In the restructured defence family, the Defence Secretariat's Chief of Acquisition forms an important nodal point between the Secretariat and Armscor.

Salvo: Could you sketch for us your position and function as Chief of Acquisition in the restructured Department of Defence?

Certainly, but I think there are one or two background issues which arise from the very thorough Defence Review and from the White Paper on Defence that we should get clarity on before we can really discuss my function. It is important to bear in mind for instance that we now have a constitutional imperative as regards civilian control of the military function. Since this control flows from the constitution, it is not vested in one man or one body - it is institutionalised in that the whole system is structured with that idea as a starting point. The principle of civilian control of the military is the basic factor underlying the function of every division in the Secretariat for Defence, including the Acquisition division.

However we must now take this idea of civilian control and ask ourselves what it really means - what do we want to control? To my mind, civilian control is all about drawing a balance between that which the military feel is their right to do and that which the general public feel is their right to question and check. Where acquisition is concerned, we need a balance between the military's decisions on the buying of new equipment and the taxpayer's need to be sure that his money is spent responsibly. The taxpayers pay for everything, so they have the right to lay down certain do's and don'ts. Someone has to check on those do's and don'ts on their behalf, so they empower the Secretariat, via parliament, to do it for them. Thus the Secretariat is responsible to Parliament for policymaking, for budgeting, and for monitoring and controlling the system. Because of events during the recent history of the country, where the military got involved in politics and internal suppression, the taxpayer has little faith in the military stating and controlling their own requirements. The military are structured in a particular way and tend to take their lead from the top down - orders are not questioned to the level and depth that civilians would like to have them questioned. Civilians are less hierarchical and tend to take their lead from what the public wants.

So we end up with a "marriage" between a civilian Secretariat and a military SANDF. A marriage works best when the relationship between the parties is formalised in the shape of an ante-nuptial contract. In our "marriage", the relationship is formalised by the existence of and a defined structure for the Secretariat.

It is against this background that the transformation team set about re-structuring the Department of Defence. They identified 18 different functions or areas and thus set up 18 divisions. Among these function areas are policy, finance, and acquisition. At this point I think we should note two things. One is that the Secretary is the Accounting Officer. He presents the budget to Parliament and is held accountable for expenditures. The other is that the Secretary is the Head of Department of which policymaking and implementation are of paramount importance. One needs to bear in mind that acquisition policy is not determined by the Chief of Acquisition - it is written by the Chief of Policy and Planning. We'll come back to this point later.

One of the other objectives of transformation is to enable the Department to spend more money at combat levels. At the moment we are top-heavy, in that we spend more money at headquarters level than at the level where the soldier has to fight. We also spend more money on supporting functions than on main-line core functions. Our spending must be better proportioned between core activities and support activities. We are also looking at ways to eliminate the triplication of the acquisition function in the restructured arms of service. We should be able to merge these functions, bearing in mind of course that each head of an arm of service will still have the responsibility of stating his own equipment requirement and technical needs.

Who takes the real decisions on the buying of equipment?

The real decisions are taken in the acquisition fora. There are three fora at various levels from the Minister of Defence at level zero and one down to levels two and three. Which level approves a particular acquisition project depends on the value and political nature of the project. But in the fora, four groups are always represented: the Ministry of Defence, the Chief of the Defence Force and the Chiefs of the various arms of service, the Secretary for Defence, the Defence Secretariat members, and Armscor. By working in this organised way we obtain consensus on what needs to be done and avoid unpleasant allegations within and outside the Department of Defence. The fora also serve as a conduit for informing the Joint Standing Committee, and through them Parliament, of our acquisition plans and the reasons for them. Thus they become co-involved and can support the Department of Defence for instance on the acquisition of corvettes. What it all means is that we function as one big team. If we leave the arms of service to go it alone in the spirit of "leave me alone, it's my department", we are divided in our support for a project before we get out of the Department of Defence to express our intentions to the rest of our countrymen.

Do you play any part in the fora's decisions on what to buy?

I play no part at the level of cardinal projects which are served before the Minister's acquisition council. I should like to make it clear that I, as Chief of Acquisition, have a limited say in the decisions of the various fora. At the second level of approval I have an equal say in acquisition matters like any other member of the steering board. This level approves non-cardinal projects only. In the acquisition of military equipment one spends substantial sums of money, and the responsibilities are enormous. Such decisions are better made by a collective body. Thus all decisions rest with the respective fora.

Armscor of course is still an integral part of the acquisition process...

Armscor is very much part of the process. Once the decision is taken, someone must go and find the appropriate equipment, do the contracting, manage the contract, look after the quality assurance, etc. That part of the process remains the responsibility of Armscor.

