Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

The phasing out of the commando system was likely to shift crime-fighting resources from farming areas to urban nodes, criminal justice researcher Jonny Steinberg said on Wednesday.

While commando members would be easily replaced in numbers by police reservists, the crime fighting focus was apt to change, he told an Institute for Security Studies seminar in Pretoria.

With a seven percent annual reduction in contact crime one of the police's current top priorities, the policing of deep rural areas and agricultural crimes would probably suffer in the absence of commandos.

Police station commanders, measured on their performance, would probably focus on bringing down priority crimes, like contact crimes, which were more prevalent in urban areas.

"A station commander's biggest priority is to meet national targets. There will be a struggle between the demands of grassroots problems and (national) performance indicators," Steinberg said.

"The capacity for policing agricultural crime is likely to be sucked into agricultural towns."

In a paper distributed at the seminar, Steinberg said total commando strength at the end of March last year was 43,976, of which just over 26,000 were dormant.

Between April last year and March this year, commando members were involved in 79,004 operations, including farm visits, patrols, roadblocks and cordon-and-search operations.

The government plans to phase out all 183 SA National Defence Force commandos by 2009. Seventeen have already ceased operating, increasing to 70 by next February.

Replacing an assumed 12,000 commando members working an average of 120 days per year with 20,000 new police reservists on active duty for seven days a month, manpower would be boosted by 14 percent in annual working days, Steinberg said.

The question was how the police, in taking over commando functions, intended deploying this capacity.

Assistant police commissioner Ben Groenewald told the seminar that rural safety was a priority for the police service. Each police station must have a rural safety plan.

No vacuum would be left by the phasing out of the commandos, he said, adding that less than 30 percent of current commando members were active in any event.

The police intended boosting its number of functional members from just over 140,000 to 165,850 by March 2008, and improving area crime combating units -- later to be replaced by larger zone units.

R60 million would be made available to call up 8000 police reservists in the 2006/07 financial year, each working at least seven days a month. This figure would grow to R80 million the following year for 15,000 reservists, and R125 million the year after that to call up at least 25,000 reservists.

The money would cover salaries, which Groenewald said would be comparable to those paid to commando members, and equipment.

The SANDF currently spent about R95 million a year on its commando system.

A new national instruction was expected to be signed by national police commissioner Jackie Selebi next week to enable ex-commando members to join the police reservists. They could also apply to join the police or the defence force on a permanent basis.

Groenewald said there would be four categories of reservists -- with the so-called D Group focusing on rural and urban safety.

It would be up to each station commander to decide how many individuals he wished to deploy to each category -- depending on local needs and resources.

On Steinberg's criticism of resources being shifted from rural to urban areas, Groenewald said D Group reservists would be deployed only in their area of origin.

If this was true, replied Steinberg, and current commando members joined the D Group reservists, the problem would actually be exacerbated. The vast majority of existing commando members lived in urban areas.

South Africa's National Defence Force has a daunting list of deployments at the moment: ceasefire observers in Darfur; peacekeepers facing down a whole collection of vicious rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo, keeping a fragile peace in Burundi, trying to restore it in civil-war-torn Ivory Coast.

But the SANDF also has a huge problem at home: A quarter of its uniformed soldiers are infected with HIV-AIDS, and the disease is taking its toll. “We've come to a point in our combat readiness where if we have to get involved in many more new missions, we will have trouble to fill the gaps,” Brigadier-General Pieter Oelofse, the director of medicine, said bluntly.

This has huge implications for this country's security, obviously, but also well beyond South Africa's borders. As the best-equipped and best-trained military force on the continent, South Africa is doing much of the region's policing these days. In conflicts such as Darfur, South Africa has stepped in as a proxy where countries such as the United States and Canada — whose governments still remember the Somalia debacles more than a decade ago — won't send their own troops, but want an international presence.

Military infection rates are estimated to be up to twice those in the wider population, according to the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies. Seven out of 10 military deaths in South Africa are AIDS-related. AIDS is also the biggest killer in the Ugandan armed forces, and Zambia is pushing to get treatment for soldiers. Eritrea has made a “condom pouch” part of its standard-issue military kit. Ethiopia and Nigeria, two of the continental heavyweights, have raging epidemics within their armed forces.

There is a simple set of reasons why soldiers are particularly at risk. “They deploy at 19 or 20, they are young, healthy people with all the normal levels of hormones a person should have and the effect of those hormones is not shied away from, if I can put it like that,” Gen. Oelofse said. Then, he added, they get training that is predicated on their courage. “They are young and healthy and fit and they think that it's not going to happen to me — whether it's getting shot or snakebite or HIV-AIDS.”

