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The SANDF says 3 000 recruits are signing up for military training
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January 10, 2008, 06:15
The South African National Defence Force says 3 000 recruits are signing up for military training this week at the different training institutions of the four arms of the country's defence forces. The defence force yesterday welcomed 250 of the recruits to the Air Force Gymnasium in Thabatshwane. The four armed services that make up the forces of the SANDF are the South African Army, the South African Air Force, the South African Navy and the South African Military Health Service.
The military as it exists today was created in 1994, following South Africa's first post-apartheid national elections and the adoption of a new constitution. It replaced the South African Defence Force (SADF), and included personnel and equipment from the SADF and the former homelands forces, as well as personnel from the former guerrilla forces of some of the political parties involved in South Africa, such as the African National Congress's Umkhonto we Sizwe, the Pan Africanist Congress's APLA and the Self-Protection Units of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).
Equiping young people with skills
The SANDF says over and above enhancing its mission readiness, military enrolment means equipping young people with training in scarce technical skills. Lieutenant-Colonel Morné Botha, second in charge at the Airforce Gymnasium in Valhalla, south of Pretoria, says many of their personnel are recruited by the private sector.
Botha said: "There are people that come to the Airforce, they are well trained, we utilise them for a couple of years and after a couple of years they will join the private sector. The military provides excellent training or military skills development and most of the skills we train in the military can be utilised in the private sector."
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