What you have described is centralised control of the acquisition process, but it seems the various arms of service each still have their own acquisition departments - i.e. the process itself is not centralised. Would you care to comment on this?

We in the department would like to move to centralised acquisition, but we cannot take away altogether the total responsibility for acquisition from the various acquisition departments of the arms of service. The arms of service are the people who have to use the equipment to do their job. As I see it, the project officers who will work in the Acquisition Division must come from the arms of service. They could report on two different functions to two different reporting lines: on functionality to the Chief of Acquisition. We wouldn't want to alienate the chiefs of the arms of service from the acquisition of equipment - in fact, we would want to bring them closer to the real decision-making and political support required for such decisions. It's another way of saying yes, they are the people who get the equipment and therefore need to have a say, but no, they don't take the final and absolute decision on the equipment they get. That decision is taken by the acquisition fora, Parliament, or the Cabinet.

Suppose the acquisition of a certain item or system has been approved. What happens then? What does your division do?

Once consensus has been reached and the decisions taken, the fora task the Acquisition Division to obtain the required equipment. The Chief of Acquisition then becomes a kind of executive-staff-officer-cum-paymaster of the fora, acting as an interface between the Department of Defence and Armscor. In other words, my division functions as a nodal point, an interface, with Armscor, who in turn does the actual contract management. In this way we hope to enhance efficiency and eliminate duplication within the acquisition process. We should be able to decrease the amount of rollover and also decrease the amount of decision making required, thereby decreasing the amount of control and frustration between the arms of service, the Secretary for Defence, and Armscor. It will be a streamlined process where the decision-making span is short and the actual work gets done. If we enhance the efficiency we can save money, and saved money means more equipment for the defence force. I'm hoping that the acquisition function as a nodal point will bring about this streamlining.

Do you see any particular challenges for the defence family in the future?

Yes, I do see one particular challenge: taking our defence industry and making it viable internationally. This means that we will have to help the industry to develop certain niche markets, and in this regard the government has a direct and indirect role to play. It can and does assist the industry directly through the marketing support provided by the Minister and by Armscor for example, and through general support from such bodies as the Departments of Foreign Affairs, of Trade and Industry, and of Arts, Culture and Science. Indirectly, it must stabilise the political, social and economic environment, so that the industry can function more efficiently and increase its exports. The world is our oyster, and we need to form some sort of marketing association.

We could also increase local spending on defence equipment and technology so that the industry can stabilise, but the drastic cuts to the defence budget make this very difficult. As a civil servant I cannot challenge the cuts - I must accept them as reality and learn to adjust my acquisition division and the Department of Defence acquisition requirement to accommodate the cuts. But of course this is what transformation is trying to do: re-arrange the way we do things in order to free more money for core functions and equipment. This becomes the greatest challenge: making transformation work so that we can release funding, which can be used for equipment acquisition and for maintaining our industry and the technology we have. If we don't succeed in this, the industry will slowly shut down. It lives by rands and cents, not by strategies and policies.

You mentioned that we would be coming back to the matter of policy determination.

Yes. It is a point on which I would like to make myself very clear. The Acquisition Division does not write the acquisition policy. It concentrates on the acquisition functions as such in co-operation with Armscor. Policy is written by the Policy and Planning division, and this division also audits and monitors the various divisions to see that they stick to the laid-down policy. So Acquisitions is not its own watchdog - there are checks and balances, as required by the taxpayer.

How do you see your role with respect to the maintenance of technology?

We must do our utmost to retain it. We have world-class technologies, because someone at some stage had the foresight and initiative to invest in the development of a G5, a Rooivalk and similar products. Unfortunately, when budgets are cut it becomes very hard indeed to maintain leading-edge technology, because one is then easily criticised for spending money on research and development, and accusations of subsidising the defence industry are levelled at the department. In fact, the Department of Defence is sometimes criticised for spending money on R&D which relates directly to military products. It is true that it spends fair amounts, but the critics lose sight of the fact that defence R&D is project driven. There is no research just for the sake of research, generating volumes of paper explaining new scientific theories. We undertake R&S as a building block for equipment we need. We will develop infra-red technology because we need technology. Thus the research is well focussed, and this makes it different from research going on in some other government sectors. We have managed to bring home this fact to some of our critics, and have managed to bring them round to our point of view or a common point of view.

When talking about technology and skills, it should be mentioned that a number of other government institutions can and do benefit from military technologies. The Defence Review actually sees us sharing technology and management skills with other parastatals and government departments such as Science and Technology as well as Trade and Industry.

With acknowledgements to Don Henning and Salvo.

