Stefaans Brmmer
SOUTH AFRICA has joined the body of nations agitating for a complete ban on the production, stockpiling, transfer and use of anti-personnel landmines – but campaigners say South Africa should prove its bona fides by legislating a complete ban locally.
Jackie Selebi, South Africa’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, last week joined representatives from about 50 nations in Ottawa, Canada, “strategising towards” a global ban on anti-personnel landmines (APLs).
South Africa’s participation in the conference, hosted by the Canadian government, signals that it has shed earlier pretensions to the “middle ground”, which was to support research into “smart” APLs as an alternative which was claimed to pose a lesser danger to civilians. Smart mines are designed to self-destruct after a set period of time.
South Africa disappointed anti-landmine campaigners last year at a UN Convention on Conventional Weapons conference last year, and at a review of that this April, when it supported the smart mine option – reportedly after the “hawks” carried the day in a split Cabinet.
But pressure from non-governmental organisations, among others, soon set South Africa on a new course. In May a ban was announced on the export of South African APLs, and a suspension on their operational use by the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), pending a review of their military utility.
Foreign Affairs liaison officer Pieter Swanepoel confirmed the policy change: “The South African policy on landmines has over time evolved from first identifying so- called long-lived APLs as being the most problematic – and in this regard deciding they should be replaced by so-called smart or self-destructing APLs – to what it is now.”
But “what it is now” – the support of efforts towards a global ban on all types of APLs, said Swanepoel – still falls short of what the anti-landmine lobby wants.
Said Noel Stott of the South African Campaign to Ban Landmines: “If they are moving away from the smart mines position, we would welcome that, and if they are moving to ban the production of landmines, we would welcome that.”
But he pointed out that no official ban on the production of APLs was yet in place, and that the suspension on the SANDF’s operational use of APLs was still reversible pending the military utility review, to be presented to Cabinet as early as November. “We would see it as a contradiction that they support a total ban eventually, yet fail to legislate it in South Africa yet.”
Selebi said that was probably coming. He said South Africa had a stockpile of about 300 000 APLs. Pending the military review on APL utility – which he believed would find against them – legislation could be passed early next year that would also ban production.
Stockpiles would also be destroyed then.
Selebi said the Ottawa conference had resolved on a number of initiatives to build support at international, regional and national level for a global ban, starting with a resolution to the UN General Assembly in a number of weeks which would, if adopted, encourage member states to implement their own moratoria on the use and transfer of APLs.
An international study on the utility of APLs, conducted by serving and retired senior military commanders on behalf of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), concluded earlier this year: “The limited military utility of AP-mines is far outweighed by the appalling humanitarian consequences… On this basis their prohibition and elimination should be pursued as a matter of urgency.”
The study was endorsed by South Africa’s Colonel AJ Rossouw, a former commander in mine warfare and clearance operations in Angola and Namibia.
The ICRC estimates there are as many as 110- million landmines spread in 64 countries worldwide, with another two to five million laid annually. They kill or maim between 1 000 and 2 000 people a month, mostly civilians. Africa bears the brunt, with countries like Angola (nine million) and Mozambique (two million) topping the list.
Angola has the highest number of civilian amputees in the world. Most of them lost limbs in landmine explosions during the long civil war.