South African weapons companies are servicing both sides in the India-Pakistan conflict — and it has been roundly condemned by the chair of Parliament’s defence committee, Thandi Modise.
”I would be very, very upset if South Africa was in any way selling to either India or Pakistan. Both have a bad human rights record. They are virtually at war. They are neighbours. It would not be acceptable to be helping to perpetuate that conflict,” Modise said this week. She is a leading African National Congress MP.
Modise’s tough stance comes ahead of crucial committee deliberations scheduled for next week on controversial government amendments to the National Conventional Arms Control (NCAC) Bill, which would significantly reduce both parliamentary oversight and the transparency of South Africa’s international arms trade.
Already, the details of the transactions with India and Pakistan are being kept secret due to the fact that National Conventional Arms Control Committee (NCACC) has failed to make public its reports for the past two years, despite promises to Parliament to do so.
Modise said her committee had never received any explanation for this failure.
In terms of an arrangement after 1994, the NCACC, which is chaired by Minister of Education Kader Asmal, is supposed to report each year on its decisions regarding South African arms exports, but the committee has failed to report since 1999. In that year South Africa exported Category A equipment worth R205-million to India and R36-million to Pakistan. Category A comprises conventional weapons such as explosives, large calibre arms, missiles, bombs, tanks, fighter aircraft and attack helicopters.
Asmal told the M&G the 2000 and 2001 figures had been delayed because of a lack of clarity over the detail of disclosure required, flowing from the two-year delay in the finalisation of the NCAC Bill. He said the figures would be released once they had been put before Cabinet, probably in about three weeks’ time.
The government has been fairly open about its bid to supply the Indian defence force with state armaments manufacturer Denel’s 155mm howitzer technology — weapons systems which have already been deployed in previous wars between the two countries.
In 2000 Denel delivered an emergency supply of ammunition for India’s 155mm Bofors guns following the Kargil conflict in which tens of thousands of shells were fired at Pakistani positions. Now the company is bidding to set up an ammunition plant in India. South Africa is also bidding against Sweden’s Bofors and an Israeli company to supply a new generation of 155mm towed and self-propelled weapons based on Denel’s G5 and G6 cannons.
As recently as February this year, Minister of Public Enterprises Jeff Radebe, attending a defence exhibition in India, announced that Denel was actively pursuing joint ventures with Indian defence industries for the development and manufacture of artillery systems, both for India’s needs and for export.
South African manufacturer Reutech, now majority-owned by the British company Vickers, has exported hundreds of Casspir armoured personnel carriers to India and is understood to be considering building the vehicle there.The situation with regard to Pakistan is more murky following a Cabinet decision to suspend new arms sales to Pakistan in the wake of the 1999 coup by General Pervez Musharraf.
However, in May 2000 the government indicated in response to a parliamentary question that South Africa was continuing to honour existing contracts and that exports of category A weapons between October 1999 and May 2000 amounted to R44-million. The contracts are believed to relate to a long-term, R600-million deal to supply missile technology to Pakistan.
The authoritative Aviation Week reported in 1999 that Denel had offered Pakistan a package of air-to-air weapons for the Super 7/FC-1 fighter it is developing with China. Denel’s Kentron division is understood to be still in line to supply the Pakistanis with its Darter/Kukri range of air-to-air missiles that would counter India’s present air superiority.
Industry insiders refused to confirm or deny the supplies to Pakistan, but informal leaks from Kentron suggest that South Africa is ”doing a roaring trade” with both India and Pakistan.
Asmal said India was regarded as a ”strategic partner” and therefore South Africa had a responsibility to meet its long-term commitments to that country. But he said that arms exports, including those to India, were regularly re-evaluated in response to the security situation.
Asmal also confirmed that the Pakistan contract, which the government had inherited from the apartheid government, was still being implemented, though new contracts would not be entered into until Pakistan made ”decisive” moves to return to democratic rule.
The international organisation Campaign Against the Arms Trade said South Africa was not unique in arming both Pakistan and India.
”Britain is selling enthusiastically to both sides,” a spokesperson said.
Local lobby groups have been critical of Asmal’s attempts to water down the strong oversight features proposed by Parliament. Anti-arms trade campaigner Terry Crawford-Browne says Asmal’s latest version of the NCAC Bill ”reads like a gun lobby document rather than a statement of principle concerned about the proliferation of armaments and the abuse of human rights”.
”It is a disgraceful feature of this Bill that citizens and/or the media are threatened by 20 years’ imprisonment should they reveal unlawful conduct by the armaments industry and/or the NCACC.”
The issue of oversight of South Africa’s arms trade has so far resulted in a stormy stand-off between Parliament and the executive.
The NCAC Bill was withdrawn in 2000 and again in 2001 after objections by a handful of NGOs, mainly because of the lack of parliamentary oversight over arms exports and the blanket secrecy imposed over any information relating to the armaments industry. Modise’s committee played a key role in throwing out these clauses and inserting much tougher provisions for Parliamentary monitoring. These included a requirement that the parliamentary committee be consulted prior to the granting of final export permits.
Both the Ministry of Defence and Speaker Frene Ginwala claimed such a provision would be an unconstitutional interference by Parliament in executive actions, despite the fact that state law advisers had approved the committee’s wording.
This week Modise said that she would be led by her committee: ”I believe that there should be this kind of oversight (of the executive). The question is whether South Africa is ready for it, whether Parliament is ready to give itself that role.”
Additional reporting by Stefaans Brummer