Deployed abroad, the soldiers are away from their families or regular sexual partners. “Those desires don't suddenly go away because you're not at home. You put all these things in a pot: ‘I'm young, healthy, invulnerable, I've trained to kill the enemy and the longer I am away from home the more difficult it is for me to stay in my room,' ” he said. “What comes out of that pot is high-risk behaviour. Add a few drops of alcohol to high risk and it doubles.”

The military here, like many other countries, has tried to counter these factors with aggressive HIV prevention campaigns, but the successes are limited. The SANDF has an annual incidence rate, or new infections, of 1.2 per cent of its 65,000 troops.

The United Nations currently bars countries from sending HIV-positive soldiers on international missions (although it is reviewing this policy), which effectively eliminates a quarter of South African troops from those duties. While no other country in the region has been willing to release the infection rates for their military forces, a senior military figure here said that the topic dominates many multilateral meetings, with grim discussion about the possibility that some forces could imminently be seriously disabled.

At the same time, research under way here may lead to a reconsidering of the HIV-positive army. Partnering with the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the military is two years into an ambitious research project on AIDS treatment. Almost 1,000 soldiers and their families are now on antiretroviral drugs, through Project Phidisa (extend life), a $50-million (U.S.), five-year project that is not only hunting for the optimal combination of the drugs, but is looking specifically at how a soldier deployed in a conflict zone could manage. (The drugs must be taken at the same time every single day for life, and may cause side effects that require medical management.) Given the reality of HIV infection rates in southern Africa, most countries will imminently be obliged to seriously consider deploying patients who are healthy but on AIDS treatment.

Sergeant Philisiwe Ntshangase, who is the project's patient advocate and runs support groups for HIV-positive soldiers, is a plump and cheerful testament. A former fighter in the anti-apartheid movement, she was part of the integration of guerrillas and soldiers in the new armed forces here after the first democratic elections in 1994. A year later, she tested positive.

“I thought it was the end of my career,” she recalled. “I started behaving not normal . . . I was angry. When you're a soldier you must be able to care for your fellow soldiers or your country. I wasn't fit — not mentally — to carry a weapon.”

She battled depression over the next few years, until she managed to stabilize her health on antiretrovirals in 2002. Now she confides with a laugh that she has to worry about counting calories.

Her message to her fellow soldiers these days is that with ARV treatment, they will be able to work just fine. “You can be promoted; your career doesn't stop.”

There have been snide suggestions in the media here that the U.S. government is pouring so much money into Project Phidisa because it has a vested interest in keeping South Africa's forces fit, and able to stabilize Darfur or Congo. But Gen. Oelofse said that misses the point. “From the negative point of view, you can say we are being abused, or I can be proud that we are doing something to benefit humankind and would not be done otherwise.”

IN view of South Africa's decision not to prosecute chemical and biological warfare mastermind Dr Wouter Basson, Namibia has requested its South African counterpart for his docket and court proceedings reports to make a decision on the matter.

Dr Basson, dubbed Dr Death, was acquitted on charges that he helped commit war crimes in pre-independence Namibia, Swaziland, Mozambique and London.

Charges that Dr Basson was involved in the poisoning of 200 Swapo detainees in an internment camp and other five detainees at a military base were among the 46 charges dropped in 2002.

On Monday, Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana met her South African counterpart, Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, Brigitte Mabandla, during which this issue came up.

Sacky Shangala, Special Adviser to Iivula-Ithana told New Era yesterday that Namibia wanted to look into the documentation on the case, investigate the matter and take a decision.

Although he said the ministry was in a position to determine the way forward, it was important "that closure be brought to the matter".

The National Prosecuting Authority recently said it could not prosecute Basson, as it was not possible in legal terms because he had already been acquitted.

Dr Basson was acquitted in 2002 of charges ranging from murder, conspiracy, fraud and drug trafficking amid protests even from Namibia, which at that time said the matter would not rest until justice was done.

"For us the matter will not rest until we see justice," said Theo-Ben Gurirab, who was Minister of Foreign Affairs then.

Gurirab added, "Basson's acquittal was a scandalous and monumental travesty of justice."

Aside from the Wouter Basson issue, the issue of the mass graves which have been discovered in the Ohangwena Region also came up in view of the fact that President Hifikepunye Pohamba has asked for forensic experts from South Africa.

Safety and Security Minister, Peter Tsheehama told the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation on Tuesday that Pohamba had sent a letter asking for help in conducting the investigations.

Shangala said the ministry fully supported the move by the President because the country would require assistance in tracing the identities of the victims.

The mass grave issue, added Shangala, should be handled in a suitable way for the sake of the people lying in the graves and also for the relatives' sakes.

"We are taking a cautious approach as there are still lots of things that have to be undertaken," said the adviser.

According to the South African Press Agency, Mabandla said it was too early to link the graves to Basson.

