THENEWSOUTHAFRICA
the people will not be complere.t'V
But that was not possible without
making the bureaucracy still more inefficient than it had been, because, as
a result of the appalling deficiencies of black education' under apartheid,
there was a dearth of suitably qualified black South Africans. The govern-
ment did manage to place reasonably well-educated supporters
in the
most senior posts, but most middle- and lower-level posts were held by
Whites. Consequently, the bureaucracy did not become an efficient instru-
ment for the implementation of the wishes of the new government.
The restructuring of the army was another formidable task. The gov-
ernment had a constitutional
commitment to create a new South African
National Defence Force (SANDF)
from the 65,000
regular soldiers and
sailors of the old South African Defence Force
(SADF),
members of
Umkhonto we Sizwe (ANC guerrillas, estimated to number
27,000),
the
Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA; the PAC guerrillas estimated to
number
6,000),
and the approximately
10,000
members of the defense
forces of the four "independent"
Homelands. This was a merger of very
dissimilar entities, most of which had been on opposite sides in the conflict
between defenders and opponents
of apartheid.
The SADF was a well-