SOUTH AFRICA’S main opposition, the Democratic Alliance, has accused the country’s arms control body of sanctioning the sale of military equipment and arms to some of the world’s most oppressive regimes.
Democratic Alliance shadow minister of defence David Maynier said “several dodgy deals” involving Venezuela, Iran, Libya, Syria, Zimbabwe and North Korea had been allowed to take place by National Conventional Arms Control Committee (NCACC) over the past 13 months.
The NCACC was established in 1995 to ensure South Africa’s arms sales and transfer remained in line with international norms.
However, deals had “slipped through the cracks”, Mr Maynier said, because the body did not meet often enough and it failed to produce annual reports regularly, which it is obliged to supply to the UN and other monitoring bodies.
This failure to meet regularly was also causing havoc within the local arms industry, with deals worth hundreds of millions of euro on hold because of a huge backlog on issuing permits.
Mr Maynier, whose information was gathered from documents and confidential sources, asked whether military sales to the six named countries was legal or moral, given some are under partial or full international arms embargoes, and have poor human rights records.
“The Democratic Alliance calls on NCACC chairperson Jeff Radebe to urgently convene a meeting of the new committee in order to investigate the arms deals that have been authorised by the committee,” he said.
Suspect deals authorised by the NCACC include the sale of glide bombs to Libya; multiple grenade launchers to Libya and Syria; and thousands of multiple grenade launchers and upgraded assault rifles to Venezuela.
“There is a concern these glide bombs [which are long range guided weapons] could be converted to deliver a nuclear, chemical or biological weapon,” Mr Maynier said.
A number of questionable deals were also “pending” authorisation by the NCACC, he said.
These include the sale of thousands of aviator G-suits – worn by pilots flying at high speeds to prevent blackouts – and sniper rifles to Iran and Syria respectively; together with a deal to provide Zimbabwe with millions of rounds of ammunition for small arms.
A South African company was also granted a permit by the NCACC within the last three years sanctioning its travel to North Korea to exhibit military support equipment for submarines to representatives of Kim Jong-il’s regime, which is suspected of trying to build nuclear weapons.
As of yesterday the South African government had not officially responded to the allegations, but the chairman of the parliamentary committee on defence, Nyami Booi, said the opposition party’s claims were based on “gossip” and “rumour”. However, Mr Maynier said he had absolute confidence that the information was correct.
If the allegations prove to be true newly appointed South African president Jacob Zuma – who had corruption charges against him relating to a government arms deal with a French company dropped in April– will be expected to take swift action.
Mr Zuma promised to tackle government corruption during his recent election campaign.