So far, reports the Namibia Press Agency (Nampa), seven mass graves have been discovered in the Ohangwena Region. Workers of the Road Contractors Company, who are constructing and expanding oxidation ponds at Eenhana, more than a week ago uncovered the first grave.

One of the two latest mass graves that were discovered on Monday contained bones, skulls and military uniforms such as those worn by Swapo Plan combatants during the liberation struggle, while the other one contained human remains inside closed body bags. Contacted for comment on the meeting between the two ministries, South African High Commissioner, Timothy Maseko said although the meeting was part of the ongoing consultation between the two ministries considering that the two governments were the latest to attain their freedom, the mass grave issue might have come up.

"I would not say that the visit was solely to do with the mass graves, and I would not say it did not come up," said Maseko, adding: "It is an issue of interest to the Ministry of Justice."

He said he presumed that it came up because there was interest in the identification of the victims in the graves. Maseko noted that there was great expectation especially on the part of parents who lost their sons and daughters during that time, and it was a social responsibility on the part of the Government to inform the families about what happened.

The South African diplomat also said the two countries have warm bilateral relations from the highest office of the land (President), right down to ministerial level in education, agriculture and health among others.

At ministerial level for instance, the justice ministries would discuss how to run the ministries and other issues of prosecution, as well as personnel.

Both countries, Namibia and South Africa are faced with crimes of the apartheid regime, with South Africa still missing people who are believed to have been buried on farms.

Maseko reiterated his earlier statement to the press that his country would offer assistance to Namibia should there be any need.

Meanwhile, a South African weekly newspaper has reported that a former South African Defence Force (SADF) soldier has come forward with details about the apartheid army's "execution-style" shootings of opponents in April 1989.

The Sunday Sun newspaper quoted former apartheid soldier Michael Jacobs as saying that 56 former guerrillas of Swapo's armed wing, Plan, were butchered by the notorious Koevoet unit at Ombalantu along the Namibia/Angola border on Sunday, April 28, 1989.

He told the newspaper that the 56 bodies were buried in a mass grave. Jacobs, whose SADF member number was 80579945BW, served in Namibia from December 1985 to May 1989, the newspaper stated.

He said the recent uncovering of mass graves in the Ohangwena Region is "just the tip of the iceberg".

Apart from Eenhana, other areas where mass grave spots have been identified by the public, police and the army are Okakwa and Omungelume.

Jacobs told the Sunday Sun that some of the SADF members who took part in that operation in Ombalantu are serving in the new South African National Defence Force (SANDF), while others are in the South African Police Service (SAPS).

Peter Stiff, the author of a book entitled The Covert War, which is about the Koevoet operations in Namibia between 1979 and 1989, says for the Namibian Government to plead ignorance on the recently discovered mass graves in Eenhana is ridiculous.

Stiff says when the UN ordered that post-mortem examinations be conducted on all bodies, that is when these mass graves could have happened.

Stiff has written extensively about the wars in Southern Africa leading up to independence. He witnessed the events that occurred which led to the nine-day war between Swapo soldiers and SADF soldiers.

The discovery of the mass graves has got everybody talking. But no one seems to know what happened.

Still, everybody seems to agree that those human remains found were of Swapo people. For Stiff, who has spent time writing about Namibia's history, "this is all nonsense".

He says this could be traced back to the 1988 New York Accord between South Africa, Angola and Cuba that allowed Namibia's independence to come into effect. This meant that Swapo troops had to be withdrawn to Angola, the SA army to their bases and police counter-insurgency units patrol the border.

The Democratic Alliance on Monday questioned whether there was not military involvement -- by past or present soldiers -- in the recent spate of heists.

"The question being asked in many police circles with the current wave of terror in Johannesburg and other parts of South Africa is whether SANDF (SA National Defence Force) personnel both past or present are either directly or indirectly involved as trainers or suppliers of criminals that are threatening to place Johannesburg under siege," spokesman Roy Jankielsohn said.

Many armed robberies, heists and attacks on the police were carried out with military precision using military arms and ammunition, he said.

Automatic weapons such as AK47s and R4s are and were only issued to either the SANDF or its predecessors the SADF (SA Defence Force), MK (Umkhonto we Sizwe) and APLA (Azanian People's Liberation Army).

Police sources confirmed that SANDF R4 ammunition was used in an attack in Bedfordview last week, Jankielsohn said.

"Government must ensure that the police, military and national intelligence agencies co-operate in order to track down the criminal syndicates that are threatening to turn our festive season into a bloodbath," he said.

"Surely it is not impossible for our intelligence agencies to find out who is responsible for what appears to be well-organised and orchestrated military attacks on the public, private security companies and the police."

Jankielsohn concluded: "We owe it to our outgunned police who confront these criminals with courage and dedication to put a stop to this slaughter."

