OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Monday 9.30am
THE South African government is investigating 10 people for supplying material to Angola’s Unita rebel movement in contravention of United Nations sanctions.
The government intends bringing the sanction busters to book, Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad told journalists on his return from an Organisation of African Unity summit in Ethiopia. “Legal action will be taken — this is very serious,” he said.
Pahad commented on a UN report which found that African heads of state and government officials are illegally helping to arm and finance Unita. The 48-page report is to be presented to the UN’s Security Council on Wednesday by the chairman of the council’s Angola sanctions committee, Robert Fowler.
British Foreign Office Peter Hain in February supplied Pahad with the names of three South Africans allegedly fuelling Unita’s 25-year-old war against the Angolan government by supplying material to the rebels. Pahad promised at the time that South Africa would investigate the matter to ensure that sanctions are better enforced.
The South African government believes the sanction busters are people who have been supplying Unita since the apartheid era when South Africa’s old regime backed the rebel movement, led by Jonas Savimbi.
The UN banned sales of arms, military equipment and fuel to Unita in 1993, after Savimbi refused to accept his defeat by Angola’s President Jose dos Santos in elections the previous year — AFP