Mechem may be removing landmines, but its labour practices and apartheid past are a minefield, writes Stefaans Brmmer
South Africa’s government-owned landmine- clearing company, Mechem, facing new calls to make a clean sweep of its apartheid-era past, has become embroiled in a dispute with Mozambican labourers employed on one of its projects in that country.
Claims that Mechem has maltreated the Mozambicans come on top of continued unhappiness in human-rights circles about Mechem’s relationship with some of the more notorious dirty tricksters from South Africa’s past, and about its relationship with arms-manufacturing parent company Denel.
The Mozambican national news agency AIM reported last week that Mozambican sappers employed at a Mechem demining project in Maputo province were threatening to go on strike.
They claimed to be working excessive hours, seven days a week – which is contrary to Mozambican labour law – and complained of low pay and being beaten by South African staff.
The strike threat came a day after Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano visited the project, stressing the importance of landmine clearance to allow citizens displaced during 16 years of civil war to return home.
The project, called Terra Limpa (clean land), is run by Mechem on behalf of South Africa’s Department of Foreign Affairs.
Mechem sometimes presents itself as a born- again member of the human-rights community for its unique skill in helping countries like Mozambique get rid of the scourge of unexploded landmines. But it has long been under attack by anti-landmine organisations, including the South African Campaign to Ban Landmines, for “double- dipping”.
Campaign representative Sue Wixley said this week: “The money earned from mine clearance is being circulated in the general pot used for the arms industry.”
Before it started landmine clearance in 1991, the company was an innovative armaments developer – and designed landmines. Earlier this year, Mechem acknowledged it still produced arms including rifle grenades and rockets, but said its demining division could be hived off completely if pressure continued.
This campaign is now calling for Mechem to give full disclosure of the role it played in South Africa’s apartheid past through, for example, a submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
During the trial of hit-squad commander Eugene de Kock last year, it emerged De Kock had obtained large caches of weaponry from Mechem property to be used by Inkatha Freedom Party impis before the 1994 elections.
To increase the company’s embarrassment, Sakkie van Zyl – a former member of the notorious Koevoet and Civil Co-operation Bureau units who is regularly employed by Mechem as contract manager – appeared before the truth commission recently to ask amnesty for his leading role in the 1985 killing of Eastern Cape activists Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sicelo Mhlauli and Sparrow Mkhonto.
And Mechem general manager Vernon Joynt acknowledged this week that Mechem has a business relationship with Garth Barret, a former commander of Rhodesia’s elite Special Air Services, later a member of the old South African Defence Force’s special forces, and eventually something of a link- man for the Mozambican rebels Renamo. Barret is now a United States resident.
Joynt said: “The fact that we are employing people who do not have the best past is, of course, a problem for us … but the situation in South Africa today is that if you go to the truth commission, you get pardoned. The same applies to a job.”
He said former members of elite military and police units often had the best experience of conditions encountered in demining and of the Casspir armoured vehicle, on which Mechem’s demining system is based. And he said the Mozambican labourers’ work conditions were not in Mechem’s full control, as the workers were seconded by the Mozambican government’s demining authority.
Mechem would investigate the claims that Mozambicans were being beaten by his South African staff, he said.