Ex-SADF troops battle to get on state database
Military veterans struggle to apply for benefits
THIRTY years after South African Defence Force (SADF) gunner Private Kurt Oelofse’s Ratel 90 took a direct hit from a Fapla T55 tank during the Battle of Lomba in southeast Angola on October 3 1987, he is still having nightmares.
Oelofse, 48, who runs a small plumbing business in Port Elizabeth today, spent three months in 1 Military Hospital with a mangled right hand and fingers “split open like a Russian sausage in the frying pan”.
He subsequently lost a finger but after two stints in Hunterscraig for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), his mental scars run much deeper, he admits.
“I’ve got a very short fuse and I don’t sleep properly because of nightmares,” Oelofse said.
“I don’t dream of the battle itself, it’s just images . . . trying to pull the trigger while the guys are coming for me . . . trying to run and my feet don’t move.
“Every day I open my eyes it’s a battle.”
Speaking to The Herald on the eve of Armed Forces Day tomorrow, Oelofse is one of hundreds of thousands of former soldiers from all sides of the South African conflict who have the right, according to the Military Veterans Act, to be registered on the state database for military veterans (MVs).
Once registered, these MVs have the right to apply for various benefits including housing, public transport, education, funeral and health.
Working through the 61 Mechanised Battalion MV support group, Oelofse has managed to get himself registered and he is hoping, once he can work out the procedure, to apply for the health benefit.
Getting it would allow him to get around his lack of a private medical aid, see a psychologist and start trying to resolve his PTSD, he said.
“But it’s unclear to me how to make this application. I feel the government needs to lay down a clear procedure which we all can follow,” he said.
Oelofse stresses that he is one of many ex-SADF soldiers in similar circumstances – and most are still not even on the database.
Memorable Order of Tin Hats district old bill Noel Smith confirmed the situation yesterday.
“There are a lot of ex-SADF blokes out there facing difficult circumstances and struggling to get registered,” he said.
“Most of all, our guys need the health benefit because of injuries and other problems they picked up in the bush.”
Former national service infantry lieutenant Mike Lenaghan, a Port Elizabeth resident who has been trying for nearly five years to get registered on the MV database, said the system was at present “another example of claimed nation-building that’s been skewed”.
Together with thousands of other hopeful MVs, Lenaghan responded with his military documentation to the department’s June 2012 call and signed up at the Prince Alfred’s Guard Drill Hall to be registered on the database.
Three years later, after hearing nothing, he visited the department in Pretoria and acquired new forms.
Having completed them he returned them electronically in February last year and then visited the department in May to hand them over personally, he says.
But he has still heard nothing back to confirm his registration.
According to the Department of Military Veterans’ own handbook, all MVs have the right to be registered.
It emphasises the vision of “a unified military veterans’ community and the mission of nation-building”.
The department last week confirmed to The Herald that former soldiers from all South Africa’s armed forces were eligible to be registered and apply for benefits.
But reflecting some of the confusion still hanging over the issue, while the department’s MV booklet says clearly prospective applicants “must be listed on the military veterans database” – department spokesman Lebogang Mophata interpreted things differently.
“All military veterans who were in the then SADF were included in the certified personnel register that was integrated into the South African National Defence Force and now the national database of military veterans,” she said.
MK veterans regional deputy chairman Mdulelo Qupe did not want to respond to questions and called for an interview with his whole committee on the issue.