Newscenter Media News The Faculty of Military Science at Saldanha on the west coast of the Western Cape province on 1 April marked its 75th anniversary with celebratory events over the prior weekend, including a Freedom of the City right of entry parade.
The Faculty, the only one of its kind in South Africa, educates personnel, principally junior officers, for the South African Department of Defence (DoD) and the SA National Defence Force (SANDF). An inter-disciplinary faculty, it includes five schools: Security and Africa Studies, Geospatial Studies and Information Systems, Human and Organisational Development, Science and Technology and lastly Public and Defence Management, according to Noëlle Cowling (Department of Military Strategy) and Ian van der Waag, chair of the Security and Africa Studies School.
Each school is home to several departments and programmes. There are also two dedicated research bodies – the Centre for Military Studies (Cemis) and the Security Institute for Governance and Leadership in Africa (Sigla).
It is the only Stellenbosch University faculty offering distance study at undergraduate level through the interactive telematic education (ITE) programme.
Five undergraduate programmes, leading to a BMil degree, include Human and Organisation Development, Organisation and Resource Management, Security and Africa Studies, Military Technology and lastly Technology and Defence Management. Postgraduate programmes, from honours to doctoral level, are open to SANDF officers and the public.
The majority of undergraduates are from the ranks of the SANDF, though young officers from Swaziland, Mozambique, Angola, Botswana and Namibia have graduated with B Mil degrees, Cowling and van der Waag write in a comprehensive history of the faculty.
The rationale behind the establishment of the SA Military Academy, which officially came into being on 1 April 1950, was to “elevate” officer training in the then Union Defence Force (UDF) to the same level as officer training in other countries. The UDF, according to Cowling and van der Waag, wanted the academy education standard to equal that of a university. Formed in conjunction with Pretoria University, the academy was modelled on the Indian National Defence Academy, with education and training systems loosely based on those of the Royal Military Academy (Sandhurst in the United Kingdom) and the United States (US) Military Academy at West Point.
Pretoria University and the Department of Defence (DoD) agreed to the university offering BSc (Mil) and BA (Mil) degrees to army and air force students at the academy. The handful of military subjects, including (military) geography, history, law and science, were grouped under “Military Studies” (“Krygskunde” in Afrikaans) presented by permanent force officers at the Military College in the then Voortrekkerhoogte.
Courses were presented in Afrikaans. Examination papers were provided in English. The academy, sometimes referred to as a “military faculty”, was not a university faculty. There was not even a “department of military studies” and the lecturers were grouped under the university’s mathematics department.
No constitution or contract between the university and the UDF existed. University attempts to introduce a formal agreement in 1952 failed. The shortage of lecturers and facilities posed a problem – aggravated by students having to commute 18 km to the university for additional degree courses not presented at Voortrekkerhoogte.
“Obviously, this half-baked attempt resulted in an unacceptably high student failure rate,” according to Cowling and van der Waag. Six of the original 30 candidates graduated in April 1953. Then defence minister FC Erasmus ordered the UDF to place the academy on the correct footing. The so-called Kriegler Committee reviewed the situation.
A critical factor was the academy’s remoteness from the ocean for educating naval officers and Saldanha was identified as ideal, with the existing Naval Gymnasium there and the Langebaan Road Air Force Base [now AFB Langebaanweg], a training base, close by.
Saldanha’s isolation was viewed as “an ideal academic environment for students, without the diversions and attractions of city life to interfere with their academic endeavour”.
The move to the west coast came in August 1953 with approval in principle for a joint services academy at Saldanha followed two months later by a meeting between Stellenbosch University Rector, Professor RW Wilcocks, and senior UDF officers. He heard the UDF intended to establish a faculty “preferably” at Stellenbosch. Much toing and froing between academics and the military ended amicably in 1955 when the first officers began studies at Stellenbosch with the Saldanha Academy opening its doors in 1958, the same year the UDF was renamed the SA Defence Force (SADF).
Politics between academics and the military were again to the fore with moves to Pretoria and a tie-up with UNISA (the University of South Africa), moves from Saldanha and others debated. In the end the Saldanha choice remained as did the connection to Stellenbosch University.
In 1994 the SADF was renamed the SA National Defence Force (SANDF). Post 1994, the growing debate on the future of the academy continued unabated ‒ no doubt in response to the changing order in the country at the time, but also because of various human resource and education and training review initiatives again highlighting the lack of clarity on the role and nature of the academy within the DoD, the pair wrote.
Despite being proclaimed “a jewel in the crown” of the new SANDF in 1995, by then deputy defence minister Ronnie Kasrils, the academy again faced the real prospect of closure.”
Though there were fewer Military Academy graduates in the officer corps, they dominated the SADF’s top posts during the 1970s to the mid-1990s. This domination waned as former MK (uMkhonto we Sizwe), APLA (Azanian Peoples’ Liberation Army) and TDF (Transkei Defence Force) soldiers increasingly dominated the new SANDF command echelons ‒ placing, once again, the academy’s future in a somewhat precarious position.
Aware of these impending realities, the academy’s leadership launched something of a “pre-emptive strike” in 1995 ‒ a conference on “The Future of Military Education in a Democratic South Africa” at the academy, aimed at garnering support within political, academic and military circles.
With official SANDF representatives advocating the militarisation of officer education, other voices called for “democratisation and civilianisation”. The conference led to the academy’s new academic offering purportedly more cost effective and task orientated. Clearly, future officers would require a liberal, inter-disciplinary education to meet the complex challenges of the military profession.
Through the following decade, the faculty would still operate in an environment contaminated by the tensions created by this unresolved debate.
In 2011 mathematician Professor Sam Tshehla was elected Dean of the Faculty after serving as Vice Dean since 2002.
Acknowledgement of the Military Academy’s role in military education came in 2016 when Tshehla was named “Best Professor in Military Science” at the African Leadership Awards.
From its coastal location, the Faculty is a service provider to the SANDF’s Defence and War colleges, seen as important in strengthening the relationship between the University and the SANDF. The SANDF-SU partnership provides a synergy which has become the faculty’s strength and an opportunity to continue the current trajectory of progress, according to Cowling and van der Waag.
The post Seventy-five years of tertiary military education in South Africa appeared first on defenceWeb.