Dear Mr Marais

It was with sadness and shock that I read the article:

https://www.defenceweb.co.za/featured/new-reserve-force-unit-names/?fbclid=IwAR3iDLtni339lcJHBrcHAS-_vAtyN3LFeAEzphoLi_JpdGJzmgUL5skG-rY

It is obvious that the SANDF have little or no knowledge of history and traditions of history.

During WW2, my father as a young man joined the SA Irish Regiment. He left to fight a war for the freedom of ALL South Africans. Throughout his life , he was anti-apartheid. He saw it as his duty to protect the country and its people from the huge threat of the Axis forces. He spent 3 years in a prison camp in terrible conditions, for the people of South Africa.

Now it seems that SANDF want to take this SA Irish pride and bury it by changing the regiment to " South African Irish Regiment to Andrew Mlangeni Regiment"

To name a regiment that served this country with pride, of whom many many were killed in action, after a political activist can only be described as insulting.
Mr Mlangeni served time in prison for his actions : a kindergarten compared to the horror my father and other combatants of the regiment suffered in a German prison camp. Added to this, a Nazi government would have been far worse than the apartheid government that the said Mr Mlangeni protested against. He was not even a military man so why the hell name a regiment after him

Please give this your attention. Besides which, the SANDF cannot even afford fuel for the jets and frigates they purchased let alone the expnse