Legal action loading — plight of military veterans Part 2

This is the second of a two-part series. Read part 1 here.

The Military Veterans Act was enacted in 2011 and included pension as a benefit, however, this was only recently budgeted for, and regulations were also only drawn up recently. The draft policy signed by the Minister of Defence and Military Veterans, Thandi Modise, in 2022 provided pension benefits to non-statutory forces and completely excluded statutory forces. This drew criticism and led to petitions and appeals to Modise and in 2023, it was amended to cover all Military Veterans as per the Act.

The Pension Regulations were signed by Modise on 31 July 2023. In  September 2023,  Modise said that the benefits would be backdated to 1 April 2023 and that the amended regulations would be published in the Government Gazette.

Modise promulgated the Military Veterans Regulations on 6 October 2023 through the Government Gazette. Following the publication of the Regulations, the Government Pension Administration Agency (GPAA) started the admission and processing of prospective pension beneficiaries.

In April 2023 Deputy Minister Thabang Makwetla said the rollout of pension payment was commencing and that as of freedom day that year (27 April 2023), the military veterans could start the application processes for the pension payout.

“So people started applying, but then there was a problem as there was confusion as to when the payment would be made because nowhere in the regulations did it say the payment date,” said Godfrey Giles, Vice-Chairman of the South African Military Veterans Organisation (Samvo).

The department tried to backdate the payments to 1 April 2023, which was the beginning of the financial year, and R331-million which was set aside for pension payouts was allocated for the 2023/2024 financial year.

“There was a backwards and forwards for months on this one, and eventually it came out in the October 2023 regulations, that it would be backdated to the date of approval of the application. So it was not going to be backdated to April 2023, it was only when the person's approval of the application was done,” he said.

Giles said, “there has been a total mess up”.

“Although the budget from DMV for GPAA was R331-million, the target was 4,000 (veterans) to be paid out this financial year [...]  it was impossible for [GPAA] to actually do that because they had to start from scratch, and if you’d look at the amount that the person could be paid, etc, they couldn’t get to it,” he said.

The GPAA could only start processing applications once the regulations were published in October 2023, by which time they had received over 18,000 applications. As GPAA could only start after six months, the target was changed to 2,000 payouts. After the first three months, only 266 were actually paid out, from 827 finalised applications, according to Giles.

Frustration mounting and court action pending 

In February 2024, the Portfolio Committee on Defence and Military Veterans received a status update on the rollout of pension benefits.

In February, 268 qualifying military veterans received their pension benefits, and the committee noted that the department would have to surrender any unspent funds to the National Treasury due to the inability of the department and the GPAA to move with the necessary speed to process the payments.

“It is estimated that over R250-million will be returned to National Treasury as DMV could not fulfil its mandate. To think of how many military veterans could have been assisted that are dying and suffering,” said Giles.

Ernest Lintnaar who served in the SADF between 1982 and 1989 as well as with SANDF from 1994 to 1998 told Daily Maverick that it felt like officials were stalling and treating the veterans like fools.

“Heads must roll. You can’t keep going on and saying, ‘oh, sorry, we missed this one let’s try again’, or ‘we didn’t do too well here but we’ll just keep trying and people will understand’, no. We as veterans do not understand anymore. They want us to go away, but me, I’m not going away,” he said.

Giles said that he had over a thousand other veterans forming part of Samvo who had voiced their concerns about how the pension payouts are being handled, directly with the DMV and GPAA, but there appears to be no immediate reaction or correction of the process.

“I’ve had enough, and that’s why we are now going to launch a court action. We believe that the only way of getting government to do anything is if you get the courts to actually push that,” he said.

“With thousands of veterans that are really starving, dying, or ill, it is not fair that they cannot get assistance because there’s a lack of political will.  There’s funding, there are regulations, there’s legislation, yet it’s just not been done. And it’s not just for one year, this goes back for a decade”.

At the time of publication, the DMV and GPAA had not responded to questions sent by Daily Maverick on 25 April and again on 30 April. DM