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SA's Zim arms shame
Edward Malnick, Sunday Independent (SA)
August 16, 2009

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=6&art_id=vn20090816064642933C760824

South Africa exported deadly weapons to Zimbabwe at a time when it was virtually at war, unleashing savage attacks on the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

This is one of the shock disclosures in a document leaked to the Sunday Tribune, which the government has failed to make public.

The report details South Africa's arms trade - including the "temporary export" of arms to Zimbabwe, which included "major conventional implements of war that could cause heavy personnel casualties . . . "

The arms exports listed showed that "fighter aircraft, explosives, missiles, bombs, artillery guns (and) tanks" were among the items dispatched to our neighbouring country.

In the wake of these disclosures the National Conventional Arms Control Committee could face a serious crisis of credibility with its functioning and conduct seeming to be in violation of both the Constitution, and the ANC government's own enabling legislation governing arms dealing.

• There are claims that for over a year the National Conventional Arms Control Committee, the government body that oversees South Africa's arms trade, effectively did not function as it was supposed to do in terms of vetting arms sales.
• The last four annual reports of the committee have been kept hidden from public scrutiny and loosely termed "classified" although the law requires these documents be delivered to Parliament's defence committee and made public.
• The 2005 report records a "temporary export" of arms to Zimbabwe. The weapons fall into the category of material that "could cause heavy personnel casualties", say government documents. The government has refused to answer questions about this export.

The committee is supposed to vet whether weapons made available to a particular government are likely to be used against that country's own citizens or whether they are likely to be used to inflame regional conflicts.

Yesterday, Tlali Tlali, spokes-person for committee chairman Jeff Radebe, did not respond to queries - including whether these arms had been returned.

A defence expert has raised the possibility that the weapons could have been on offer to international buyers including the Democratic Republic of the Congo at an arms exposition in Zimbabwe.

Noel Stott, of the Institute for Security Studies, said although he was not aware of an arms sale event in Zimbabwe, "I can't picture why a particular country would have an expo just for its own defence force and military".

"Any country could be a potential buyer," he added.

In 2005 an Amnesty International report "DR Congo: arming the east" said that "The DRC has used sympathetic neighbours in the region for arms procurement".

A UN report on repression in 2005 accused Zimbabwe of acting in "an indiscriminate and unjustified manner, with indifference to human suffering, and, in repeated cases, with disregard to several provisions of national and international legal frameworks".

Though the SA government has refused to divulge details of what weapons and ammunition were made available to the Zimbaweans, the 2005 deal is only one of several deals with them in recent years.

Earlier this year, the Mail & Guardian indicated that among other material, handguns (assault rifles as well as 9mm handguns) had been sold by SA interests to the Zimbabwean security forces.

Last year, a furore erupted when news broke of a permit issued by the committee to allow a Chinese ship to convey weapons to Zimbabwe via South Africa. However, a court order prevented the ship unloading.

Whether the arms ever got to Zimbabwe via another African state remains unclear.

In December 2008 a UN panel of experts reported on deliveries of ammunition made from the DRC to Zimbabwe. On whether these originated from China, Jason Stearns, a member of the panel, said, "It's possible, but we have no clues."

Democratic Alliance parliamentarian Dr Wilmot James, who recently authored a report for the party on a fact-finding trip to Zimbabwe, described the latest revelations as really alarming. "I would have thought the committee would have exercised a bit more care."

James expressed concern about the possibility of additional unreported arms exports to Zimbabwe, saying "it sounds like there has been a pattern".

Human Rights lobby group Freedom House, which ranked Zimbabwe "not free" last year, raised concerns that Zimbabwean security and military forces "abuse citizens with impunity".

The latest revelations come as the British government has effectively warned South Africa against providing Zimbabwe with weapons based on concerns about "internal repression".

Last week, DA defence spokes-man David Maynier called on Radebe to "investigate the arms deals that have been authorised by the committee in respect of Libya, Syria and Venezuela", and to a deal with Zimbabwe currently pending authorisation.

The Helen Suzman Foundation last week called on Parliament to thoroughly probe the latest allegations about "dodgy" arms deals.

The foundation said it was concerned that ongoing allegations regarding the armaments industry continued to bedevil public life, eroding and undermining trust between citizens and government institutions.

Adding to the concern, the Sunday Tribune has learned that for well over a year the committee largely ceased to function. In the aftermath of political bloodletting at the ANC's 2007 elective conference, the committee apparently existed only in name until the early part of 2009.

According to well-placed sources, authorisations for weapons trading were given under the signature of a functionary in the Defence Department, acting Defence Secretary Tsepe Motumi, the Defence Ministry's deputy director general for policy planning and strategy, after NCACC chairman and former minister Sydney Mufamadi apparently delegated his committee's responsibilities.

Shortly before this, an investigation by First Consulting uncovered irregularities in the weapons trade serious enough to call for the suspension of several top officials and the cancellation and rescinding of several deals.

The report was later suppressed by the Secretariat of Defence. Earlier this month, the current chairman of the committee, Justice Minister Jeff Radebe, admitted in response to allegations by Maynier that the NCACC had "developed a special mechanism in terms of which the chairman or deputy chairman can consider "urgent matters" and "take any such decision they deem appropriate within confines of the (law)".

However the law states that "four of the members, who must include the chairman or deputy chairman of the committee, constitute a quorum".

Mufamadi would not therefore have had the power to delegate responsibility to Motumi under the "special measures".

A week ago, the Tribune put written questions to Radebe's spokesman, Tlali Tlali, including "on what advice the "special mechanism" was developed and how many decisions were taken under this "mechanism"."

Tlali refused to address the questions, saying, "I really do not want to have my fingers burned." He referred queries to the Defence Ministry's director of arms control, Dumisani Dladla, who refused to answer any questions.

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