South Africa will soon send an extra 1 500 troops to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad said on Wednesday.
He was briefing the National Assembly’s foreign affairs committee on developments in the DRC and Angola. South Africa already has 200 troops in the DRC as part of a United Nations Observer Mission (Monuc).
Pahad said the troops would be sent as part of a United Nations Security Council mandate, and included an infantry battalion, a mobile mine detection unit, a field engineering unit and aircraft and helicopters.
”The challenge now is to start preparing for the major involvement of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF).”
Pahad said the UN was keen to have the troops in place before December. The proposed deployment follows a peace pact between the DRC and Rwanda which has been widely regarded as a diplomatic coup for South Africa. It is aimed at ending four years of warfare in the DRC that has claimed the lives of 2,5 million people.
The South African troops would be expected to help Monuc implement the pact, which provides for the rounding up, disarming and repatriation of tens of thousands of Rwandan Hutu rebels.
On Angola, Pahad said it was also vital for South Africa to help entrench peace and stability there, particularly as the country was the next chair of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union.
With the formation of an Angolan Parliamentary Commission on Peace and Reconciliation, it was time for South African civil society to help sustain and intensify the peace process in Angola.
This process would receive further impetus when a bilateral commission between the two countries met in Pretoria in November to discuss issues such as trade, crime, health, and tourism.
Pahad said the peace process was threatened by the ”unprecedented humanitarian tragedy” in Angola, with more than a third of the population displaced, and approximately nine million people living on less than one dollar a day.
He agreed with the Archbishop of Luanda that fighting poverty and establishing social justice should be the first priority of the Angolan government.
This was possible because the Angolan government now had the resources to help with the reconstruction and development of the country, because it could make use of the former military budget, Pahad said.
The issue of lifting UN sanctions was a concern that would be addressed at this weekend’s SADC meeting.
He said Angola was recognised as the second powerhouse in the region, after South Africa, and he was convinced that South Africa’s local private sector had excellent opportunities to get involved in trade, investment and the energy sector in the south-west African country.
South Africa was already looking at opportunities to import oil from Angola, which at this stage, was supplying 10% of its oil to the United States.
The United States was expected to import 25% of its oil needs from Africa by the year 2010, and this could assume added significance given the current Middle East situation. – Sapa