SA to resume supplying arms to Saudi Arabia, UAE
Foreign customers to allow SA officials to inspect their facilities to verify that weapons were not being transferred to third parties
At the end of 2019, a Swedish think-tank released data showing sales of arms and military services by the sector’s 100 biggest companies totalled $420bn (R6.2-trillion) in 2018.
War is big business.
SA has always understood this, but now questions are being asked about just how far the country is willing to go to make a quick buck. Or a billion, to be more precise.
Earlier in February, Reuters confirmed that the National Conventional Arms Control Committee (NCACC) had amended a clause in the export document requiring foreign customers to allow SA officials to inspect their facilities to verify that weapons were not being transferred to third parties.
The clause was not to the liking of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which are engaged in a war in Yemen, because they viewed it as a violation of their sovereignty.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE have led a coalition of states in Yemen against Houthi forces which, in alliance with former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, took over Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in September 2014.
An investigation by Amnesty International published in February 2019 linked SA to the sale of arms to the UAE, which were then diverted to militias accused of war crimes in Yemen.
In November, under increasing pressure from humanitarian lobby groups, SA temporarily stopped arms sales to several countries, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which until that point bought a third of the country’s arms.
That suspension now appears to have given way.
Ezra Jele, the head of the secretariat of the NCACC, told Reuters: “I can confirm that the amendment of the end-user certificate was approved by the NCACC recently.”
The amendment must now be published in the government gazette.
The new clause states “on-site verification of the controlled items may be performed, through diplomatic process”.
Essentially it means that exports to these nations can resume.
Arms deal activist and author Terry CrawfordBrowne was unequivocal in his response to the Dispatch on the amendment.
“The bottom line is that lives don’t matter,” he said.
“Defenceweb in April 2016 reported that President Jacob Zuma and then deputy crown prince Mohammed Salman had jointly opened a munitions factory in Saudi Arabia built by Rheinmetall Denel Munitions, which was paid $240m (R3.6bn) for its services.”
Crawford-Brown is firmly of the belief that parliament became one of the first victims of state capture for the manner in which the arms deal was handled.