Former deputy President David Mabuza has taken the flack for making “empty promises” just before he left government as the Department of Defence and Military Veterans fails to pay pension payouts that were promised to groups of former liberation soldiers.
Defence Minister Thandi Modise and her deputy Thabanga Makwetla are also at the centre of a blame game on the government’s failure to spend hundreds of millions of rands meant for liberation war veterans.
It is also alleged that the spat over the fund also cost Director-General Irene Mpolweni her job. Mpolweni’s allies in the department claimed she was the stumbling block to a plan to loot military veterans’ funds. The department has not yet given reasons for her suspension.
The military veterans’ funds, approved by the National Treasury last year, had not reached the intended recipients, who are soldiers who participated in South Africa’s war for liberation.
Sunday World has learnt that the ministry, headed by Modise and Makwetla, had failed to make the necessary submissions to parliament. This was to unlock the disbursement of funds to war veterans. The National Treasury approved funds worth hundreds of millions of rands “towards the roll-out of pension benefits” for liberation war veterans.
The amount comprises of R37-million for the financial year ending this month, R102-million for the next financial year. About R109-million was set aside for the 2024-2025 financial year and R115-million for the following year. But not a cent has been paid out despite Mabuza’s promise to pay the former soldiers in December 2022.
Lwazi Mzobe, leader of the Liberation Struggle War Veterans of South Africa, slammed the government, especially the former deputy president and Makwetla, for not taking the plight of soldiers seriously, saying even the December 2022 promise was meant for “political grandstanding”.
Said Mzobe: “There is a lack of political will from deputy minister Makwetla and the hasty pronouncement by deputy president Mabuza while there were no systems in place. This was not new behaviour by DD (Mabuza).
“The situation has not improved to date, the President Task Team (PTT) on Military Veterans led by DD was weak and non-functional, the new chairperson of the PTT would be the newly appointed Deputy President Mr Paul Mashatile, we hope relations will be different this time.”
According to Mzobe, the DG might have been suspended for refusing to bend over backward to accommodate the demands of the MK Liberation War Veterans – a group of ex-combatants associated with Makwetla, which is not the same as the Liberation Struggle War Veterans of South Africa. “The DMV (department of military veterans) is used as a cash cow by one veterans’ association linked to the deputy minister. If you don’t appease that association, you run the risk of being sidelined,” Mzobe said.
Modise’s spokesperson Cornelius Monama defended Modise and Makwetla, saying they were not responsible for the delays in the payments to former Liberation War guerrillas. “There are parliamentary processes to follow, including the gazetting of regulations and public consultations. The processes are currently underway,” he said.
It was the same reasoning Modise and Makwetla used three days before last Christmas to dribble the former liberation soldiers who held them hostage. By December last year, Modise and Makwetla said war veterans were not paid because “in the process of the implementation of this decision we were confronted with unavoidable administrative processes which resulted in the delay in the payment of pension benefits. One of these was the requirement that the Draft Pension Regulations and the Pension Benefit Access form should be tabled in parliament.
“The Department of Military Veterans (DMV) is working around the clock to ensure that the disbursement of the Military Veterans Pension benefit is implemented as soon as possible,” said Modise and Makwetla in a joint statement on December 22, 2022, following a commitment by Mabuza earlier that month.
Monama said Modise and Makwetla, who are ex-combatants in their own right “are committed to addressing the plight of the military and to ensuring that they receive the benefits due to them as prescribed in the Military Veterans Act”.
A military veterans department official said: “The destitute former soldiers will suffer further as they have been suffering for many years because of lack of political will to prioritise their plight. Instead, the political heads who have failed to do their job in parliament for the payment of retired liberation soldiers have opted to suspend the person who worked hard to get the allocation from the National Treasury.
“They do this because they want to benefit. There’s already a suspicion that there are ghost veterans on the list,” said the person.
To read more political news and views, click here.
Follow @SundayWorldZA on Twitter and @sundayworldza on Instagram, or like our Facebook Page, Sunday World, by clicking here for the latest breaking news in South Africa.
