Airforce must keep pilot from India for another term

The following is a rough translation from an Afrikaans article that appeared in Beeld:

The Minister of Defence, Mr Mosiuoa Lekota, and the airforce must, according to a High Court ruling, renew an Indian fighter pilots contract after the airforce already informed him that the contract would terminate today.

Lt.kol. Rama Iyer is an accomplished fighter pilot with more than 24 years of experience with MiG-fighters in the Indian airforce when the (South African) airforce employed him in 1998. At that stage, the airforce had a critical shortage of fighter pilots.

Iyer and his family moved to South Africa where his main task was the drawing up of the sylabus for the Hawk training program.

In terms of the Defence Act of 1957, which was still in force, he was initially contracted for three years. His contract could be renewed every three years.

On the grounds of the ‘excellent work' which he had performed, his contract was renewed for a further three years in 2002. In this time, the new Defence Act came into being which stipulated that a foreign contractor could only be employed for two terms of three years each, whereupon the person must return to their country of origin.

In 2003, when the new Act was enacted, Iyer enquired about this and received an undertaking from the airforce that his second contract (the one that was in effect when the Act changed) would be viewed as the first one in terms of the new Act.

He would therefore have qualified to a final term of three years today. The airforce later reinterpreted the new Act, which meant that he was not entitled to a further contract.

Judge AJ Ismail found for Iyer that the law cannot be retroactively interpreted.