paramilitary training
Ann Eveleth
SOUTH AFRICAN conservation groups are pursuing lucrative business in paramilitary training across Southern Africa, according to a report released this week by the Network of Independent Monitors (NIM).
The report names a number of organisations involved in the trade, including Wildlands Trust, an organisation headed by Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi; its partial funder, the KwaZulu Department of Nature Conservation; and the South African Police Service’s Endangered Species Protection Unit.
The report fails to detail what training the groups have actually undertaken beyond South Africa’s borders. But NIM says all such paramilitary training should be outlawed. Legislation is already in the pipeline to ban organisations exporting paramilitary know-how, which could see these conservation bodies falling foul of the law.
The report says a central link in the conservation network is Ian Thompson, a Game Rangers’ Association committee member, trustee of Wildlands Trust, former acting director of the KwaZulu conservation department and acting chief executive of the African Rhino Owners’ Association.
It also lists as Wildlands trustees the KwaZulu-Natal Conservation and Traditional Affairs MEC, Chief Nyanga Ngubane; the KwaZulu conservation department’s director, Nick Steele; and its conservation head, Wayne Elliot. British gambling magnate and IFP funder John Aspinall is a ”principal funder” of Wildlands, the report says.
The report says 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)”.
The WWF was previously implicated in establishing a covert anti-poaching unit, known as Operation Lock, which allegedly served the paramilitary interests of the apartheid government.