Former SADF soldiers are training their old enemies in Angola. To counter accusations of being mercenaries, they are expanding into civilian operations, reports Stefaans Brummer
FROM the hilltop an ex-South African Defence Force soldier gave the order. On the dusty plain below a ragtag bunch of adolescent Angolan army recruits advanced, artillery rounds bursting metres away. They stormed on in make-believe attack.
Angola’s bloody civil war has given rise to a new style of corporate military entrepreneur — some brand them “mercenaries” — and the South African instructor on the hilltop was one of them.
Back home their bank accounts swell, in stark contrast to the dearth of all worldly comfort experienced by those recruits on the dusty plain, but they say their services are worth every cent of it — and the Angolans seem to agree.
Pretoria-based company Executive Outcomes completed its first 12-month contract “training and advising” the Angolan government forces, the Foras Armadas de Angolanas (FAA), two weeks ago.
The contract was worth US$40-million (about R140- million), half of it paid to the company, the rest administered by it for logistical purposes. A new 12- month contract has been signed. Salaries range between R10 000 and R40 000 a month.
Ironically, a majority of the company’s few hundred employees are veterans of the Angolan bush war, former 32 Batallion and reconnaissance unit members who in the 1970s and 1980s spearheaded South African support for Jonas Savimbi’s Unita rebels against the government that Executive Outcomes now supports.
South Africa’s Foreign Affairs Department has gone on record slamming Executive Outcomes as “mercenaries”, saying it wants them out of Angola as they tarnish South Africa’s image as an impartial regional power.
Earlier this year the department asked Northern Transvaal attorney-general Jan D’Oliveira to consider prosecuting Executive Outcomes under the Defence Act, which bars South Africans from recruiting or acting as mercenaries. D’Oliveira declined to prosecute for lack of evidence. A Foreign Affairs spokesman this week said investigations into the company continue.
Executive Outcomes general manager Eeben Barlow, a former commander in 32 Batallion and later head of the Civil Co- operation Bureau’s Western Europe operation, says Executive Outcomes is the largest operation of its kind in the world. He started the company in 1989 to train South African special forces and insists the Angolan contract means nothing more than above-board training and advice to the defence force of a legitimate government. When employees have “had to fight”, it was in self- defence or incidental to training and advice on the battlefield.
Perhaps to counter its image as mercenaries, and certainly to ensure a continued role when peace returns to Angola, Executive Outcomes is expanding its civilian role. There are plans for a hotel resort and a cellular phone network for Luanda is being mooted.
Its planned metamorphosis from a corps of military instructors to peacetime businessmen is fitting in a war where allies have turned into enemies and enemies have become friends. Perhaps the best illustration is Executive Outcomes instructor Wynand du Toit, who spent more than two years in a Luanda jail after being captured on an SADF reconnaissance mission to Angola’s oil-rich Cabinda enclave in 1985.
Now he teaches FAA troops, his former enemies, in special operations at Longa, Executive Outcomes’ main training base, south of Luanda. He said the hero’s welcome from the South African government on his release had been all show: “There was no money, and money pays.”
But he said he believed in his new role. “It is not a problem to help build these guys against Unita, which is generally regarded as better trained, to help FAA enforce the government’s mandate won in the elections.”
Du Toit said FAA troops and their new South African instructors’ oft-shared experience of battles, albeit on different sides, meant mistakes could be discussed and rectified.
Not far away looms a strategic bridge crossing, which incidentally Du Toit also surveyed for the SADF. The Longa training operations are carried out on a former nature reserve, larger than the South African National Defence Force’s giant Lohatla battle training school in the Northern Cape.
At Longa, FAA recruits are trained in anything from motorised infantry to artillery, engineering, signals, medical support and special subjects like sabotage and reconnaissance. Other Executive Outcomes operations include help in setting up a FAA intelligence structure in Luanda, the training of FAA pilots around Luanda, and a second large training base at Saurimo, capital of the northern diamond-fields province Lunda Norte.
The company’s most glaring success to date is the recapture of Cafunfo, centre of the diamond trade in Lunda Norte, on July 18.
Executive Outcomes Colonel Hennie Blaauw, a former SADF special forces soldier and Military Intelligence operative, was in charge of training for the operation. He said: “When we started training about October last year the tactic of the the Angolan government was to take back strategic areas, the diamond fields and the oil fields. The training was structured to that aim.”
Joint planning was done with the FAA high command and FAA’s 16th Brigade — wiped out in 1987/8 by the SADF in south-east Angola — was regrouped and trained by Executive Outcomes.
In early June the 16th Brigade started a push from Saurimo, ending six weeks and numerous “contacts” later when Unita fled Cafunfo.
Said Blaauw: “Our involvement was mainly not to be part of the actual fighting, but we had been requested by FAA to advise and assist in the planning of the mission. It was an extension of our training from the bases.”
He said about 20 Executive Outcomes “advisers” had been spread through the column, from platoon to command level, and air support had been given by Executive Outcomes- trained pilots. Two company employees were wounded, while FAA had a maximum five percent casualty rate.
Brigadier Nick van den Berg, the company’s head in Angola, said before the recapture Cafunfo had been a main conduit of diamonds to Zaire, where “all the king’s men and all the king’s horses” had a stake in the trade in exchange for supporting Unita.
A group of about 1 750 recruits from the northern Uige and Zaire provinces are being trained at Longa. (Zaire province is home to Soyo, an important oil-producing town in Unita hands.)
Longa commander “Chris” said Executive Outcomes’ “proof lies in its success”, but that there were problems. FAA obtained its recruits by commandeering and boys as young as eight were dumped on the company for training. He said the South Africans tried to weed out those younger than 16, but it was often difficult to motivate the trainees, who faced a lack of facilities, food, transport, medicine, clean water, equipment, ammunition and training weapons.
Brigadier Antonio Valeriano, commander of the 16th Brigade, said Executive Outcomes had made a name for itself in Angola by the Cafunfo success. “We have seen the outcome already, and (the 16th Brigade) made more progress than other units.”
If FAA is fighting a messy war complicated by lack of expertise and financial constraints, neither has the Angolan operation been without danger to Executive Outcomes employees.
In a Unita attack on a joint Executive Outcomes and FAA camp in Saurimo two months ago, one South African was killed and two helicopters lost. Locals marked trees before the attack to point out the South Africans’ quarters to Unita.
On Wednesday last week Executive Outcomes suffered another casualty: former SADF reconnaissance unit member Paul Dietrich drowned when the armed personnel carrier he was driving plunged off a makeshift bridge near Saurimo. Barlow said 14 employees had died in Angola in the past year.
Employees also face the temptations — and dangers — of a country devoid of regular civilian control. Executive Outcomes has expelled a number of its men caught trying to smuggle diamonds, while it has warned it will deal more strictly with those who pass information to the other side. Lie-detector tests are being instituted for all employees.
Barlow said: “If we find one passing information to Unita, we will hand him over to the government as a spy. They will not interrogate him in a friendly atmosphere.”
Meanwhile, Executive Outcomes has also started a “humanitarian department” in Angola, with stated aims akin to South Africa’s reconstruction and development programme, albeit on a far smaller scale. The idea is to harness South African expertise in business development, health and related fields. And yes, it is true; Executive Outcomes is distributing Bibles.