In your 2018 budget speech, Minister, among other things that you said was that and I quote, "South Africa is a peaceful country that lives in harmony with her neighbours." You further said that due to unpredictable geopolitical realities in Southern African Development Community, SADC, and in the continent, the country requires to maintain a credible military force as a deterrent.
For your account, you further said, "Some of the SADC countries are injecting resources to build their military capacity through strategic acquisition. Conversely, SA is in a path of reduced defence expenditure."
Why do you have to reduce defence expenditure when we know that the threat to our sovereignty is permanently lurking? Why do you say nothing when you know that the real threat is not within but outside - when you know that the real threat which is imminent, is a threat of imperialism across Lobatse - the US High Command
and Military Base in Gaborone? Are you friends with imperialists? You becoming speechless on this real threat is telling - it is telling because you are not committed to combating the threat of imperialism. Yours is the contradiction of the highest order and it ought to be exposed for what it is. And this is what it is, and for which we raise pertinent issues of relevance to this Budget Vote debate.
Comparatively, the South Africa budget allocation and expenditure over the years has been significantly declining and fell below the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, Brics, countries which leaves South Africa lagging behind and therefore exposing our defence capability and aspirations.
Again, on comparative analysis, the Defence and Military Veterans' budget and expenditure per GDP constitutes 1,1 percentage point of its annual R482 billion as against l5 percentage point of R213,7 billion allocated to education for an example. Without devaluing the critical role of education as it contributes to socioeconomic wellbeing of the nation, which also correctly priced at l5% of the total expenditure to the GDP,
however, madam Minister, we decry a one percent allocated to Defence and Military Veterans. You should give soldiers more guns and not sticks.
We are told that the military equipment and armaments are obsolete and no longer useful, whereas government spent R30 billion for Strategic Defence Acquisition in 1999, an arrangement through which the country was exposed to corruption and state capture as early as then, at an industrial scale.
We demand more transparency on the so called Special Defence Account which is nothing else but a slush fund whose purpose and utilisation is shrouded in secrecy. We demand full disclosure of this account. A strategic asset such as Armscor, which could be strategically repositioned and capitalised in order to play a role in massive industrialisation and manufacturing of both military and commercial products and commodities, is reduced to a tender committee of corrupt politicians and securocrats.
We call for increased budget allocation and expenditure for the Department of Defence and Military Veterans for improved service
and working conditions of our soldiers engaged in the national duty; for better care for struggle veterans' widows and their children; for the repositioning and recapitalisation of Armscor to meet industrialisation aspirations and for a secured South Africa.
The EFF proposes a strategic paradigm shift from colonial and apartheid militarism to democratic and people-centred civil military which is guided by the philosophy and the doctrine of the revolutionary consciousness and a people's government; where the military and the people are one in the battle against alcohol, drugs, substance abuse, crime and all social ills. We call or a review of the defence strategy which shall ensure resources that guarantee the uninterrupted defence of the national and territorial sovereignty against imperialist aggression. [Time expired.] And until all these demands are fully met, as the EFF, we reject this Budget Vote. Thank you so much.