Back to Index

South Africa has a Jekyll and Hyde approach to Zimbabwe
Guy Lamb, Daily Dispatch (SA)
April 28, 2008

http://www.dispatch.co.za/article.aspx?id=197040

Official South African foreign policy appears to be schizophrenic in a number of areas. On the one hand, the South African government promotes peaceful conflict management through spearheading mediation efforts in a number of Africa-s violent conflicts, as well as contributing troops to peacekeeping missions in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan. On the other hand, South Africa is the largest African exporter of arms to the rest of the continent. This schizophrenia is none the more evident than with South Africa-s current dealings with Zimbabwe.

South Africa is the Southern African Development Community (SADC)-mandated mediator for the Zimbabwean political quagmire. However, South Africa-s National Conventional Arms Control Committee (NCACC), the cabinet committee responsible for implementing South Africa arms control policy and legislation, recently issued a permit allowing Chinese arms and ammunition to be transported across South African soil to Zimbabwe.

At the time, January Masilele, South Africa-s Defence Secretary, was quoted as saying: "This is a normal transaction between two sovereign states. We are doing our legal part and we don-t have to interfere."

However, Section 15 of the National Conventional Arms Control Act (2002) compels the NCACC to "avoid contributing to internal repression, including the systematic violation or suppression of human rights and fundamental freedoms" when it considers applications for the import, export and conveyance of arms.

According to a recent report by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), hundreds of Zimbabweans have had their homes destroyed and 3 000 families have been displaced as a result of post-election violence. In addition, over the past three weeks the Zimbabwe authorities have detained more than 400 MDC activists.

The South African government has been widely criticized both internationally and domestically for this decision.

It took civil society/church groups and Durban dockworkers to remind the South African government of their legal and moral obligations by securing a court order for the temporary confinement of the arms and ammunition, and refusing to offload the cargo respectively.

The Chinese vessel ferrying the arms and ammunition has subsequently left Durban harbour and is allegedly charting course for Luanda.

Recently, South Africa once again assumed the presidency of the UN Security Council. The South African government has indicated that the control of small arms and light weapons will be one of its priority areas.

In fact, South Africa has been a champion of arms control and disarmament within the UN structures for the past decade, and has consequently acquired significant diplomatic currency. Given this state of affairs, why did the NCACC issue a permit to allow for the arms and ammunition from China to be transported to Zimbabwe across South African territory?

The answer relates to the governance and capacity of South Africa-s internal arms control architecture and processes.

For more than three years, the Directorate for Conventional Arms Control (DCAC), which is essentially the secretariat for the NCACC, has not had a permanently appointed director. The previous director of the DCAC was suspended following a disagreement with the NCACC over South African arms exports to Haiti in 2004 at the time of a political crisis and internal strife in that country.

The National Conventional Arms Control Act requires the NCACC to provide Parliament with quarterly confidential reports and a public annual report on South Africa-s arms exports. The NCACC has been negligent in this regard. For example, in 2007 the Auditor General reported that NCACC had not released both the quarterly and annual parliamentary export reports.

In addition, the Auditor-General reported that the operating procedures of the DCAC had yet to be approved by the NCACC. The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Defence, which is the transparency and accountability watchdog of South Africa-s arms trade, has been conspicuously silent on this issue.

South Africa-s 'Jekyll and Hyde- approach to Zimbabwe, particularly the recent incident with the Chinese arms shipment, has arguably devalued the diplomatic currency that South Africa has accumulated through its generally progressive approach to arms control in the UN and other international forums.

Hence, it is essential that the South African government gets its domestic conventional arms control house in order, otherwise it runs the risk of becoming an arms trade pariah.

*Guy Lamb is the head of the arms management programme at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP