The New Arms Race
We are aware of how the previous South African regime used to sell South African manufactured armaments in unstable regions like the Middle East, South America and parts of Africa. This cynical disregard for the security of the citizens of other countries helped to earn our country the status of pariah nation.
Since 1994 the government has laudably enacted legislation to control the sale of conventional arms, to regulate foreign military assistance, to control firearms, to prohibit anti-personnel mines, and to limit nuclear proliferation. The legislation controlling the sale of armaments is designed to “avoid contributing to internal repression, including the systematic violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms” as well as to “avoid transfers of conventional arms that are likely to contribute to the escalation of regional military conflicts, endanger peace by introducing destabilising military capabilities into a region or otherwise contribute to regional instability.” Sticking to these praiseworthy goals will help us to avoid being branded the polecat nation of Africa.
One of the key terms of the legislation is for the National Conventional Arms Control Committee to report quarterly to the cabinet and the United Nations and “to present to parliament and release to the public an annual report of all conventional arms exports concluded during the preceding calendar year.” This is what all the hue and cry has been about in the papers for the last month. For more than four years the committee hasn’t fulfilled its mandate of reporting to the public. No report was presented at all for 2008 and 2007, and the reports for 2006 and 2005 have been marked “secret” and “confidential.”
St Ignatius tells us to put the best possible interpretation on other people’s deeds. The best possible interpretation is that the NCACC is simply incompetent and unable to meet its statutory obligations of reporting. But when the Chairman of the NCACC seeks to prosecute the shadow minister of defence who brought 2008’s report before parliament, even St Ignatius would suspect that something nefarious is afoot.
In an industry where trillions of Rands stand to be made off other people’s misery, it is imperative that there be complete transparency and very strict rules. That is why the NCACC is obliged to present a public report. That it why it is in the public’s interest to know that Mr Sipho Thomo, the CEO of Armscor received some R3.27million or an 89% increase in salary over the past year. That is why we should be concerned when the world spends nearly US$ 1 500 000 000 000 on armed forces last year. These are resources being diverted from the poorest and the hungriest in the world.
As US President Dwight Eisenhower said in 1953: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.” What Pope could have said it better?
