SA soldiers off to DRC to serve with UN

MORE than 400 South African soldiers were going to the Democratic Republic of Congo to beef up the UN Stabilisation Mission in Congo (Monusco), a senior military official said yesterday.

“We will be deploying three groups. We will be deploying a specialist unit to Kinshasa. An aviation unit will be deployed to Goma and the third group will be an engineers squadron,” Brigadier-General Linda Selepe, who is responsible for SANDF external operations, said.

A farewell parade was held at the mobilisation unit at De Brug, near Bloemfontein.

The deployment is a rotation for the South African soldiers as hundreds on that mission will be returning home.

The soldiers will fly to their destination on UN chartered flights.

Selepe said the use of UN chartered flights was not because of a lack of capacity in the SANDF.

“It is a responsibility of the United Nations to transport members being deployed to external operations. It is not that we don’t have the capacity,” he said.

Parcels

“Even the ones returning home will be brought back by the UN,” he added.

An advance group has already left for the turbulent country.

Yesterday, the SANDF handed “goodwill parcels” to the soldiers heading for duty. Private sector companies have contributed to the parcels through donations.

Soldiers spend a year in the Monusco deployment before being replaced. Individuals could return to South Africa prematurely for a bereavement or other commitments.

In September the SANDF said it was withdrawing around 50 soldiers from the UN mission in the DRC to face court martial.

The soldiers were alleged to have broken curfew in the eastern DRC where they had been stationed.

South Africa has maintained a constant troop presence in the DRC since 1999 when the Second Congo War broke out. – ANA