Recent public debate has focused on the future of South Africa’s defence capability, the sustainability of the South African National Defence Force and the importance of maintaining a sovereign defence industrial base.
These discussions are important. They also raise a further question: How does South Africa retain sovereign capability once the skilled people who carry that capability are gone?
Denel Pretoria Metal Pressings (PMP) provides a practical example of why this question matters.
For Solidarity, the future of PMP is not only a discussion about ownership, investment, funding models or partnership structures. It is a discussion about people, skills, safety, governance and the conditions required to sustain strategic capability.
PMP remains one of South Africa’s most important defence manufacturing facilities. Its future matters to workers, the SANDF, SAPS, the local defence industry and the broader national interest.
Yet sovereign capability requires more than infrastructure. No sovereign defence capability survives after the skilled people who build, maintain, test, certify and safely operate it have been lost.
Any discussion about the future of PMP must therefore begin with the people whose knowledge, experience and commitment continue to sustain the facility.
South Africa cannot maintain a credible defence capability without a functioning defence industrial base. Equally, a defence industrial base cannot survive if the skills, experience and institutional knowledge on which it depends are allowed to disappear.
Solidarity supports serious efforts to restore PMP to stable, safe and sustainable operation. We support credible investment. We support practical partnerships. We support operating models that can protect jobs, retain scarce skills, restore production and preserve South Africa’s defence manufacturing capability.
However, support for any recovery plan must be based on practical commitments, measurable outcomes and credible implementation.
Recent interest in PMP and renewed discussion about investment and partnership arrangements provide an opportunity to focus on what recovery will require in practice.
Workers at Denel have endured years of uncertainty. They have experienced salary concerns, governance failures, operational disruption and repeated recovery plans. Many highly skilled employees have already left. Those who remain continue to carry the institutional knowledge and technical expertise on which future recovery depends.
The question is therefore not only whether PMP can be saved.
The real questions are these:
- Who will implement the recovery plan?
- How will the critical workforce be protected?
- What safeguards will prevent another failed turnaround?
- How will working capital be converted into sustainable production?
- How will stakeholders know whether recovery is taking place in practice?
For these reasons, Solidarity will assess any PMP recovery proposal, lease arrangement, operating model, investment plan, public-private partnership or strategic partnership against five practical tests.
Salary stability
Workers must be paid on time.
Any credible proposal must explain how salaries will be funded, how payroll risk will be managed and how workers will be protected from further uncertainty.
Salary stability is a basic employment obligation. It is also a requirement for sustaining strategic industrial capability.
Worker protection and skills retention
PMP depends on skilled people. Without them, the facility cannot operate safely or effectively.
Any proposal must show how it will retain critical artisans, engineers, technicians, operators, inspectors, programme managers and safety personnel.
It must also explain how skills will be developed, how apprenticeships will be supported and how institutional knowledge will be transferred to future generations of workers.
Workers must have certainty about their future before any recovery plan can be regarded as sustainable.
Safe production
PMP operates in a specialised and high-risk manufacturing environment.
Safe production requires functioning equipment, disciplined procedures, competent supervision and proper maintenance.
Any proposal must explain how safety standards will be maintained, how operational risks will be managed and how workers will be protected.
Production cannot be sustainable if safety is compromised.
Clean governance and accountability
Confidence in future recovery plans will depend on visible improvements in governance and accountability.
Any proposal must include transparent governance arrangements, clear decision-making structures, effective reporting systems and consequence management where failures occur.
Public money, worker livelihoods and strategic capability require governance systems that can withstand public scrutiny.
Published milestones and measurable outcomes
Recovery must be visible.
Any proposal must include published milestones, realistic timelines, accountable decision-makers, measurable production targets and regular progress reporting.
Stakeholders must be able to assess whether orders are being converted into production, whether working capital is available and whether the facility is moving towards sustainable operation.
Recovery must be measurable. PMP must be restored as a working factory
Solidarity’s position is clear. We want PMP to succeed, and Denel’s remaining centres of excellence to succeed.
We want South Africa to retain the defence manufacturing capability required by the SANDF, SAPS and other lawful domestic users.
We recognise that exports and strategic partnerships may form part of a sustainable future for PMP.
Solidarity does not believe that sovereign capability requires all industrial activity, expertise and decision-making power to be concentrated within the state.
Equally, strategic capabilities cannot be left entirely to market forces without safeguards.
A sustainable defence industrial base requires a balance between public oversight, private-sector participation and accountability to the people whose skills sustain the capability.
Responsible public-private partnerships, strategic joint ventures and other commercially sustainable arrangements can contribute investment, technology, market access and operational expertise, provided that South Africa’s sovereign interests, critical skills, institutional knowledge and strategic capabilities remain protected.
South Africa’s fiscal constraints require practical solutions.
The question is not whether the state or the private sector should participate, but how both can contribute to preserving and growing capabilities that remain important to South Africa’s national security and industrial future.
Sovereignty is protected through strategic control, capability, accountability and resilience. It does not depend on exclusive state ownership.
Strategic capability does not reside in buildings, machinery or balance sheets alone, but in people too, the knowledge they carry and the experience they have built over many years.
Much of what makes PMP valuable is not captured in manuals, policies or reports but in in the accumulated knowledge of artisans, engineers, technicians, operators, inspectors, programme managers and safety specialists who understand the plant, its products, its production processes and its risks.
This knowledge has been built over decades, is refined through practice, and transferred through experience.
A sovereign capability can rebuild facilities and replace machinery, it can recover from financial distress, and attract new investment. What it cannot easily replace is the institutional knowledge accumulated over decades by the people who understand the systems, processes, products and safety requirements that make production possible.
Once that knowledge is lost, recovery becomes far more difficult and, in some cases, impossible within a generation.
This is why workforce retention is not only a labour issue, but a strategic one.
The preservation of strategic capability therefore requires the preservation of the people who carry that capability.
The workforce is not simply a stakeholder in the recovery process, but a strategic asset on which recovery depends.
Solidarity therefore calls on Denel’s Board, the Department of Defence, any prospective investor or strategic partner to place workers at the centre of the PMP recovery process.
South Africa needs proposals that are credible, transparent and capable of implementation.
It needs funding arrangements that are sustainable, governance structures that inspire confidence, and measurable outcomes that can be independently assessed.
Most importantly, it needs a recovery strategy that protects the people who continue to carry the knowledge, skills and experience on which PMP’s future depends.
PMP must be restored as a working factory, not preserved as a strategic asset in principle.
Solidarity will assess every proposal against five practical tests: salary stability, worker protection, safe production, clean governance and accountability, and measurable implementation milestones.
Strategic capability is not preserved through announcements.
It is preserved through skilled people, safe production, stable employment, accountable leadership and measurable results. That is how confidence is rebuilt. And that is how South Africa will know whether PMP’s recovery is real.
Derek Mans
Defence and Aerospace
Sector Co-ordinator, Solidarity