There are many jobs in South Africa that I don’t imagine are easy – police officer, the person who has to explain those big numbers to Jacob Zuma, the men and women who serve in our military ranks – I wouldn’t want to trade places with any of the afore-mentioned people.

Sympathy for our soldiers might be harder to come by after you read the latest allegations labelled at South African soldiers on United Nations peacekeeping missions. Yep, a report by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services has reviewed four of the major missions and what they found is very disturbing. TimesLive reports:

The report shows that South Africa tops the list of offending nations, despite not being the biggest contributor of troops to missions.

In terms of substantiated allegations, the report states that the three countries whose soldiers are most abusive are:

• South Africa (nine allegations);
• Uruguay (eight allegations); and
• Nigeria (seven allegations).

The report does not detail the nature of the allegations but says some of the offences were committed by more than one soldier.

That report is a damning indictment on our overseas military representation and is not something that should be taken lightly. A Nelson Mandela Metropolitan researcher further highlighted how poorly our numbers stack up:

In Burundi, when South Africa led the peacekeeping mission between 2001 and 2009, our troops faced nearly 400 misdemeanours and about 1000 military trials, [ranging from] absence without leave to rape and murder.

In the DRC, between 2005 and 2006, they faced 264 misdemeanours and more than 546 military trials for serious crimes.

This shows there are still very serious problems in the SANDF.

Not exactly doing ourselves proud out there are we? Of course it isn’t fair to paint all of our troops with the same brush, which would do the large majority of our soldiers a great disservice, but numbers like those we have seen above point to some deep-rooted problems within our ranks.

Sort it out SANDF and sort it out now.

[source:timeslive]