Call to halt disrespect of the SADF through spreading of fake news
THE Military Command Council (MCC) categorically urges South Africans to respect the institution of the military and refrain from spreading maliciously false information about the SANDF.
An article in the City Press, dated July 22, peddled misinformation that the SANDF interfered with issues of the state during the ascension of our commander-in-chief and head of state, President Cyril Ramaphosa, to the highest office in the land.
This is seen as an attempt to discredit our country’s military and its political maturity to fully grasp and understand the constitutional checks and balances (and injunction) not to meddle in issues of the state.
Tasked with the noble responsibility to constitutionally serve the people of South Africa in their diversity, the SANDF has never in its 24 years of existence undermined the institution of state as embodied by the executive, the legislature and the judiciary.
It has remained resolute to defend the country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty without fail ever since the first Parliament, presided over by our first commander-in-chief, then-president Nelson Mandela.
As the country’s military, the SANDF puts South Africa first and fosters national cohesion while continuing its march to advance Madiba’s nation-building teachings.
The MCC condemns with the contempt it deserves any claim by cowardly, unnamed sources that our military does not understand its place in a democratic dispensation.
Our military has never failed in its mandate to defend our hardearned democracy and has no business straying into the political realm as it is led and staffed by upright men and women who do not indulge in armchair criticism of political developments in our beloved South Africa, but rather continue to serve with loyalty in and outside the borders of the Republic so that you and I can stay free from harm.
The MCC joins the chief of the SANDF, General Solly Shoke, in sternly condemning claims made by faceless individuals whose intentions we believe are not in the interest of South Africa and its people, but to spread doubts and panic about what our military is about. Brigadier-General Mafi Mgobozi Defence Corporate Communication Pretoria