Some 50 families from Air Force Base Makhado’s Braambos residential area will be left virtually destitute at the end of this month as a result of massive retrenchment action at the base.

An undisclosed number of learners will have to leave the school at the base when their parents evacuate their jobs and homes.

Breadwinners in these families were members of a specialized staff component involved in the maintenance of the military aircraft (Hawks and Gripens) at the base. It is not known how this retrenchment action will affect the status of the aircraft in their care and the overall combat readiness at the strategic AFB Makhado.

It is also not known how the retrenchment will impact members’ personal situations, what assistance will be forthcoming for members’ forced relocation and in the disruption of their children’s schooling.

Questions about all these issues met with a continued deadly silence from military headquarters in Pretoria this week. Repeated efforts by this newspaper to receive official information regarding the massive retrenchment action and the reasons behind it had been forwarded to military headquarters since 12 December last year. None of these enquiries was answered.

The continued official silence is causing concern and confusion about the situation at AFB Makhado in the local community, where congregations  have engaged in special prayers for the affected families since last week.

The retrenchment of members of the Denel/AMG unit at AFB Makhado followed a decision by the Air Force not to renew the contract with Denel. This involved the future of more than 500 Denel/AMG members countrywide and came in the wake of an announcement in Parliament last year that the air force did not have sufficient budget to keep all Gripen fighter planes in the air. The situation was exacerbated by the recent announcement of further drastic budget cuts. According to media reports, the Department of Defence indicated that it intended to create its own internal technical unit to take over the services of the Denel/AMG unit. According to one newspaper report, a spokesperson also mentioned that the present technical team was “too white.” Indications were that just a small number of the present unit members would be retained.

In the meantime, the electricity crisis at the base and the expensive interim measures to supply electricity via standby diesel generators remains unresolved. The cost of only the diesel required for this emergency action runs into more than R1,2 million a month. Members of a parliamentary portfolio committee who recently visited the base to find out how the training of black pilots was progressing, to their surprise discovered this major crisis at the base. According to an earlier statement by the AFB Makhado command, no information is available yet from the Department of Public Works (DPW) about any plan to start with the tender and repair process to restore the high-voltage electricity supply to the base after a supply cable exploded in October last year.

Upon enquiry, the DPW stated: “Progress will be determined by the SCM processes, but we envisage the work to take more or less three months at an estimated cost of R9 million."