FRIDAY, 10.30AM
SOUTH African conservation groups are offering paramilitary training across Southern Africa, and making a financial killing from it, according to a report released this week by the Network of Independent Monitors.
Although the report does not detail precisely what training has been given and to whom, it names several local organisations as being involved in the industry. Chief among these is Wildlands Trust, headed by its co-founder Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and bankrolled by Buthelezi’s friend and British millionaire and ”white Zulu” John Aspinall; the KwaZulu Department of Nature Conservation; and the SA Police Service Endangered Species Protection Unit.
NIM has called for such paramilitary training to be outlawed. Legislation is already due before Parliament aimed at banning the private export of paramilitary know-how.
The report adds that the Game Rangers’ Association ”is currently negotiating with the department of environment affairs and the department of foreign affairs for permission to provide paramilitary training outside the country … [and] claims to have the unequivocal support of organisations such as the World Wildlife Fund (South Africa)”, previously involved in a covert anti-poaching unit which was allegedly involved in smuggling rhino horn and in paramilitary interests of the apartheid government.