By James Hall
JOHANNESBURG, Jan 18 2003 (IPS)

The 14 member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have a mutual security pact as the centerpiece of their organisation, and if for no other reason than the tide of destabilising illegal arms that passes through their countries.

‘’The traffic in small arms and weapons of war through the region shows how closely linked our nations are in matters of security, and how vulnerable each state is to the security lapses in other countries, particularly neighbouring countries,” an officer with the South African military told IPS this week.

He calls himself an ‘’arms inspector”, and the items he searches for ‘’ weapons of mass destruction”.

‘’They may not kill as many people at a single time like a chemical weapon, but they are killing hundreds of people weekly, and thousands every year,” he says.

Small arms are illegal in SADC countries without proper registration and permits. Weapons of war are strictly prohibited. But criminal syndicates are not concerned with such requirements, and they use illegal weapons both as items to sell for profit and to carry out their crimes.

A recent moratorium on the release of data on serious criminal activity in South Africa has made difficult the task of assessing the long-term flow and impact of illegal weapons into the region’s largest and most affluent country. One police official cautiously estimated, ‘’The impact is not minimal”.

In neighbouring Swaziland, police regularly mount roadblocks to inspect vehicles for illegal weapons. Unregistered firearms are confiscated from criminal suspects. House raids net more guns. The figure for confiscated illegal weapons in 2002 is classified by police authorities, but is a ‘’ record high”, according to Vusie Masuku, spokesperson for the Royal Swaziland Police Force.

Nearly all the weapons were brought into the country, and were not stolen from local owners.

SADC security officials trace the origin of illegal weapons to countries in the region that are experiencing armed conflicts, or have experienced these in the recent past. Angola is a key source for weapons exports. Rival fighting factions sell weapons to criminal syndicates for badly needed cash, or to trade for food and other materiel. The factions’ supporters overseas smuggle them new weapons.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is awash with weapons, which poses a security problem for the rest of the region.

Mozambique, where two decades of civil war and post-war political power struggles generated a large cache of weapons, is another point of origin for firearms.

From these nations, weapons flow southward, into Swaziland and South Africa. And, if persistent unconfirmed reports are to be believed, into Zimbabwe as rumours of resistance to Robert Mugabe’s government grows.

Security authorities agree there are two strategies to keep weapons of war out of criminal hands. The first is interdiction, which is Swaziland’s policy. Sweeps and inspections, roadblocks and raids are carried out to locate and confiscate small arms.

‘’The problem is that criminals are good at anticipating raids, and hiding their weapons. It is almost always by chance that we find a gun. A vast majority of illegal weapons are still out there,” a Swazi police inspector told IPS.

The second option is to destroy weapons at point of origin, before they begin their migration to other countries. In Angola and Congo, cease-fires are accompanied by programmes to collect weapons from rival factions. Soldiers converge at meeting places to turn in their rifles and munitions. Only partial success is achieved at rounding up weapons, but thousands have been destroyed in both nations.

Sometimes a cash bounty is placed on weapons to encourage ex-soldiers to trade in their weapons. The monetary rewards have enticed other people to dig up buried weapons, or even steal them from former combatants.

Determined to proceed with its successful post-war reconstruction efforts, Mozambique has increased criminal penalties on illegal firearms. The country’s long civil war spawned massive amounts of firearms that fuelled criminal gang activity in Johannesburg as weapons were smuggled across the border.

‘’When one country cracks down on illegal weapons, other countries benefit,” says Mozambique police inspector Victor de Sousa.

SADC heads of state hope to focus their security concerns on larger issues, like mutual defence against terrorism. The nations hope to produce a military organisation made up of units from member states’ armies, to be available for peacekeeping missions on the continent.

But the continuing presence of large amounts of illegal weapons from earlier conflicts is still causing problems. Domestic security concerns are still paramount in the policy decisions of regional police forces.

Meanwhile, in ‘’the Corporation”, an informal township slum on the outskirts of Nelspruit, South Africa, which was built to segregate black workers from the urban centre during apartheid, a self-styled tsotsi (gangster) named Nicholas boasted to IPS, ‘’I can still get any weapon I want from the gun runners. Pistols, rifles, even a grenade. I can even get a gun as a loan, and pay it off with the profit I make from hold-ups.”

It is just such boasting, unfortunately founded on reality, that SADC police departments want to eliminate. The solution may simply come with the passage of time, as old weapons deteriorate. But this would require no new conflicts arising to replace them.

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