Police and prosecutors are working to build a criminal case
against South Africans who are, or have been, hired to fight in
foreign wars, most recently in Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea Bissau
and Sudan - and possibly for the British military in Iraq.
These would be the first prosecutions under the Regulation of
Foreign Military Assistance Act, which was passed in 1998 to stamp
out mercenary activities by South Africans, especially those of the
now-defunct "private military company" Executive Outcomes (EO).
Motivation for the prosecutions comes from education minister
Kader Asmal, who heads the National Conventional Arms Control
Committee (NCACC) that administers the act with defence minister
Mosiuoa Lekota.
"We take this matter seriously because it impinges on our foreign
relations," says Asmal. "Mercenarism is not only forbidden by our
constitution, it is a scourge."
Asmal says authorities are also "looking at the enlistment of
South Africans in foreign armies that engage in armed conflict, as
in Iraq". Such enlistment is also prohibited under the act, he says.
Scores of South Africans now serve in the British armed forces and
many fought in Iraq this year.
Asmal has given no indication of whether these soldiers are under
active investigation.
British high commission spokesman Nick Sheppard says SA has not
made any direct representations to his government in this regard.
The embassy receives "four or five" inquiries a day from South
Africans wanting to join the British armed services.
"We do not actively recruit people here for the armed services,"
he says.
National Prosecuting Authority spokesman Sipho Ngwema declines to
comment on the investigation. So too does the director of the NCACC,
Capt Fred Marais. But a source close to the mercenary community says
that upwards of 17 South Africans may be charged for their
involvement in conflicts in West and North Africa. Not all who are
still active in military affairs have became mercenaries. Some are
engaged in mine-clearing operations in Africa and Central Europe,
and others are handling security for multinational companies in the
reconstruction of Iraq.
The actions of some have provoked international outrage, but
others have served with distinction, drawing praise for warding off
or limiting massacres and saving civilian lives. In a book not yet
commercially released, War Dog, veteran SA war correspondent
Al J Venter has chronicled the exploits of a lone helicopter pilot,
Neill Ellis, in preventing armed rebels from overrunning a depleted
Nigerian peacekeeping force and the Sierra Leone government in early
1999.
Venter's and other reports have helped fuel the debate over
mercenaries - or their modern equivalent, "private military
companies" (PMCs) - and whether they are a benefit or liability for
maintaining stability in a still-volatile Africa.
One SA group is said to have been hired to train special
counterinsurgency forces in Libya and the Sudan on behalf of Libyan
leader Muammar Gaddafi. Another is believed to have instructed
special bodyguards for Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe.
An SA official close to the police investigation says the matter
is "extremely sensitive". Such sensitivity, contends a former SA
Defence Force special forces combatant, is partly the result of some
so-called "mercenaries" possibly working with the covert consent of
SA's military and intelligence agencies.
SA's active "mercenary" community fragmented and went to ground
after EO, the central group, disbanded at the beginning of 1999.
An EO offshoot, NFD Ltd, was named in press reports as having
engaged in anti-insurgency fighting in southern Sudan last year.
NFD still operates out of Centurion as a conventional security
company. Its website lists activities in SA, Angola, Sierra Leone,
Uganda, Congo Brazzaville, Egypt, Bulgaria and Belgium, and clients
including Anglo American, Sonangol, Sierra Rutile, AngloPlat ,
Siemens and Heritage Oil & Gas.
NFD cofounder Nick de Beer, now farming in the Free State, says
that though he started the company shortly before EO was forced out
of business, he never worked for it. "I do know that some of those
guys did quite a lot of subcontract work," he says.
While the SA government seems intent on cracking down on the
activities of former combatants, the US and the UK are encouraging,
or at least condoning, their own PMCs.
In a world of widespread, fragmented security threats, too
numerous for even a world power to cover by conventional means, PMCs
have become booming business.
US PMCs like Military Professional Resources Inc (MPRI),
International Charter Inc (ICI) and Pacific Architects &
Engineers have provided aviation and logistics support to African
peacekeepers in Liberia. When President George W Bush sent US
advisers to Liberia last month, it was ICI professionals who went.
MPRI, the largest US PMC, is involved in military and logistical
programmes on every continent. In SA it provides training and
analysis programmes to the defence force.
The British government, meanwhile, has issued a white paper
outlining ways to regulate and deploy mercenary forces in areas
where conventional troops would be at risk.
"This is the way it's going to go," says Venter. "The great
powers aren't going to involve themselves in shitty little wars,
like in Liberia, when they can outsource their security needs to
private companies."
Not only the great powers think this way. Last week a Ugandan
parliamentary committee proposed hiring unnamed SA mercenaries to
"eliminate" rebels destabilising parts of that country.
Peter Singer, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings
Institution in Washington DC, identifies at least 60 PMCs. He
divides them into three categories:
- The "provider firm", such as EO and Britain's Sandline
International, which gives tactical, often direct military
support;
- The "consultant firm", like MPRI, Vinnell and Dyncorp of the
US, which offers advisory services, training and management; and
- The "support firm", like Brown & Root Halliburton and SAIC
of the US, which provides supplementary military services such as
logistics, intelligence and supply-chain management.
In a new book, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatised
Military Industry, Singer declares "the private military
industry is now a reality".
It is too late to try to stop their emergence, he argues.
Rather, the UN should institute an international regulatory
office to register and monitor the activities of PMCs and ensure
their compliance with basic standards of human rights and ethics.