The government would only consider bringing in the defence force to tackle cash-in-transit gunmen and mall robbers if the situation was "out of control", the Safety and Security Department said on Friday.

Spokesman Trevor Bloem said the SA National Defence Force's primary function was for external duties, but they could be drawn in if required.

"If things turn out of control I am sure the necessary steps can and will be considered, like bringing in the SANDF," Bloem said.

"At this juncture I am sure the SAPS will be quite capable of dealing with these criminal elements. The SANDF does play a backup role. We have not reached the stage when SANDF should perform policing functions."

Police were mounting several operations countrywide.

"Let's give the police a chance to prove that they are capable of fighting these criminals."

There have been a spate of mall robberies and cash heists in Gauteng in the past months.

In the latest incident, four men shot dead a police official and injured two others in Rosebank, Johannesburg, on Friday morning.

The men struck again later in Fourways when they opened fire on a man who had just drawn money at an American Express.

On Thursday morning a security guard was killed and two others were critically injured in a cash heist on the N12 highway near Edenvale.

On Monday afternoon two people were arrested at a garage near the Soweto highway for their alleged involvement in a cash heist on Monday afternoon. The two allegedly attacked three security guards as they picked up money in Rosettenville, south of Johannesburg.

Last week three security guards were injured and a motorist was wounded in an attempted cash heist at Gillooly's interchange near Bedfordview, while two men were recently arrested after an attempted heist at Gold Reef City Casino.

Bloem said police started a festive season operation with additional operations being held on November 21. The operation will last until January.

The Democratic Alliance called for the SANDF to be brought in after the shootings in Rosebank on Friday morning.

"The DA have called for more back up to help SAPS, metro police and security guards by sending in manpower from SANDF," party spokesman Darren Bergman said.

"We need to fight fire with fire and declare war on these well-trained syndicates that run roughshod over our anti-crime forces.

"Crime prevention operations and road blocks should be set up more regularly around these times in strategic spots and cash-in-transit vehicles should have chase cars following them as extra back up."

Spokeswoman for Community Safety in Gauteng, Phumla Mthala, said there had been a large spate of heists in a relatively short time.

However, police had to be given credit for foiling a number of potential robberies. The police, she said, had stepped up patrols and were building relationships with the managers of filling stations and malls.

"Air patrols have been stepped up and unmarked police vehicles are patrolling," she said.

"Police stations have developed a close relationship with filling stations and the managers of malls and small businesses. If they see anything suspicious they have an open line to head of the station to ensure a quick response."

Mthala said malls had to improve their security.

"Some shops are seen as soft targets. Many of them have easy access and they have vast amounts of cash but poor security. In many the surveillance cameras are not working properly."

Police in Gauteng were doing everything they could to fight crime.

"We are fighting this battle. We are doing our best," she said.

Three soldiers were arrested on Friday morning for shooting and wounding four Zimbabweans near Musina, Limpopo police said.

Superintendent Ailwei Mushavhanamadi said the men were travelling on Tshipise and Republic roads near the N1 close to Musina when they spotted a car.

"The SANDF members tried stopping the car for no apparent reason. The driver of the vehicle drove on.

"Then, the men took out guns and started shooting at them. Two adults and two children were wounded," Mushavhanamadi said.

Those injured in the party of eight were taken to hospital. Two R4 rifles were found on the scene.

Mushavhanamadi said the suspects would appear in court soon.

L'intégration de membres de factions jadis antagonistes en est la clé, souligne un universitaire.

- Selon le professeur Stephen Burgess, attaché au département " stratégie et sécurité internationale " de l'École de hautes études de l'armée de l'air des États-Unis, l'Afrique du Sud pourrait servir de modèle lorsqu'il s'agit de faire participer l'armée d'un gouvernement jadis ségrégationniste à la reconstruction politique qui suit le règlement d'un conflit.

South Africa stands as a model for the way the military of a formerly exclusionary government can be made into an important part of peaceful "post conflict political reconstruction," says Professor Stephen Burgess of the U.S. Air War College's Department of Strategy and International Security.

Burgess delivered a paper entitled Fashioning Integrated Militaries and Police Forces out of Formerly Warring Militias in Africa at the African Studies Association's Annual General Meeting, held in Washington November 17-20.

Howard Wolpe, a former congressman who later served as President Clinton's special envoy to the Africa Great Lakes region, joined him at a roundtable discussion on reconstituting states in Africa.

Burgess said one of the most important aspects of post-conflict political reconstruction in Africa has been "the reconstitution of the security sector."

Starting with Zimbabwe in the early 1980s and followed by Namibia, South Africa and Mozambique in the early 1990s, Burgess said, "peacemakers established working arrangements to fashion integrated militaries and police forces out of what were warring government and rebel forces" in Africa.

