# [TOP STORY] Can South Africa still afford its defence force? Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/moneyweb-midday-60224/top-story-can-south-africa-still-afford-its-defence-force Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/moneyweb-midday-60224/top-story-can-south-africa-still-afford-its-defence-force.md Podcast: [Moneyweb@Midday](https://stenobird.com/podcast/moneyweb-midday-60224) Published: 2026-06-19T12:50:00+00:00 Episode link: https://iono.fm/e/1687662 Audio file: https://dl.iono.fm/epi/prov_216/epi_1687662_medium.m4a?p=rss Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/moneyweb-midday-60224/episodes/top-story-can-south-africa-still-afford-its-defence-force Duration seconds: 477 ## Resource β€˜The defence budget should be very close to 1.5% of GDP, or the international global benchmark of 2% of GDP. Currently, we are at less than 0.7%,’ says independent defence analyst, Kobus Marais. Moneyweb ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/moneyweb-midday-60224/episodes/top-story-can-south-africa-still-afford-its-defence-force/transcription-requests` β€” Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/moneyweb-midday-60224/top-story-can-south-africa-still-afford-its-defence-force.md` β€” Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.