Niehaus has called for answers over reported conditions facing SANDF soldiers after their return from a DRC deployment.
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.
