Paul Stober
Game reserves in remote areas under the control of the KwaZulu Department of Nature Conservation (KDNC) are being used to train members of the Inkatha Freedom Party’s self-protection units (SPUs), according to a report by the Network of Independent Monitors (NIM).
The Durban-based violence monitoring organisation has alleged the Port Durnford forest reserve on the Natal north coast is being used for “48-hour flash training” and it appears the conservationists are unable to stop these operations because they happen so quickly.
Those taking part in the “flash training” are bussed into the forest and subjected to two days of intensive training before the camps are dismantled and the trainees dispersed. This makes it extremely difficult to trace the camps and prove that training has taken place in the area, NIM monitors said in an interview this week.
The police are also concerned about reports that military training was taking place at the Mlamba reserve near the Natal Parks Board’s Umfolozi Game Reserve. A team of investigators from the police Crime Intelligence Service recently visited officials of the KwaZulu conservation department as part of an investigation into reports that ongoing training was taking place at Mlaba.
KDNC executive director Nick Steele admitted that his department had been forced to hand over the Mlaba camp in 1994 so that it could be used for housing SPUs, but insisted that paramilitary activity was no longer taking place there.
Last year, a team of investigators linked to the Goldstone Commission raided the Mlaba camp and confiscated weapons found in the car of SPU commander Phillip Powell, now an IFP senator in Cape Town.
Steele told the Mail & Guardian that the SPU vacated the conservation camp after the raid and it was then returned to the jurisdiction of his organisation. “However, I am not happy about the association that the place has and I have ordered the base to be demolished,” said Steele.
“I would be very surprised if our territory was being used for this kind of thing. Not only do I have no knowledge of training, but we have a strong policy that we will not allow it to happen on our reserves. I have no conscience whatsoever and I would be willing to say this to a commission of inquiry.”
Steele confirmed, however, that police had visited his offices to investigate reports that clandestine training was continuing at the Mlaba camp after the official departure of the SPU.
The Mkuze camp that was used as a training base for Inkatha’s most notorious paramilitary unit, the “Caprivi 200”, is also administered by the KwaZulu conservation department — but Steele says his staff were not heavily involved in the area at the time military activities took place there, and have only recently been given full jurisdiction over it.