A model of success, said Burgess, who studied on the continent as a Fulbright-Hays fellow, was South Africa, where in the 1970s and 1980s, the 90,000-member South African Defense Force was "the most feared military in Africa, fighting fiercely for the survival of the apartheid regime."

Opposing the apartheid regime were the 28,000 guerrillas of the African National Congress (ANC) -- Umkhonto We Sizwe -- and the 6,000 guerillas of the armed wing of the Pan-Africanist Congress -- the Azanian Peoples Liberation Army, he told the panel.

Burgess said a key factor in the successful integration of the guerilla units with the South African military proved to be an organization of defense experts, originally established by the ANC, called the Military Research Group (MRG).

The MRG primarily was opposed to a large military establishment and strongly supported civilian control over the military, integration and a more defensive security strategy, all points that characterized the new South African National Defense Force (SANDF) after 1994.

In addition, the British armed forces were invited as arbitrators overseeing the creation of the SANDF and the integration process, the scholar said. "The planning process brought warring militias together and created the basis for a common institutional culture," he said.

The overall result was that SANDF's size was reduced from 90,000 to 57,000 uniformed members. And "its effectiveness has not dissipated greatly, as evidenced by the dispatch of peacekeeping forces to Burundi, [the Democratic Republic of the Congo] and Liberia," said Burgess.

"On the whole, the transformation and integration of the SANDF was a major contribution to permanent peace in South Africa," the scholar concluded.

WOLPE DESCRIBES BURUNDI CONFLICT RESOLUTION PROJECT

As head of the Africa program at the Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, Howard Wolpe has been working on a conflict resolution project in Burundi involving the integration of its military.

Sustaining peacebuilding is the real challenge in war-torn regions like Africa's Great Lakes, where there is a total breakdown of the rules for sharing power, Wolpe told the panel.

"You have to resolve conflict where there is no value attached to collaboration" and where there is a large-scale "fracturing of trust" among all the institutions of society, especially the army and police, he said.

Wolpe's recipe for success was to re-ignite "the ability to communicate" among the warring parties and institutions in Burundi, whose representatives were accustomed to "screaming at each other" or worse, he said.

To tackle the problem, Wolpe said, the Wilson Center worked to identify 100 leaders around whom a training program could be built based on "conflict analysis, strategic planning and problem solving." This group became a network that reached out to local leaders and opinion makers throughout the nation.

The program has been so successful in entrenching Burundi's new multiethnic government that the government has requested similar training for its national army and police force, Wolpe told the panel.

While Africans are making inroads in conflict prevention, Wolpe said the level of U.S. abilities in this area has disappointed him. "In my five years at the Department of State [as special envoy], I was stunned that diplomats got no training in conflict resolution or management," he said.

"They [diplomats] know a lot about the political affairs of the countries they operate in, but not enough about conflict prevention techniques," Wolpe concluded.

Dealer network is empowering blacks A STRONG network of dealers supports several thousand OMC military and armoured vehicles, such as SAMILs, Casspirs, Mambas and RG-12s (Nyalas).

These are used by the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) and the South African Police Service.

Thami Mbele, director: South African programmes at Land Systems OMC, says these dealers are located at or near SANDF centres in urban areas, as well as in smaller towns such as George, Kokstad, Phalaborwa, Zeerust, Upington and Bethlehem. In this way, downtime and positioning costs are minimised, as the dealers are specifically focused on the military client environment.

Our dealer network is unique because of its geographic coverage, technical ability and business empowerment edge. We have worked hard to identify and support the right organisations in the right areas with the appropriate financial assistance and training, to ensure businesses and relationships that are sustainable for the future.

The company's after-sales support is a lifetime commitment offered countrywide, ensuring that our service to the SANDF is second to none.

"We've managed to secure a sound working relationship between the SANDF and our dealer community because of the dealers' close proximity to the military establishments, which also gives us an intimate knowledge and a deep understanding of how the SANDF manages and operates its fleet of vehicles. Mbele says that traditionally, given the country's history, very few blacks had been involved in the defence industry. The company's dealer network provides an excellent example of transformation in the defence sector, he says.

Mbele says that Land Systems OMC has made significant strides with its black economic empowerment strategy since 2000.

In order to facilitate the entry of black participants in the defence industry, the company initiated a programme to transform its dealer network, he says.

We decided that one of the avenues we needed to pursue in order to introduce black people to the defence industry was the transformation of our dealer network, he says. Mbele says that two years ago the company embarked on a five-year plan to ensure that all dealers had black empowerment status by 2008.

In 2000, only one firm in the company's 31-strong dealership network was black empowered. Today, there are 21 black empowerment dealers in the network, which means that more than 68% of Land System OMC's dealers are empowered. By the end of next year all our dealers should be black empowered, which underlines that we are not merely paying lip service to transformation and change, but creating jobs as well as ownership opportunities in the process. The company is assisting its dealers to achieve this goal by guiding and supporting them in their empowerment endeavours, he says.

