SA’s first SANDF Chief Georg Meiring dies

General Georg Meiring, the last Chief of the apartheid era SA Defence Force (SADF), and the first SA National Defence Force (SANDF) Chief under former statesman Nelson Mandela, has died. News24 reports that the SA Defence Force Association said ‘he passed on peacefully in the company of his family at his home in Pretoria (on Tuesday)’. After obtaining a Master of Science in Physics from the University of the Free State, Meiring joined the army as a signals officer in 1962 and, in 1980, was appointed as the director of signals, Between 1982 and 1983, he served as the army's Deputy Chief. He became the Chief of the Army in 1990 and was then appointed as the last Chief of the SADF from 1993 to 1994, when he became the Chief of the SANDF under Mandela. Military expert Helmoed Heitman said Meiring also played a pivotal role in the integration of the SADF in the 1990s, when the SADF, uMkhonto we Sizwe , and the Azanian People's Liberation Army were integrated into one Defence Force. Near the end of his career, Meiring was criticised for his handling of an intelligence report about a coup plot to overthrow Mandela.