The SANDF has come clean on covert links with African countries during the 1980s, writes Stefaans Brummer
THE National Defence Force has owned up to a secret mid-eighties project to help build a military base in the West African state of Gabon — part of Pretoria’s efforts to forge covert links with African states whose public position towards the apartheid government was often neutral at best.
The SANDF last week reversed an initial refusal to give information on “Project Canteen”, saying in a statement that the government of Gabon had approached the South African government in 1983 “for assistance in erecting infrastructure” at a planned base at Leconi.
“The project was undertaken jointly by Armscor and the SADF. The SADF … undertook the planning and construction of sleeping quarters, ablution blocks, a light workshop, a water tower and an aircraft hangar.
“The operation took six months and was completed in November 1985. The total number of personnel involved at any given time numbered about 100,” the statement
The SANDF said the budgeted cost of R2,3-million had been “facilitated by the Department of Foreign Affairs on a government-to-government loan basis”.
The Weekly Mail & Guardian first gleaned information of the operation from a document, marked “top secret”, composed by South Africa’s security chiefs in 1984. The document contains an audit of military, police and Department of Foreign Affairs “strategic communication” projects — the term used for covert propaganda.
The document describes Project Canteen as: “To handle South Africa’s and the SA Defence Force’s involvement with the construction of a military base in Gabon in such a way that it does not become public and, should it become public, what action to pursue.”
Other SADF Africa projects mentioned by the document include support to former President Kamuzu Banda of Malawi, military aid to Swaziland and the use of a Moroccan newspaper “to establish the RSA’s image as an African power”.
In Angola there were projects to boost the image of rebel leader Jonas Savimbi and his Unita movement, while “Project Detach” was aimed at “creating a feeling of dissatisfaction among the population” with the Angolan government.
In Zimbabwe there were projects to discredit the government of Robert Mugabe and boost the opposition. There was also a project to “sow suspicion” about the government of Lesotho.
A commander in the Gabonese defence force this week said there had already been military co-operation with South Africa in the late 1960s, when South Africa supplied a number of military aircraft to his country.
‘In more recent years, especially since the beginning of the democratic process in South Africa, South African and Gabonese military authorities have had many contacts in order to develop military co-operation … That’s why between May 1993 and today, a good ten official missions have been exchanged between the two countries, comprising the training of Gabonese officers and NCOs in the fields of the air force, the navy and the army.”
Lebona Mosia of the South African Institute for International Affairs at Wits University this week said Gabon, one of Africa’s richest countries because of its oil reserves, had followed the “stand-off” neutrality common to Francophone African countries during the apartheid years. He said Gabon had maintained “coded relations” with the South African government. While it never openly supported the South African liberation movements, it would have been embarrassed if military co-operation with the SADF had been revealed in the
A recent SANDF bulletin said military personnel from, among others, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Kenya, Zambia, Lesotho, Swaziland and Malawi have visited South Africa since April 1994 for training in army, navy, air force, medical service and intelligence