Ivor Powell
South Africa’s plans to send a peacekeeping force to the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo could be scuppered by the refusal of senior army officers to command the force.
Military sources said this week that the army had not been able to identify a single experienced field commander of the required rank of lieutenant colonel willing to command the Congo peacekeeping assignment.
The South African peacekeepers are supposed to be part of a mission under the auspices of the United Nations aimed at enforcing the peace provisions agreed to in talks among the seven belligerents in Lusaka in the middle of last year.
However, in the 10 months since it was signed, the Lusaka agreement has been honoured far more in the breach than the observance, and war has continued more or less uninterrupted.
The South African peacekeeping force, if indeed it is finally deployed, is expected to be made up of two battalions – one a fighting outfit and the other to supply logistical support – based in the rebel-held Kisangani area, where much of the ongoing fighting continues to rage.
But according to insiders and analysts, any South African force sent in the present climate will be woefully unprepared for possible engagement with one or other side in the conflict – and especially against either air attack or attack by armoured vehicles or tanks.
Ironically, given the recent R10-billion purchase of aircraft for the South African Air Force (SAAF), the key area of weakness lies in the army’s potentially fatal vulnerability of attack from the air.
However, military analysts say the South African force could be fatally vulnerable to air attack, since the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) is in no position to provide meaningful air cover – either by the air force’s newly acquired Gripen fighters or the Cheetah fighters it already flies.
In part this is apparently the result of a bizarre oversight, which has left the SAAF unable to refuel its aircraft in conflict situations. Though, in theory, the SANDF can command at least two Boeing 727s specially fitted out for mid-air refuelling, military sources told the Mail & Guardian that the aircrafts’ licences to fly have been revoked.
Cheetah fighters in the SAAF, even if they could be delivered, would also struggle to find runways in the area long enough for them to land and take off.
The key weakness, according to Jane’s Defence correspondent Helmut Rohmer Heitman, however, lies in the fact that the air force’s Hercules and other troop and cargo aircraft are either in the process of being refurbished and modernised or have been decommissioned entirely. This would mean that South African troops would be reliant on the good offices of allies like the United States to get in in the first place – and to get out if a speedy evacuation was needed.
Arrangements for an interview with Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota fell through