Peta Thornycroft
STORIES are emerging about the dying days of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, and how South African mercenaries and desperadoes tried to make a quick buck out of the tottering regime of Mobutu Sese Seko.
As rebel leader Laurent Kabila’s men prepared their final march on Kinshasa, Mobutu loyalists were in South Africa recruiting former soldiers and volunteers.
But their efforts to recruit a South African force to shore up Zaire’s undisciplined and underpaid army came to nothing as Mobutu’s strongmen apparently had no money. Those who went into Kinshasa had to flee for their lives ahead of looters in the Zairean army.
“We thought the deal would be for about R30- million,” said Pretoria lawyer Harold Miller this week. “The money never came, and so we didn’t go.”
He said he and others had been talking to one of the more efficient Zairean officers, General Marc Mahele Lieko Bokungo.
Among the group who tried to get military work in Zaire were those who had previously served with South Africa’s best-known company of mercenaries and military trainers, Executive Outcomes.
Executive Outcomes always maintained it would have no dealings with Mobutu, but confirmed this week that some former employees were among the soldiers of fortune who either showed up in Kinshasa or tried to get hired by the Zairean government.
A recent edition of the London-based fortnightly newsletter, Africa Confidential, has published details of some of the efforts of Mobutu’s men to recruit South Africans. One of them, a former soldier in the South African Defence Force, Mauritz le Roux of Pretoria, refused to answer questions this week. The newsletter reports him as a former member of Executive Outcomes who briefly served the company in its first exploit, guarding Angolan oilfields in Soyo, in 1993.
Le Roux runs a security company, Safenet, which the newsletter says has a contract to provide personal guards for a former Mobutu loyalist, Kpama Baramoto, now reportedly living in Wendywood, north of Johannesburg.
Africa Confidential names a company, Stabilco, registered in the Isle of Man, which hired the bulk of the recruits for Zaire. It names some of them: former air force officer Neil Ellis, and former defence force colonels Roelf van Heerden and Renier Hugo.
Most of the men who tried to get hired by Stabilco never made it to Zaire, but among those who did were Ellis and pilot Johan Joubert, who had to escape into the Central African Republic after being attacked by Zairean army looters when Kinshasa fell to the rebels.
The newsletter also reports that a former defence force officer, Ian Jacobus Liebenberg, together with 12 South Africans and several foreign military advisers, formed a special unit on the other side of the Congo River in Brazzaville helping President Pascal Lissouba. Liebenberg has also reportedly facilitated the purchase of South African arms and Nyala armoured cars.
Africa Confidential says some Unita soldiers are also fighting alongside Lissouba’s militias.
Meanwhile, Executive Outcomes’s chairman Eeben Barlow and his deputy, Lafras Luitingh, have pulled out of the company. It is now run by CEO Nick van den Bergh, the publicity-shy former parabat who headed up its successful and highly profitable operation for the Angolan government and its aborted contract in Papua New Guinea earlier this year.
Barlow is overseas at present, and Executive Outcomes has moved offices from his home. Barlow is understood to have retained his links with various companies formerly associated with Executive Outcomes, such as the Angolan-registered Ibis Air.
Luitingh said he had “had enough of that life” and was going into business as a consultant.
Van den Bergh said he, Barlow and Luitingh remained friends, but that Executive Outcomes had severed ties with all the other companies, local and foreign.
He said Executive Outcomes consisted of security consultants and trainers and looked forward to legislation which will make it illegal for South Africans to become involved with military activities in foreign countries.
“The legislation will stop fly-by-nights. But we hope it will allow us to respond to clients’ needs quickly.” He said he still had to study details of the proposed legislation. Meanwhile, he said, Executive Outcomes was at present not operating anywhere outside South Africa.