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-
equipped, disciplined, standing army, navy, and air force, which had been
trained to enforce apartheid, whereas the guerrillas and Homeland units
were ill-equipped and poorly disciplined troops who had been committed
to overthrowing the apartheid state. 2 3
Anticipating this problem, Joe Modise, the commander of Umkhonto
we Sizwe who became Mandela's minister of defense, and General Piet
Meiring, a former commander
of South African military operations
in
South West Africa (Namibia) who became the initial chief of the SANDF,
had begun in 1993 to plan the merger. After the inauguration, they coop-
erated to obtain an increase of 10 percent in the security budget (thereby
destroying the expectation of a substantial financial dividend from the end
of apartheid) and to train the guerrillas as modern soldiers. They also won
over seven former guerrilla leaders by appointing them as generals in the
new army. But two serious problems arose. The guerrillas were not satis-
fied with their treatment, and in October 1994 many of them went absent