Johannesburg — HALF of SA's arms exports in the past decade went to 58 countries that failed to meet at least one of the criteria required by the National Conventional Arms Control Act, lobby group Ceasefire Campaign said yesterday.

Of these, sales worth R13,2bn, or about 60%, comprised "sensitive weapons" such as antitank missiles.

India tops this category of buyers, with purchases of R3,2bn between 2000 and last year, followed by the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Colombia and Saudi Arabia.

Over this period SA's arms industry exported arms worth R26,1bn, with the US, Britain, Sweden, Germany and Spain among the top buyers that met the criteria set by the National Conventional Arms Control Committee.

Ceasefire's figures had no listing of sales to Iran, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and Myanmar.

South African law forbids the export of arms to human rights violators, including countries involved in a regional conflict and those subject to a United Nations (UN) embargo.

Details of South African arms exports are a closely guarded secret, overseen by the committee, which reports to Parliament.

But Ceasefire blamed Parliament's portfolio committee on defence for failing to get accountability from the committee, chaired by Justice Minister Jeff Radebe.

"It is evident that a culture of secrecy, or at least bureaucratic resistance to transparency, reigns within the offices of the committee," Dr Rob Thomson, a member of Ceasefire's steering committee, said yesterday.

Along with the South African History Archive, Ceasefire failed to get information through the normal channels as far back as 2006 but pieced together sales details from the records of the committee, the UN, state arms manufacturer Denel and the Bonn International Centre for Conversion.

Dr Thomson said while SA had not broken any international embargoes, it did not follow the law requiring it to take account of the accepted international practice of restricting sales to countries with questionable human rights records.

"Each of these criteria is there for a good reason, so either we are fuelling local conflict, systematic human rights abuses or skewed government expenditure," he said.

However, SA's arms industry could not compete with more established exporters like the US, and therefore could not be too picky about clients, said Dr Thomson. "The only countries we can sell to are those nobody else wants to export to."

Ceasefire's figures show SA exported arms to African countries including Angola, Cameroon, Chad, Libya, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.

Dr Thomson dismissed the common justification that an arms industry allowed a country to manufacture its own weapons in the event of a war, saying this only applied to pariah states like apartheid SA and Israel.

He said while some sales - such as to China, India and Brazil - could be justified on political grounds, these three countries should not have received South African arms due to their human rights records.