We do not dictate to the dealers which model they should follow. Instead, we believe that it should be a business imperative for them to transform, and a concept that they should fully accept before attempting to implement it, Mbele says.

He says that empowerment initiatives, if tackled in a proactive and positive manner, can bring about transformation at all levels of the industry.

Apartheid-era defence minister Magnus Malan has joined former SA Defence Force chief Constand Viljoen in denying any knowledge of mass graves found near a former South African military base in northern Namibia.

Malan on Monday said questions about the graves should be directed at the United Nations as they were in command in Namibia at the time.

"I know nothing about it, but if you have a look, you'll see we weren't in Namibia in that stage, it was (the) United Nations... In that period there was a gentleman there called Mr (Maarti) Athisaari, who was the representative of the United Nations. If I were you, I'd phone him and ask him 'what the hell did you people do here?' I know nothing about a grave but they should know about it, they were in command, in charge, there," Malan said.

Two mass graves were found near Eenhana, 850km northeast of Windhoek. The base was home to the SA Army's 54 Battalion during the latter part of the 1966-1989 border war.

Retired Freedom Front leader Viljoen, who was chief of the army from 1977 to 1985, said burying dead guerrillas was a police function.

People's Liberation Army of Namibia (Plan) fighters killed by the SA Army and Southwest African Territory Force by law had to be handed over to the Southwest African police for identification and burial.

The bones are suspected to be those of Plan fighters who may have been killed in the so-called nine-day war in April 1989, a name that derives from the title of a book by writer Peter Stiff about the event.

Construction workers discovered a first mass grave containing human bones and ammunition 400 metres from the base on Thursday.

With the exhumation of the grave still in progress, it was not known how many bodies the grave contained.

Several hundred Plan cadres were killed in the nine days after April 1, 1989, just before UN peacekeepers formally took over from the SADF.

The Namibian government has asked the SANDF to shed light on the graves to speed up identification.

South African government sources say Pretoria will tackle the question privately with Windhoek.

Janes Defence Weekly correspondent Helmoed-Romer Heitman said photographs existed of South African troops burying Swapo members towards the end of the liberation war in 1989 when, in the absence of mortuaries, the dead were buried in pits dug by front-end loaders.

A book on the border conflict by author Willem Steenkamp showed one such grave being dug, but by South West African police officers attached to its counterinsurgency wing, infamously known as "Koevoet."

The pictures show them digging the graves with spades -- not front-end loaders.

Athisaari later became president of Finland.

Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota's heart attack has raised concerns about the capability of military hospitals to provide high-quality care for VIPs.

Lekota, who had a heart attack on Wednesday night, is being treated at the private Gatesville Medical Centre where his condition this morning is "stable".

Although it could not be confirmed, it appears that Lekota was taken to the Gatesville because it was the closest health facility.

But this is a major variation from the past when military hospitals, such as No 1 Military Hospital in Pretoria and No 2 Military Hospital in Wynberg, Cape Town, were the treatment centres of choice for government leaders. Not only were they equipped with the most well-trained staff, but they also provided first-class security of a high military standard.

Just a few weeks ago a parliamentary oversight visit to No 1 Military Hospital showed that it was falling apart at the seams.

Parliament's defence committee found in August that there were major cracks in the walls, holes in ceilings, and peeling paint. Also, ceilings and window panes were missing, bathrooms did not have taps and tiles, sleeping quarters did not have curtains, cupboards or chairs.

"This poor state of the facilities impacted negatively on morale and therefore the performance of the personnel (patients, staff and learners)," parliament's study reportedly found.

The defence committee's draft report said some of the maintenance backlog represented occupational health and safety risks "which are impediments to training, accommodation and the provisioning of proper medical care to patients in the case of No 1 Military Hospital".

The military hospitals are there to provide care not only for members of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) and their families, but also for the president and deputy president, former presidents, former deputy presidents and foreign dignitaries.

The parliamentary committee found the Pretoria military hospital had resorted to accommodating foreign students and visiting SANDF members in private guesthouses "to save the image of the SANDF".

Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota was out of bed and doing "much better than expected" following his heart attack, the army's surgeon general said on Friday.

"I am extremely pleased with his medical condition. We are extremely fortunate in that he has suffered no other complications whatsoever. He is out of bed and presently sitting up and is doing much better than I expected," the SA National Defence Force's (SANDF) Lieutenant General Vijay Ramlakan said.

Lekota suffered a heart attack at midnight on Wednesday at his official residence in Cape Town. He was alone at the time, but was able to call one of his bodyguards to help.

