As I read the reports emerging from the Department of Defence Mobilisation Centre at De Brug in Bloemfontein this week, a deep and familiar pain rises in me. Our soldiers – men and women who answered the call to serve South Africa in the dangerous terrain of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo – have returned home exhausted, having endured gruelling overland transit via Entebbe after the conclusion of their mission.
Instead of the dignity and care they have earned, they are being held in leaking tents in the bitter Bloemfontein winter, sleeping on thin mattresses placed directly on the cold ground, with reports of inadequate sanitation and insufficient support during a mandatory 21-day quarantine. Some have described it as worse than a concentration camp.
Disturbing news reports and soldier accounts circulating widely on social media platforms describe thin mattresses on the floor of leaking tents in sub-zero winter temperatures, poor sanitation, and a profound sense of abandonment. These accounts, which began circulating in the first days of July 2026, are not isolated. They reflect the lived experience of troops who served under Operation Thiba, the SANDF’s contribution to the Southern African Development Community Mission in the DRC, and earlier long-running deployments under Operation Mistral as part of the UN MONUSCO mission. In both operations, South African soldiers confronted real combat, lost comrades, and carried out dangerous tasks on behalf of our country. Now they return to conditions that shame the nation they served.
The SANDF’s response, issued on 4 July 2026 by Brigadier General Selinah Rawlins, was defensive in tone. It insisted that standard military field accommodation was being used, that electricity had been restored, that every soldier had received proper bedding and additional blankets, that hot meals were served twice daily, and that medical teams and family support measures were in place. The statement spoke of “transitional friction” and rejected extreme comparisons. Yet it offered no independent verification – no photographs of the actual conditions inside the tents and ablution facilities, no transparent maintenance records, and no opportunity for the soldiers themselves to speak freely to the public. When those who have just returned from a gruelling foreign deployment describe thin mattresses on the floor and leaking tents in freezing conditions, defensive assurances without transparent evidence only deepen the sense of betrayal.
This is not the first time we have witnessed this pattern of neglect. Earlier this year at Fort iKapa in Cape Town, more than 140 SANDF members deployed under Operation Prosper to support the police in anti-gangsterism operations were housed in leaking, unsanitary and grossly inadequate facilities. The South African National Defence Union exposed the conditions and public pressure eventually forced some relocation. Yet the same failures have now reappeared at De Brug for soldiers returning from far more dangerous service in the DRC. The system has not learned. It has not changed.
What compounds the outrage is the haste with which these exhausted troops are being moved from quarantine into new domestic deployments. While still recovering from the physical and psychological demands of Operation Thiba and previous DRC missions, they are being funnelled into supporting police operations against crime and, most recently, the Afrophobic and xenophobic marches and violence associated with groups such as March and March. Our soldiers deserve proper rest, mental health support and time with their families before being redeployed. Instead they are treated as interchangeable assets. This approach is unsustainable and deeply unfair.
I have stood with comrades in the struggle for decades. I have buried friends who gave everything for the liberation of our people and for the defence of our sovereignty. We cannot claim to honour the legacy of the armed struggle while allowing the current generation of soldiers to be treated with such disregard. The same revolutionary love that drove us to fight apartheid must now drive us to fight for those who wear the SANDF uniform today.
As a member of both the Portfolio Committee on Defence and Military Veterans and the Joint Standing Committee on Defence, I have a duty to exercise real oversight. That is why I am calling together with my fellow EFF colleagues for an urgent, immediate, and thorough joint oversight visit by both the Portfolio Committee on Defence and Military Veterans and the Joint Standing Committee on Defence to De Brug. The committees must inspect every facility, speak privately with the soldiers, examine the quarantine arrangements, catering, medical support and demobilisation plans, and hold the leadership to account. Minister Angie Motshekga and Chief of the SANDF General Rudzani Maphwanya must urgently appear before a joint sitting of the two committees to present to us the truth without any lies and obfuscation about the actual conditions at De Brug, and without delay present a concrete remediation plan.
Therefore I call, together with my fellow EFF colleagues, on every South African who respects our armed forces to add their voice to this demand for accountability. Our gallant soldiers have sacrificed enough. The least we can do is to ensure that they return to a country that treats them as the heroes that they are. Anything less is a stain on all of us.
Carl Niehaus
EFF Member of Parliament and Permanent Representative on the Portfolio Committee on Defence and Military Veterans and the Joint Standing Committee on Defence