Hon Chairperson, some months ago, after completing a Cabinet-level performance assessment, the President decided to push "eject". With a push of the button, former Defence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu was catapulted from her ultra-luxury Gulfstream jet, came tumbling down 35 000 feet and landed in a dump called the Department of Public Service and Administration, DPSA.
Since then, the Minister has been spotted on British Airways, picking at her Woolworths meals, probably desperately missing her favourite Gulfstream jet. However, truth be told, the Minister is settling in rather well in her new role of monitoring tardiness and name-dropping within the not-so- capable state. [Laughter.]
Of course, the same cannot be said for the new Minister of Defence, who seems to be stumbling from one scandal to another. First, we had Boeing- gate; then CARgate; and now we have Guptagate. The Minister must realise that at this rate she is in danger of being rechristened "Ministergate". [Interjections.]
Unsurprisingly, there are rumours in the corridors of power that the President is losing patience with the Minister and that his finger is once again hovering above the eject button. [Interjections.] One suspects that if there is one more defence scandal, the President will push the eject button and catapult the Minister all the way back to Correctional Services, where she can do less damage.
Yesterday we debated Guptagate without the benefit of a copy of the final report of the investigation. The report was deliberately and cynically withheld in order to disarm members of the Opposition in Parliament. Frankly, the report makes for scary reading. The President is, evidently, not in control of his Ministers and his Ministers are, evidently, not in control of their officials. When the President says jump, Ministers, evidently, do not listen.
We were told that the Minister turned down a request from the Gupta family to use the Waterkloof Air Force Base. That now appears not to be true. It was the Minister's senior adviser, who had been contacted separately by a different person who, in fact, turned down the request.
The Minister seems, at least for a period, to have seriously considered the request. The Minister knew the Guptas had their eyes on Waterkloof Air Force Base. Had she issued clear instructions to the Defence department, the aircraft would never have landed at the Waterkloof Air Force Base and there would have been no Guptagate scandal. The Minister was clearly negligent. We therefore hope that one day soon the Public Protector will be knocking on the Minister's door to begin an independent investigation into Guptagate. The Chief of the SA National Defence Force, General Solly Shoke, has not been given an opportunity to brief the Joint Standing Committee on Defence on the combat readiness of the Defence Force. We therefore know very little about the state of the Defence Force. However, everything we do know suggests that the Defence Force is in very deep trouble.
This was nowhere better illustrated than by the tragedy in the Central African Republic, CAR. The Defence Force Commander, Colonel William Dixon, is justifiably proud of our soldiers, because they fought well when the fighting began. [Applause.] They survived, according to the terrible logic of battle: kill or be killed. However, the fact is that our soldiers were left dangling, with both hands tied behind their backs in a deadly firefight, which cost 14 young men from the elite One Parachute Battalion their lives.