The minister was taken to Claremont Hospital where he was stabilised.

He was then taken to Gatesville Medical Centre for an "invasive cardiological procedure".

"After the treatment at Gatesville Medical Centre he has responded well to the procedure and continues to improve hour by hour," said Ramlakan.

The SANDF would move him to 2 Military Hospital as soon as his condition allowed.

Investigations into the discovery of a mass grave 400m from a former South African military base in Namibia would be a government to government issue, the SA National Defence Force (SANDF) said on Friday.

Construction workers earlier this week discovered a mass grave containing human bones and ammunition.

"Because the SADF [South African Defence Force] no longer exists, having been replaced by the SANDF, the issue of the mass grave will have to be discussed directly between the two governments," said SANDF spokesperson Sam Mkhwanazi.

The Star newspaper reported on Friday that the bones were believed to be the remains of South West African People's Organisation (Swapo) liberation fighters killed under South African occupation of Namibia.

With the exhumation of the grave still in progress, it was not known how many bodies the grave contained.

"This is a serious matter; a huge massacre has happened. Those in the South African army need to tell us why they shot these people," Ohangwena regional governor Usko Nghaamwa told the newspaper.

Constand Viljoen, who was chief of the army from 1977 to 1985, reacted that it was impossible for well-disciplined South African troops to have buried guerrillas in mass graves, as dealing with any bodies had been a police function.

However, Jane's Defence Weekly correspondent Helmoed-Romer Heitman told The Star photographs existed of South African troops burying Swapo members towards the end of the liberation war in 1989 when, in the absence of mortuary facilities, the dead were buried in pits dug by front-end loaders.

The grave was discovered near the Eenhana base, 100km from Oshakati, in the Oukwanyama district.

SA National Defence Force peacekeeping troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo are facing 22 cases of alleged sexual misconduct, according to Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota.

In a written reply to a parliamentary question by DA MP Rafeek Shah, Lekota said one SANDF member had been charged with sexual misconduct, two had been suspended and one had been discharged.

Only one member currently faces criminal charges.

Shah stated that 32% of alleged sexual misconduct cases involving foreign troops in the DRC were against SANDF members and queried whether there was a discipline crisis in the SANDF. Lekota denied this.

He said "differences in culture" had made the UN forbid contact with local people. However, it was not an offence for SANDF members to have bona fide relationships in the DRC.

An SA National Defence Force commander was dragged kicking and screaming from a bus and arrested when he insisted on returning to Burundi earlier this week, Beeld newspaper reported on Thursday.

Five military policemen pinned Colonel Andy Ncube to the tarmac and arrested him at the Waterkloof Air Force base in Centurion on Monday.

Ncube was previously relieved of his post as formation commander when he disobeyed orders from his superiors.

Charges against him came to a head three weeks ago. While stationed in Burundi, Ncube refused to send a soldier who had broken his ankle back to South Africa for specialist treatment.

Ncube was ordered back to South Africa to appear before his superiors where he was relieved of his post pending an investigation into the matter.

According to Beeld Ncube refused to accept his suspension, saying he was under the command of the United Nations in Burundi.

Ignoring orders that he was not to return Burundi, he boarded the bus to take him to the plane on Monday. He apparently ignored a general's orders to get off.

Provisional charges, including resisting arrest, were put to him on Monday. An investigation was launched to determine how many charges he will eventually face.

He was released on his own recognisance and has returned to Lohatla military training base in the Northern Cape, where his is a senior staff officer, Beeld reported.

Government today welcomed military action taken by the United Nations and Congolese forces this week against the rebel forces operating in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad said foreign armed groups - including members of the Interahamwe Hutu militia responsible for the genocide in neighbouring Rwanda some years ago - had been "a constant source of destabilisation in eastern Congo".

"For the first time, action is now being taken" against these rebel groups, Mr Pahad said, adding that he hoped they would still "come in" to the peace process in the DRC that is supported by the African Union, the United Nations as well as the United States and neighbouring countries.

The UN news agency IRIN today reported that UN and Congolese troops destroyed five rebel camps on Monday during a joint operation in the Virunga National Park, eastern DRC, citing a military spokesman for the UN mission there.

South Africa currently has 859 troops supporting the UN Mission in the DRC, as well as 28 SANDF members working with the Congo-Kinshasa government to integrate its armed forces - which remains on ongoing and difficult process, journalists heard today.

South African troops appeared not to be part of the action taken on Monday, which IRIN reported involved "some 500 UN peacekeepers from the Indian contingent and 2 000 Congolese army soldiers".

No casualties were reported and the militiamen who came under attack exchanged fire before escaping, according to the IRIN military source.

The operation followed the expiry of the deadline set by the Congolese army for all local and foreign rebel groups - including the Forces democratiques pour la liberation du Rwanda rebel group and the different Congolese Mayi-Mayi militias operating there - to leave the area by October 27.

