Cape Town — SA's arms trade watchdog, the National Conventional Arms Control Committee (NCACC), has not met in more than a year but in that time there have been weapons transfers to some of the least-free nations in the world, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said yesterday.
DA defence spokesman David Maynier said some of the sales had been approved by officials in the NCACC or by a committee that was not properly constituted, rendering them legally suspect. Among the recipients of weapons in the past 13 months have been Syria, Libya, Iran and North Korea, with deals pending for Zimbabwe and Syria.
Maynier also pointed out that the NCACC was required to supply quarterly and annual reports on weapons transfers to Parliament and that the reports for the past four years had still not been released. Last August a delegation from the NCACC called for the reporting requirements to be scrapped and for certain transactions to be kept secret. This did not find favour with Parliament's defence committee nor civil society representatives, who charged that the NCACC was in contempt of Parliament for not reporting.
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Maynier also said that the failure of the committee to operate was affecting the arms industry in SA, with contracts worth millions being put on hold. President Jacob Zuma appointed the new NCACC last week under the chairmanship of Justice Minister Jeff Radebe .
"There is a crisis at the NCACC which has resulted in a massive backlog of permits awaiting assessment with contracts worth billions of rands in the arms industry now on hold, and several dodgy deals appear to have slipped through the cracks after the last meeting of the NCACC in May-June 2008," Maynier said.
"The dodgy deals that have been 'authorised' by the NCACC include: selling glide bombs that could be used to deliver nuclear, chemical and biological weapons to Libya; selling multiple grenade launchers to Libya; selling multiple grenade launchers to Syria; and selling thousands of multiple grenade launchers and upgraded assault rifles to Venezuela."
Attempts to reach government spokesmen were unsuccessful.
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Every major western country is trying to sell arms to Libya why should south africa play the moral high ground.
hey,man!what`s the big deal here bcause apartheid sold weapons of mass destruction from koeberg nuclear station and it manufactured weapons to kill black people with its uncalled for wars in africa.
mugabe face a real war threat and he has every right to arm himself to defend his sovereignty against the consternation of threatsfrom external and internal dark evil forces.when your national party government was budgetting billions every year to go fight in angola you never raise an eyebrow and happily paying taxes for such mission to which today there`s nothing to put on the table to show the results of such stupid mission.