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Soldiers for hire: SA’s great security risk

Bo Mbindwane is a business executive with experience in mining and other sectors. He has past experience in public administration and is an indepedent mining analyst. On twitter: @mbindwane

Today being Africa Day, South Africa should be introspective over the viability of having highly trained SANDF personnel engaging in conflicts within the continent of Africa, and what this means for African peace. In particular, we should consider the risks of reprisal attacks in South Africa.

From early this month, the Nigerian Army has released several reports claiming victory against Boko Haram. 

The first of these started immediately after the elections that saw outgoing President Goodluck Jonathan lose in the democratic elections. The army immediately began its assaults against Boko Haram. 

The Nigerian military launched a joint operation with troops from Cameroon, Chad and Benin, as well as a few Canadian trainers. The operation after the May elections was coordinated with UMEOA member States Cameroon, Chad and Benin. These operations have resulted in the freedom of some 700 hostages, mainly women and young girls from Boko Haram. In pictures, these women appear pregnant and disorientated. 

Nigerian General Chris Olukolade has refused to be drawn into whether the freed hostages include some of the 200 schoolgirls who were kidnapped by Boko Haram in May 2014.

Boko Haram began its terrorism and insurgency seven years ago. They also released a video, pledging allegiance first to al-Qaeda and then to the Islamic State. Before the elections, which had to be postponed owing to terror threats, Boko Haram controlled an area compatible to the size of Belgium inside the territory of Nigeria and her neighbours.

What is extremely curious is the involvement of South African private military contractors who have been training the Nigerian elite force and have also joined the actual war, with units reportedly joining combat operations against Boko Haram.

In a series of blog posts on SOFREP.com, military journalist Jack Murphy interviews Eeben Barlow, South African managing director of a mercenary business called Specialized Tasks, Training, Equipment, and Protection (STTEP).

Jack Murphy is given untold access to military and combat information that appears in advertorials for STTEP, and provides details usually not easily shared by South African mercenaries. STTEP says it was asked for assistance and was subcontracted to the Nigerian government by a primary contractor after testimonials about the company’s reputation. 

The Centre for Foreign Relations says in its report: “Apparently, the Nigerian authorities contracted with STTEP in December to train a Nigerian unit to find and rescue the kidnapped Chibok School girls. But that mission soon morphed into an ‘aggressive strike force’, with STTEP personnel participating in combating Boko Haram. Jack Murphy, a journalist with access to STTEP, confirms this in various blog posts detailing interviews with STTEP personnel.

Because mercenaries are motivated by the desire for private gain to take part in the hostilities, they are usually seen as acting outside the Geneva Convention Protocol. Article 47 of the protocol says:

“Art 47. Mercenaries

  1. A mercenary shall not have the right to be a combatant or a prisoner of war.
  2. A mercenary is any person who:

(a) is especially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict;

(b) does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities;

(c) is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party;

(d) is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;

(e) is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict; and

(f) has not been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces.”

President Nelson Mandela in 1998 signed the Foreign Military Assistance Act that banned citizens and residents from any involvement in foreign wars, except in humanitarian operations, unless a Cabinet committee (National Conventional Arms Control Committee) approved its deployment. The Regulation Of Foreign Military Assistance Act 15 of 1998, in Sections 3 to 4 reads:

“3. Rendering of foreign military assistance prohibited

No person may within the Republic or elsewhere –

  1. (a) offer to render any foreign military assistance to any state or organ of state, group of persons or other entity or person unless he or she has been granted authorisation to offer such assistance in terms of section 4;
  2. (b) render any foreign military assistance to any state or organ of state, group of persons or other entity or person unless such assistance is rendered in accordance with an agreement approved in terms of section 5.
  3. Authorisation for rendering of foreign military assistance (1) Any person who wishes to obtain the authorisation referred to in section 3 (a) shall submit to the Committee an application for authorisation in the prescribed form and manner. (2) The Committee must consider any application for authorisation submitted in terms of subsection (1) and must make a recommendation to the Minister that such application be granted or refused.

The question arises on whether STTEP received Cabinet approval or not, and if not, what does the Department of State Security and South African Police, together with National Prosecuting Authority, plan to do?

In January 2005, Mark Thatcher pleaded guilty and was convicted for the “funding and logistical assistance in relation to an alleged attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea” organised by Simon Mann. In the Cape Town High Court, Judge Abe Motala ordered Thatcher to pay a R3 million (£265,000) fine and gave him a four-year suspended prison sentence.

By February 2005, the NPA boss was Advocate Vusi Pikoli, who has a few dubious plea bargains in his curriculum vitae, including those of confessed drug lords and Brett Kebble killers.

This NPA record may have encouraged more soldiers for hire to reinvent.

What is not clear is to what extent terrorism organisations are using South Africans involved in combat against them in foreign lands, which include Iraq, and may be encouraging homeland security threats from Islamic terror organisations like Boko Haram and ISIS. If the South African government is seen to be tacitly encouraging such activities, terror organisations will highlight that in their recruitment activities inside the country.

Barlow, talking to Murphy, described STTEP in Nigeria this way: It is a mobile strike force with its own organic air support, intelligence, communications, logistics, and other relevant combat support elements.”

With the force striking only after elections, this raises the question of whether the intelligence part of STTEP includes “political” intelligence, wherein the Nigerian army purposefully waited to act to weaken incumbent President Jonathan in a tacit support for a former military man who ended up winning the elections, General Buhari. 

“I think we sometimes gave them [Nigerian military] grey hairs, as we were forever begging for equipment, ammunition, and so forth,” Barlow tells Murphy. 

Nigerian Senate defence committee chairman Thompson Sekibo in September 2014 disclosed that his committee had met Nigeria’s Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshal Alex Badeh, and Chief of Army Staff, Lt-Gen Kenneth Minimah, to discuss their investigation on how $9.3m (£5.7m) of government money ended up on a private jet in South Africa’s Lanseria airport. The jet belonged to Ayo Oritsejafor, the head of the Christian Association of Nigeria. Two Nigerians and an Israeli were caught with the money allegedly meant for buying and supplying weapons to the Nigeria intelligence services perhaps the same weapons Barlow was demanding.

City Press reported that the trio landed at Lanseria International Airport, Johannesburg on 5 September, in the jet from Abuja, with the money loaded in three suitcases. 

A country that does not make it a serious crime when its citizens are involved in external conflicts opens itself up to be a target for attacks by foreign terror organisations. These soldiers of war acquire their initial specialised training when serving country military and later profit from that training. 

Aside from external risks, when demobilised from their private wars, these soldiers return to their home country to burden social fabric with post traumatic stress disorder and civil nuisance. They also pose internal risks in that they are prone to be hired for internal violence, be it political or otherwise. 

With a country like South Africa still struggling to shake off its past racial hatred, allowing citizens to freely roam the continent in combat is a serious risk to state security, the people and democracy. 

I have previously written that South Africa begs for disarmament in general. Soldiers of war pose a serious danger to society and our general security. DM

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