Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

The commander, or regimental sergeant major, of an “amabutho academy”, now closed by police and prosecuting authorities, got word to the Sunday Tribune last week that he wanted “to speak from the heart”.

“Use his code name, Mkhulu, Mkhulu Hlongwane,” the Tribune was advised, “and buy him a pack of cigarettes – LD red.” We used this name, Mkhulu, meaning grandfather, in seeking clearance at Eshowe Police Station.

“What’s your real name, Mkhulu?” we asked.

“Moses Bheki Nkosi . . . I was with 121 Battalion,” he said, referring to his military service in the South African Defence Force in the apartheid era. I was a platoon sergeant. I left the army in 1997 because of non-integration. I took a package.”

Nkosi, if that is his real name, is now among 352 “soldiers” charged with forming an unlawful paramilitary organisation at the Mlaba camp outside Ulundi.

The site was once the training ground for IFP “self-protection units” (SPUs) during violent conflict with the ANC- aligned “self-defence units” in the late 80s and early 90s.

With the 2009 national elections looming, the allegation that former IFP SPU members have again been receiving paramilitary training at the camp sparked a police raid and arrests of “soldiers” organised under the banner of South African Unintegrated Forces (SAUIF).

Nkosi said this camp, the “amabutho academy”, had been set up to cater for soldiers like him sidelined in the formation of the South African National Defence Force, and “everyone” who had once served in the IFP’s SPUs and former KwaZulu Police.

He said this was to help integrate these “troops” into the SANDF, which had not happened after the 1994 elections.

He said that after the SAUIF had been established at a meeting with the IFP leadership in Macambini on KZN’s North Coast in 2003, base camps had been established for people to “wait for integration”.

Threat

These bases included Macambini, Jabulani Hostel in Soweto, Mkhuze near Mozambique, Eshowe and, more recently, the Mlaba camp outside Ulundi.

But exactly who are these “soldiers”? Whose instructions do they follow? Where do they come from? Do they pose a threat to national security? Is there subversive intent behind their training and, if so, why had police not acted earlier?

We set out to answer these questions as KwaZulu-Natal head of SAPS criminal investigations, Director Solly Vezi, appointed a senior task team to the case last week.

The Tribune discovered the bush “boot camp” had been the talk of Ulundi since about April last year.

That was when hordes of so-called SAUIF “troops” started arriving, seeking refuge and, seemingly, also patronage from IFP senior leaders.

The road leading to the camp then was reportedly barely a visible track. Today it’s a well-used road, running along the western boundary of Hluhluwe-uMfolozi Game Reserve, leading to an expansive parade ground, complete with flagpoles and an SAUIF emblem engraved in the ground with stone, alongside the words, “We do or die for the truth”.

Beyond that lies the wreckage of the SAUIF “barracks” – old, disused stone buildings surrounded by what appear to have been makeshift tents, cruder than those in the poorest of informal settlements.

The camp, now destroyed, appeared to have been neatly maintained, regularly swept and, according to a guard register, entry was monitored 24 hours a day.

What went on at this bush camp is detailed in documentation found littered about the burnt ruins, complete with the contact numbers of many SAUIF trainees, girlfriends, relatives and friends.

Analysis of it gives insight into the kind of simplistic and bizarre training that has taken place, with recruits using crudely carved R4 rifles.

Take these SAUIF lecture notes, “Fire unit: any number of a man (sic) firing under the control or command of one man, eg section commander. Fire direction order: Fire unit commander receives orders from his superior. May include: a) key range b) special order to fire c) when to open fire d) at what target e) at what rate.”

Documentation shows that many of the trainees were in their early 20s – too young to have had formal military experience in the 80s and early 90s. Equally disturbing is the apparent xenophobic nature of the military-style indoctrination that has taken place. While “communists” were identified as enemy number one by the old SADF, instructors of the “unintegrated forces” at the Mlaba camp appear to have selected illegal immigrants as one of their prime targets.

Could such “forces” have been involved in the recent wave of xenophobic violence that engulfed South Africa?

“No, no, no,” said Nkosi.

He said the camp’s lessons about roadblocks – “to stop the infiltration of illegal immigrants”, as recorded in the SAUIF lecture notes – were part of many things that soldiers needed to learn.

Regarding the age of the troops, Nkosi said that during apartheid “kids as young as 12 were fighting”.

He said allegations that some of the younger recruits had been held against their will – effectively abducted and unable to contact their families, as violence monitor Mary de Haas recently reported – were not true.

“Yes,” Nkosi said, phones were confiscated, as would happen under any military regime, and “because sometimes people can say things when they don’t understand what is going on – like this thing about paramilitary training”.

Leaders

Nkosi said senior IFP leaders had been aware the SAUIF training camp existed, but had not directly supported it.

“Some of the politicians are now saying they did not know the camp was there. They are lying. This is stupid. They just don’t want to say it’s their children who are there,” he said.

He said the SAUIF would try to raise bail for all troops arrested at the Mlaba camp. But after two weeks’ incarceration at police cells across KwaZulu-Natal, many of the accused were still in custody this week, their families unable to afford bail of R300.

Nkosi appealed to the public to assist these “soldiers” who, he said, had lost “everything they owned” when police raided the camp and allegedly set fire to the place afterwards.

“And here police are not giving us blankets. We are sleeping on the concrete floor. One senior policemen said we must call Gatsha (IFP president Mangosuthu Buthelezi) for help,” said Nkosi.

On Monday Nkosi was denied bail, along with seven others considered a flight risk.

This follows disclosures to the Sunday Tribune that key SAUIF members arrested at the camp had absconded during logistical preparations for last week’s court appearance, held in the open air outside Mahlabathini Magistrate’s Court.

“The commander said those who have a code name should abscond. I am one of those,” said a former amabutho camp member, who facilitated the interview with Nkosi.

How many others absconded?

“I cannot tell you that yet.”

Vezi said police were unaware of any suspects at the Mlaba camp having absconded from last week’s mass court appearance.