The cabinet is split over whether South Africa should send troops to Angola, reports Eddie Koch
THE bells that toll for peace in Angola have struck a note of discord in Nelson Mandela’s government. The president — faced with stiff resistance from opposition parties to United Nations requests for troops to help hold the ceasefire in that country — this week set up a small committee of ministers to advise his cabinet on the growing controversy.
Cabinet secretary Jakes Gerwel said on Wednesday that the ministerial group would investigate “whether, and in which ways, South Africa should participate in peacekeeping issues” in Angola. The cabinet was expected to decide on a UN appeal for help this week — and the postponement indicates how sensitive the matter has become for government.
Deputy President FW de Klerk this week announced his National Party was opposed to sending soldiers to join the blue helmets in Angola. The Inkatha Freedom Party is reticent about the idea and the Democratic Party said: “Our police and security forces have a critically important job to do at home before the government contemplates sending them off on foreign ventures.”
However, Defence Minister Joe Modise and his deputy, Ronnie Kasrils, favour some form of military assistance to the war- shattered country especially as the South African military helped create the conditions for civil strife in Angola in the 1980s. Both men spent time at ANC guerrilla bases in Angola during the liberation struggle and feel a moral debt to the country that hosted their forces.
“It would be churlish to walk away from the war there,” says Major Muff Anderson, communications officer for the Defence Ministry. “We favour a regional peace package but that depends on both sides to maintain the ceasefire.” She denied a report in a Sunday newspaper that the defence force has already devised contingency plans to send 1 000 a battalion of engineers and an air support detachment to join the UN’s Angola Verification Mission (Univen).
Mandela’s decision to hold fire on a the UN request indicates divisions in the cabinet. But military sources indicate that even ANC ministers have serious worries that renewed military involvement Angola could soak up finances needed for the reconstruction and development programme and distract effort away from pressing internal problems that have beset the integration of the new national army.
“The country is not well enough healed to deal with body bags — even if they contain the corpses of engineers not fighting troops — coming back from Angola,” says Peter Vale, director of the Centre for Southern African Studies at the University of the Western Cape. “And any involvement there will be extremely costly and expenses on foreign military ventures are not a priority.”
His views echo an eloquent editorial in the Sunday Times this week which noted that South Africa’s involvement on the side of Angola’s rebel movement — and a series of bloody defeats — in the late 1980s was responsible, more than sanctions and sedition in the townships, for the fall of the National Party. “Once we involve even engineers or medics, we are engaged. The next step is to send in the troops to get the engineers out,” says Vale.
But sources close to parliament’s standing committee on defence told the Weekly Mail & Guardian that influential members of this group are taking a “bells toll for thee” line and will try to hammer out a compromise. “Angola is a very strategic area and we cannot afford to ignore it. It can plunge the whole sub-region into a costly war or it can unlock a vast economic potential,” says the source.
Mandela is obliged under the new constitution to consult the standing committee on defence matters before making his decision about sending troops into Angola. The committee is considering the following elements of a compromise position:
* That no combat troops be sent to Angola. The South African National Defence Force’s contribution should be limited to medics, engineers and air force equipment that can help with logistics and transport — as they did in the recent Mozambique election.
* No military personnel be deployed until there was a strong and binding commitment by both warring parties in Angola to maintain the ceasefire.
* That all diplomatic channels be exhausted to strengthen the peace process before resorting to military assistance.
The last point is backed by the Democratic Party which says Mandela’s diplomatic stature has played a vital role in bringing Unita and the MPLA government to the peace table. “South Africa’s best contribution to lasting peace in Angola will be to keep strengthening the will of President (Eduardo) dos Santos and Dr Jonas Savimbi to make peace work in their country.”
Meanwhile, the ceasefire in Angola this week tottered in the face of violations across the country — and the UN Angola Verification Mission deployed a token force of 80 military observers to monitor the situation.
A statement from the Angolan military said Unita troops had seized two small towns since the ceasefire was signed and had attacked government positions in several other regions of the country. Unita’s Radio Vorgan has also issued accusations of ceasefire violations on the government side in recent days.
Faced with this situation, the UN announced it had finished deploying a “symbolic” force of 80 military observers to monitor ceasefire violations in six provinces of the country. The first meeting of a joint Unita and government military commission was indefinitely postponed on Tuesday this week after Unita delegates failed to turn up.
Both developments will bedevil efforts to find a solution to the moral and political conundrum that Mandela and his cabinet will face when they sit down at next week’s cabinet meeting to hear the recommendations of the special committee.
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