Cape Town - Defence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu has revealed a plan to set up a national service to provide training and instil discipline in youth.
Briefing the media ahead of her Budget Vote speech on Tuesday, Sisulu said she hoped to draw up a bill within a year, but cautioned that the national service would not be compulsory.
"It offers the country a solution that we have in our hands. Ten years down the line with such a youthful population and 50 percent of them between the ages of 18 and 24 unemployed and unskilled, not purposeful, we are going for a serious crisis and unless we change our mindset around how we can utilise what - we have a problem," said Sisulu.
The national service would differ from the defence force's Military Skills Development System which serves as a feeder system for the defence force, as those that enrolled in the proposed service wouldn't necessarily have to join the military.
Sisulu said the department would be seeking stakeholder consensus on the service, adding that department would also use a new series called In Your Defence which will appear on SABC2, as a way to gain national consensus.
She said moves were also going ahead to amend legislation to allow for military reserves to be called up at any time.
Presently the legislation only allowed defence force reserves to be called upon at times of war, which Sisulu said was a "serious impediment" particularly for those that sought work.
There were currently about 28 500 reserves, with about 13 500 called up last year for various tasks including peacekeeping operations in Sudan, said Major General Roy Andersen.
Sisulu said the amendment had been accepted by Cabinet and Parliament indicated that it would pass it soon.
She said the department's budget which currently made up 1.3 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was "woefully" inadequate and should be more in line with two percent of GDP.
This was one of the reasons why the government had to in November withdraw its contract with Airbus to buy eight transport aircraft as the country "could not afford" it, she said.
The government was still waiting for Airbus to pay back R2.9 billion which it had paid to the European company before the contract be cancelled.
Sisulu said Armscor has been in contact with Airbus to see how soon the money could be recovered.
The Department of Defence would also be hiring out its services to other departments and Sisulu said defence force members had already done a "fantastic job" helping to build bridges for the Department of Public Works.
"What they give us for repairing their infrastructure is a pittance, so it is some kind of income generating method," she pointed out.
She said because of the department's increasingly tight budget, five task teams had been set up to try to cut down on expenses and tighten internal control systems.
Already some of the Navy's budget would be cut so that Army could get more funding.
The department had also found the necessary monies for salary increases and would be announcing these soon, she said.
However, she said though the defence force was struggling with aging equipment on the department's "shoe-string budget", the country was not "employing a skeleton defence force".
She said Rosita, the 10-year toddler born in a tree that the South African military rescued during the Mozambican floods in 2000, was expected to attend Sisulu's budget vote speech today.
