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Defe
nce minister Mosiuoa Lekota says South Africa faces the biggest
responsibility of bringing peace and stability to the Southern
African Development Community (SADC) region.
The minister addressed the Cape Town Press Club yesterday.
“South Africa as the biggest economy of the SADC region
cannot avoid this responsibility”, the minister said.
He said if the region couldn’t be stabilised, a spill over of
large numbers of refugees into the country would continue.
“And the money we do not want to spend to assist the
stabilisation in the DRC, Burundi, Angola and so on, we will find
that we will have to spend that money taking care of the citizens
of those countries in our hospitals, prisons, clinics, schools and
in the squatter camps where some of them will reach to,”
Lekota said.
He said there was a need for the region to transform the existing
defence forces, including the equipment they used.
“Our defences have to be appropriate to meet all these
challenges and conditions in which we find ourselves, even
ourselves we have to deal with our training in a new
way”.
He added that new training focused on peace efforts, rather than on
attacking other countries.
Lekota emphasised the need for the region to work together in
building peace and stability to attract investment for
Africa’s development.
He said development was necessary for the people. Thus sound
conditions had to be created for foreign aid and investment in the
region.
Lekota announced that SADC Heads of State would soon meet to sign
their support for the establishment of the African Standby Force.
–BuaNews.
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