• responsibility and accounting to Parliament (this did not happen);
• responsibility of each head of arm of service stating his own equipment requirement and technical needs (this was over-ridden by Cabinet);
• Armscor being "very much" part of the process (Arms became only a rubber-stamping institution);
• real decisions are taken in the acquisition fora (real decisions were taken by MINCOM and Chippy himself);
• Secretary for Defence (SfD) as Accounting Officer and accountable for expenditures (Government decided that the equipment was needed, MINCOM over-rode all the value systems, all the selection critera, most of the lower-level selections - so much so that the SfD resigned);
• separation of functions:
  • Chippy directed the joint project teams responsible for equipment evaluation;
  • was chairman of the Project Control Board;
  • was co-chairman of the Strategic Offers Committee;
  • was a member of the International Offers Negotiating Team (IONT) and co-responsible for technical matters along with Armscor's representative, Llew Swan;
  • was a member of the Armament Acquisition Steering Board (AASB);
  • was an invited member and secretary of the Armament Acquisition council (AAC);
  • was an invited member and secretary of the Ministers' Committee (MINCOM);
• Chippy was also allowed by Modise to report directly to him and not to his line manager being the Secretary for Defence;  and
• Almost no support for the local defence industry - so much so that even the Government's own defence company Denel has been brought to its knees, mainly be the Arms Deal, and has had to be bailed out with several billion Rands of taxpayer's money in the few years since the Arms Deal.

Doctor who?

Chippy Shaik, whose engineering degree has been exposed as plagiarised.

‘Certain academics have abused the university to engage in illicit, disgraceful and dishonest activities’

EXPOSED: How Shaik brother cheated to get his engineering doctorate

Chippy Shaik has for four years laid claim to a bogus doctorate that he and a cabal of internationally acclaimed South African professors fraudulently concocted.

An extensive Sunday Times investigation has found that Shaik’s 2003 PhD in mechanical engineering from the then University of Natal was plagiarised. More than two-thirds was regurgitated from journal papers of other authors without citation or acknowledgement.

This exposé comes on the eve of a petition by his convicted fraudster brother, Schabir, to the Constitutional Court to get out of jail early.

Chippy now risks his doctorate being revoked, and the academics who supervised his thesis ­ Professor Viktor Verijenko, head of the School of Mechanical Engineering at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and his colleague, Professor Sarp Adali ­ face being fired.

In a confidential communiqué dated May 16 and sent to the university senate on Friday, acting vice-chancellor Professor Isobel Konyn said she regretted that the integrity of a UKZN degree had again been called into question.

“This was brought to our attention by an outside agency. The university has conducted its own investigations and the allegations have foundation. An investigation of the matter has been instituted within the university and senators will be kept informed.”

Shaik, the government’s former procurement chief, played a key role in sourcing suppliers for the country’s controversial R65-billion arms deal.

German authorities are investigating allegations that he was paid a R21-million bribe by the German arms manufacturer ThyssenKrupp.

Some of the biggest research projects that Verijenko headed at UKZN involved the former Kentron, a division of Denel, as well as Armscor, Spoornet and Council for Scientific and Industrial Research mining and defence programmes.

Shaik was best man at Verijenko’s wedding in Durban five years ago and the relationship between the two men has been described as a mutually beneficial one.

Responding on behalf of Shaik yesterday, his brother, lawyer Yunus Shaik, described the plagiarism claim as “wild” and “fanciful”.

“As we enter the doors of the Constitutional Court, an attempt is made to malign the integrity of the Shaik brothers, and is a crude attempt to poison the atmosphere.

“In the field of science the concept of ‘unaided work’ is blurred by the fact that all knowledge is acquired, progressively, over time, and each scientist stands on the shoulders of those who went before,” he said.

He said that what mattered was the judgment of his brother’s supervisors and examiners as to whether he should be awarded the doctorate.

The Sunday Times has established that Professor Theodore Tauchert from the College of Engineering at the University of Kentucky in the US, who had participated in research collaborations with Verijenko, was an external examiner on the thesis.

He and Professor Pavel Tabakov of the Durban University of Technology (DUT), who is thanked by Shaik at the beginning of his thesis for his “assistance”, will be questioned on their roles.

Ukrainian-born Tabakov said yesterday he was upset to hear Shaik had plagiarised other people’s work, including his own.

“But I cannot comment further until I’ve had a chance to study the thesis,” said Tabakov, a former research associate at the then University of Natal and now associate director of the DUT’s mechanical engineering department.

A study of Shaik’s 217-page thesis, on the formulation of an advanced theory to calculate the bending of composite structures due to mechanical stress and heat, has also revealed:

• Fundamental errors in mathematical formulations; and
• At least 100 spelling, typographical, grammatical, consistency and internal referencing errors.

With acknowledgement to Jocelyn Maker, Megan Power and Sunday Times.