South africn airforce bought the grippon from sweden. I would prefer the su 27 but the country bought the griffon/ grippon, i would like to know if that is a good plane or not and wich of the 2 would be better for south Africa, the size and the mentalety

Depends really on what Sukhoi they wanted. If they wanted one of the lower-standard Sukhoi's from Russia then I guess the Gripen is a better choice.

Serbia actually, is considering purchasing around 24 new fighter aircraft, and the Gripen is one of the three choices [The other two is the F-16 and MiG-29SMT]

And anyways, a Sukhoi would have been a few million dollars cheaper. Im not sure on what the budge on the SAAF is at the moment, they might be rolling in money or not have enough to rub two pennies together.

money no they dont really have that to roll in. there was a speculation on the more top range that they where looking at

Is it possible they wanted an aircraft that could operate in a short take off environment? i seem to recall reading somewhere that the Gripen is designed to take off from runways as short as 800m. Maybe this flexibility is what the South African airforce is after?

As the SU-27 is quite large i dont imagine it would be able to match the Gripen in taking off from short runways or wide roads.

who are south africa's potential advisaries?