South Africa would arm peacekeepers

Any South African soldiers deployed as part of the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC) would be armed, South African National Defence Force’s (SANDF’s) General Siphiwe Nyanda told a seminar in Pretoria on Tuesday. “There is no way we can deploy our people without a protection element,” the South African News Agency (SAPA) quoted him as saying. In June, the South African cabinet approved the participation of 165 specialised SANDF members in MONUC, stating that “none of them were to take arms”. The SANDF since expressed its concern about the safety of those personnel, a feeling that was echoed by members of the parliamentary committee on defence, SAPA noted. The DRC government has objected to the deployment of South African specialist units, and none have been deployed so far by MONUC.

According to Nyanda, the belligerents themselves would be responsible for policing the peace in the DRC, even if peacekeepers were sent in. “Without this we won’t succeed even if we increase our force tenfold,” he said, adding that the Congo was too vast and the conflict too complex. “If the belligerents comply, there will be no need for more people. But if there was a flare-up of violence, the members of the peace support mission would have to pack up and leave,” he said. Nyanda said that DRC President Laurent-Desire Kabila’s decision that South Africans would not be welcome as part of the peace force would make it “very difficult for MONUC to be effective, as South Africa was the key to its success”. Nyanda said his country had tried, “almost to the point of ridiculousness”, to remain neutral in the conflict. “The people there have already fought themselves to a standstill. We have to help them,” he added.