- DA calls for Parliamentary report into botched return of SANDF troops on Friday,
- DA further calls for accountability in disastrous SAMIDRC mission,
- SANDF needs full scale overhaul and not to be treated for DoD’s PR.
The Democratic Alliance expresses serious concern over the chaotic and humiliating return of South African soldiers deployed to the failed and now-defunct SADC mission in the DRC. The first group of 249 SANDF members, meant to be welcomed in Bloemfontein on Friday at noon with dignity and ceremony, was instead rerouted to Air Force Base Waterkloof after a series of logistical blunders left Minister Angie Motshekga, her generals, military families, and bused-in media teams waiting in vain.
The DA calls for a full parliamentary report detailing the planning and procurement of repatriation logistics, the causes of delays in troop and equipment movement from Goma, the full cost of rerouting and VIP arrangements, the status and safety of remaining SANDF personnel and assets in the DRC, and what lessons, if any, have been learned from this mission’s collapse.
This farcical “homecoming” is not merely a PR disaster. It reflects the SANDF’s growing inability to carry out even the most basic operations, troop movement, equipment return, or coordinated logistics, without confusion, delay, or last-minute crisis-driven haphazard improvisation. The Minister’s own admission that “we would have just picked up our children and landed them at the airbase” if the SANDF had working aircraft speaks volumes.
Worse still is the SANDF’s expensive and unsustainable reliance on foreign commercial airlines. While our own military transport fleet sits idle due to chronic neglect, the Department is now dependent on costly foreign charters—further proof of a hollowed-out defence force.
The treatment of our returning troops only deepens the disgrace. After waking at 03:00 on Friday to begin their journey from Tanzania, they landed at Waterkloof just before 19:00—nearly 16 hours later. Rather than being allowed to rest, they were paraded in front of cameras in a stage-managed media spectacle. This is not honour. It is humiliation.
Yet instead of accountability, we get excuses. When convenient, Minister Motshekga blames SADC or the SAMIDRC mission. Now she blames inadequate funding. At no point does she or her senior commanders take responsibility for the planning failures, poor coordination, or lack of leadership. South Africans deserve accountability, not spin.
This botched withdrawal is emblematic of the wider disaster that the DRC mission became marked by confused mandates, poor preparation, tragic losses, and now retrospective claims of “success.” From under-equipped deployments to strategic drift, SAMIDRC has laid bare the deep structural crisis gripping the SANDF.
South Africa’s soldiers are not props for press conferences. They deserve modern equipment, professional leadership, and dignified treatment not muddled flight plans, hollow ceremonies, and failed logistics.
No amount of spin can conceal the truth: SAMIDRC ended not in honour, but in disarray. If this is how South Africa withdraws from conflict, what confidence can we have in how it enters one.