If Ramaphosa caused the navy exercise fiasco, will anyone tell us?

About this episode

The episode discusses the implications of President Ramaphosa's late instructions regarding a naval exercise involving multiple countries, focusing on military morale and accountability.

If the past is any guide then some middle-ranking official of officer is going to take the fall for the cock-up at sea last week when an Iranian corvette took part in exercises off of False Bay with the South African, Chinese and Russian navies after President Cyril Ramaphosa, very late in the day, issued instructions (exactly what he said and whether or not he wrote it down we still don’t know) that they should not take part. There was probably no need for the Iranian vessel to follow the others out to sea, veteran military analyst Helmut Roemer Heitman tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge, if it was merely going to observe. You can observe from the bridge of a participating ship. The result of the mess thus created, he says, is that "It'll be have a demoralizing impact on an already demoralized defense force because they'll be given the blame. And that's bad because the morale is already not good for obvious reasons. So you'll have more people leave who we'd rather keep and you'll have fewer people join who we'd like to join” Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data…

People in this episode

Host: Peter Bruce

Guest: Helmut Roemer Heitman

Topics covered

• naval exercises
• military analysis
• defense force morale
• political accountability
• international relations

Keywords

• navy exercise
• Cyril Ramaphosa
• military morale
• Iranian corvette
• False Bay
• defense force
• Helmut Roemer Heitman

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: South African Navy, Chinese Navy, Russian Navy, Podcasts from the Edge, TimesLIVE Podcasts

Places: False Bay

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