Crackdown on mercenary activity continues

A government crackdown on South Africans involved in mercenary activities outside the country's borders continued on Wednesday with a raid on a suspected recruitment company in Cape Town.

During the raid on the offices of International Intelligence Risk Management, 2,000 names of people "suspected of being in the process of being hired as mercenaries was discovered", Sipho Ngwema, a spokesman for the elite investigations unit, the Scorpions, told IRIN.

Four people were detained but have since been released, he said, and investigations into the company would continue as it was suspected of violating the South African Foreign Military Assistance Act. The act prohibits South Africans and any foreign citizen in the country from providing military assistance abroad without authorisation.

According to Ngwema, the company was thought to be recruiting mercenaries for countries in Africa and "other places".

International Intelligence Risk Management had reportedly won a contract to guard mines in Angola last month, and had also bid on a contract to protect Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe.

South Africa continues to play a leading role in providing trained personnel for hire. Many of the 82 alleged mercenaries arrested in Equatorial Guinea and Zimbabwe earlier this year were former members of elite units of the apartheid-era South African Defence Force.

The men were detained after arriving at Harare International Airport on 7 March from South Africa, and charged with conspiring to carry out a coup in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea with weapons bought in Zimbabwe.

Earlier this year, the Scorpions unit arrested a former defence force pilot for mercenary activity in the west African country of Cote d'Ivoire. The government also forbade its citizens from getting involved in the conflict in Iraq after the death of a South African employed by a security company in Baghdad in January.