R19.6bn for veterans a moving target - DG
2011-03-09 16:35
Cape Town - The department of military veterans on Wednesday gave MPs a cost estimate of R19.6bn over five years to provide benefits for former freedom fighters but director general Tshepe Motumi qualified it as a "moving target".
"That is the total figure but it is a moving target. Even as we speak we have new figures but we cannot release them yet," he said after a briefing to Parliament's portfolio committee on defence also attended by Defence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu.
A cost estimate of R65bn leaked to the press earlier this week would come into play if all veterans qualified for all the benefits being considered under new legislation, he said.
However, the figure was believed to be considerably lower because many already received state help.
The department estimated that 5.4% of veterans qualified for new pension benefits, 26% for transport support, 35.7% for an upgraded once-off housing grant of R120 000 and 8.9% for an education grant of R10 000 per year.
Its calculations however included medical benefits of R6 000 per year for the full register of 56 064 military veterans.
The department was proposing an average annual pension of R2 900 a month for veterans, with yearly increases calculated at 75% of inflation.
Motumi said the much-criticised lack of finality about the figures was due to the fact that work streams put in place in the fledgling department to cost a comprehensive benefit system were updating the register of veterans "on a daily basis".
'A political problem'
The department was seeking to include former struggle combatants who could not be integrated into the military or refused to do so because their political leaders rejected the Codesa negotiations on a new political order.
The deputy minister for military veterans, Thabang Makwetla, angrily rejected suggestions from the opposition that South Africa could simply not afford the cost of proposed amendments to the Military Veterans Affairs Act of 1999 to extend education, employment, health housing, pension and transport benefits to all former statutory and non-statutory soldiers.
"There will always be many problems to deal with. You have to make a choice," Makwetla said. We cannot say the money is not there. It is a political problem."
He warned that international experience had repeatedly shown how dangerous it could be to leave former freedom fighters to fend for themselves, and cited Zimbabwe as a case in point.
Noting that the neighbouring state waited six years after the end of colonial rule in 1986 to address the plight of former combatants, Makwetla said: "This contributed to the instability in Zimbabwe."
"If we ignore the welfare of former soldiers we may live to regret it," he added.
He dismissed a charge by Democratic Alliance defence spokesperson David Maynier that the legislative process had been too long and sloppy.
The process had hardly been slow given the fact that the task team on military veterans concluded its report at the end of November 2009 and that Cabinet only finalised its position on the document in June 2010.
The minister accused the media of being insensitive in reports about the potential cost of implementing the ambitious package.
He said a front-page headline this week in Business Day which referred to "apartheid veterans" was "insulting" because it confused former anti-apartheid fighters with the old regime's soldiers.
"It is confusing the public about what it is that we have done."
- SAPA