Mr Pahad said that elections in the DRC, postponed - mostly for logistical reasons - "have to take place next year".

So far, they have been scheduled for March/April 2006.

Preparations for these elections were now at an "advanced stage", Mr Pahad said, but added that "insufficient funding" remained a major obstacle to the successful implementation of the peace process.

Other major obstacles to a more complete resolution of a peace process there were "challenges in the form of safety and security where foreign armed groups mainly from neighbouring Rwanda have infiltrated that part of the country, causing instability among the local population", Mr Pahad said.

And according to the pressure group, International Rescue Committee, civilians in the eastern part of the DRC continue to be terrorised by the rampant brutality of rebel forces operating there, with widespread slaughter, executions, torture, rape and mutilation seemingly common practices.

The war that was at its height from 1998 to 2004 has seen about 3.8 million killed, including from war-induced starvation and disease.

Earlier this week the UN Security Council was reported to have extended the mandate of the UN Mission in Democratic Republic of Congo to 30 September 2006.

The SA National Defence Force has bought or developed a number of missile systems as part of its armaments acquisition programme. It is at the same time selling off large quantities of redundant hardware and has also subscribed to a US computer-based system for predicting conflict and developing arms.

The moves are part of the rearmament programme the SANDF began in 1999, but also seem geared to the overall rationalisation of the force to make it better able to engage on the African continent. This has recently involved more recruiting to compensate for the over-age and often ill personnel currently available.

According to state arms agency Armscor's latest annual report, the accent has been on land- and sea-based missiles. The SA Army's air defence artillery has taken delivery of a batch of British Starstreak portable very short-range air defence systems (Manpads).

The SA navy has begun equipping itself with Exocet missiles - in August the Department of Defence's acquisition division announced the SAS Amatola had some months before tested an Exocet anti-ship missile.

The Exocets were acquired as part of 'Project Sitron', which has already seen South Africa take delivery of four German-built Meko A200SAN patrol corvettes.

According to reports, an initial 17 missiles were acquired, one for testing and the rest to parcel out among the ships. The missile is designed to attack large warships, with a range of about 50km.

The Starstreak acquisition is part of the first phase of a larger ground based air defence systems (GBADS) programme. The first phase comprises one battery of man-portable SAMs and an Thales/Denel radar-based early warning and command system.

The Starstreak is designed to counter threats from very high performance, low flying, aircraft and fast attack helicopters. It is a threat to any aircraft within 300m to 5000m of the launcher.

In November 2002 Armscor announced the cost of the three-year programme was around R797m.

A further phase of the GBADS programme could include a land-based version of the Umkhonto missile and more command-and-control systems.

At the same time SA is reported to one of the clients of the Tactical Numerical Deterministic Model, or TNDM, designed by the Dupuy Institute, a military think-tank based near Washington, DC. The $93,000 purchase price includes instruction classes, a year of technical support and a subscription to the TNDM newsletter, with subsequent updates to the software costing extra.

Sweden is reported to use the software to improve its arsenal and to model weapons that could then be proposed to engineers, according to the Economist magazine.

Most clients contract the Dupuy Institute to produce studies that combine the software's conflict predictions with human analysis.

Clients for weapons

While it has been acquiring new weapons, the SANDF has also been destroying or selling numerous tanks, aircraft and ships in the last year, according to a briefing to the parliamentary defence portfolio committee.

In the main the clients have not been named. In one case 354 Ratel infantry fighting vehicles were sold for R1.1 million. Another 120 could be sold later. One hundred Mk1 35mm GDF anti-aircraft cannon were sold.

Still up for sale are 80 1970s Eland armoured cars, 117 20mm and 32 23mm anti aircraft guns and 24 14.5mm machine guns.

The key difficulties in selling second-hand or new arms on the African continent are the ability of buyers to pay and the willingness, or otherwise of SA's National Conventional Arms Control Committee to approve such sales, say analysts.

The SA Army also donated 450 SA Military (Samil) trucks to Uganda, in addition to selling 837 for R31.9 million and putting another 837 forward for disposal. It has been controversially selling equipment to the Ugandan police for riot control.

In total, the state received just over R183 million from the sale of redundant stock and equipment, including R64,000 for 2,300 parachutes.

Since August 2003 the SANDF has destroyed 14 Olifant Mk1A main battle tanks and 14 Rooikat armoured cars. Fourteen more are up for sale. Also destroyed were two strike craft, the SAS Shaka and SAS Sekukhuni, two Ton-class minesweepers - SAS Kimberley and Windhoek - and the submarine SAS Spear.

The former supply ship SAS Outeniqua was sold as a "going concern" and earned the state R40 million.