Johannesburg - It has been a busy couple of months for the SANDF, which recently hosted the People’s Republic of China’s People’s Liberation Army Military Health.
This comes a couple of weeks after a 20-member Department of Defence delegation headed to the US to attend the 19th RSA-USA Defence Committee Meeting in Washington to engage the US Department of Defence on a range of defence-to-defence and military co-operation matters.
In the middle of May, the SANDF confirmed that the Chief of the Army, Lieutenant-General Lawrence Mbatha, was in Moscow, Russia, for a bilateral meeting between the two military establishments. This two-way meeting was meticulously prepared for. Furthermore, it needs to be emphasised that the bilateral is an established agreement.
The People’s Liberation Army Military Health delegation was led by Senior Colonel Liu Yang, the deputy director of the Health Bureau, along with five senior delegates.
“The aim of the visit is to foster a strategic partnership between the two military health services, strive for the implementation of a mutual diplomatic relationship for military co-operation, and further explore future collaborations in the field of military health.
“The Surgeon-General, Lieutenant-General Ntshavheni Peter Maphaha of the SANDF, welcomed the delegation as a gesture of promoting bilateral relations between the two defence forces,” read an SANDF statement.
Meanwhile, chief of logistics in the SANDF, Lieutenant-General Xolani Ndlovu, last week hosted the first decentralised Supplier Information Session to empower businesses in and around Jan Kempdorp with awareness of services required by the military unit to contribute towards the stimulation of the local economy.
The SANDF found that units and bases situated outside the province of Gauteng have for the longest time struggled to source and retain local suppliers who may be interested in doing business with military units. This is understood to have been caused by businesses’ lack of awareness of the services required by those units, as well as the procedure followed to provide services to the SANDF.
The aim was to afford entrepreneurs in the area an opportunity to interact with the Department of Defence on services required by the units and embrace doing business with the military.
“This is meant to help create employment opportunities and ensure that the military unit prioritises local businesses to take the opportunity to render services to meet its needs. The unit is looking to attract suppliers of food, vehicle repairs, plumbing, electrical fittings, general services, and other essential hygiene commodities,” said the SANDF.
The Star