Introduction

All weapons are seldom if ever collected at the end of an armed struggle. The conditions of insecurity that prevail in countries in transition (which are either entering the final stages of a collapsed state or are emerging from anarchy and war) are fertile ground for the maintenance and acquisition of light weapons and small arms by the community at large. Physical security and/or primacy, and economic needs are the fuel that keeps the trade in small arms moving. This trade, for the first time in history, does not require a new influx of weapons to be destabilising, depending instead on the constant movement of massive existing stocks in ever widening circles of distribution.

Thus, in countries which are moving in a downwards spiral towards anarchy or have already failed, the weak, the strong, and the corrupt have a common need to possess arms to ensure their self-defence, maintain an advantage, or exploit a situation. In addition, in nation-states emerging from conflict, the ownership of weapons not only has a security and primacy motivation, but also one based on economic imperatives. Impoverished groups of people, insecure about their own potential for economic development and survival, utilise weapons as if they were cheque books: robbing to cover basic needs, and/or exchanging guns for money or goods (as in Mozambique).

It is in this light that the problem of small arms proliferation in Africa must be considered, and why an initial examination of one subregion, in particular — Southern Africa — might be of importance in putting the whole into perspective. Southern Africa provides a good example of how weapons can spread through an area, and their negative impact on the communities of the subregion.

Arms Availability in Southern Africa

There is no accurate measure of the number of weapons circulating in Southern Africa. In Mozambique alone, estimates of weapons imported during the civil war range from 0,5 million to six million. During the United Nations peacekeeping operation (ONUMOZ, 1993-1995), nearly 190 000 weapons were collected. However, most of these weapons were not destroyed and soon found their way back to the streets of Maputo or into neighbouring states. In addition to the 4,1 million firearms licensed to civilians in South Africa (i.e. excluding weapons in the possession of the security forces), estimates of illegal weapons in circulation range from 400 000 to eight million.

In Angola, it is virtually impossible to estimate the number of available weapons. It was reported that, in 1992, 700 000 weapons were distributed to civilians by the government following the resumption of fierce fighting. During the demobilisation component of the most recent UN peacekeeping operation (UNAVEM III), only 34 425 weapons were collected, many of which were old and unserviceable. Combined with the small number of police and soldiers who have been demobilised, this indicated that most weapons and soldiers were kept apart from the now broken peace process. Should peace ever be established — and if the example set by Mozambique remains true for Angola — and people get rid of their weapons either through necessity or need, the impact on countries in the region could be at least as severe as it has been in Mozambique. Furthermore, apart from the arms stockpiled during the seventies and eighties, Angola continues to receive weapons regularly since 1992. The United States, Russia and Portugal have supplied arms and other military equipment to the Angolan government. Although sanctions to cut off UNITA’s supplies were introduced on 1 October 1997, Savimbi has been able to find alternative routes of supply.1 Without a doubt, the continued availability of small arms in the Angolan conflict has led to the resumption of the civil war in the country. The same principle fuelled the eruption of war in 1992.

In South Africa, the years since 1994 have seen an upsurge in the number of illegal and legal weapons in circulation. An average of 20 000 firearm licence applications were received each month in the period from January to March 1996, of which approximately 85 per cent were approved. South Africa also has an extremely high rate of lost and stolen firearms. According to the South African Minister for Safety and Security, an estimated 30 000 stolen licensed firearms enter the illegal market each year. In addition to these are the approximately 8 500 weapons lost or stolen annually from the police and defence force. The presence of these illegal weapons in the hands of criminals has prompted South Africans to arm themselves, causing an alarming increase in firearms available in the country which "... may have profound implications for the stability of the Republic."

In Zimbabwe, the disarmament process that took place at independence was described as protracted. Thus, the concealment of weapons was "... justified as a precaution, in the event of the independence process being sabotaged or manipulated by Rhodesian forces."2 In the post-independence period, however, an influx of weapons from Mozambique, South Africa and Botswana has been reported. Peace in Mozambique and the end of apartheid in South Africa brought peace dividends to Zimbabwe by way of reduced arms inflows.3 However, the country’s current involvement in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo may steer further arms into the country.

In Namibia, while demobilisation and reintegration were relatively successful, the close proximity to Angola, Zambia, Botswana and South Africa makes the country a potential growth point for arms proliferation. This statement also holds true for Swaziland which, while initially serving as a transit point, has acquired a proliferation dynamics of its own.4

For some time the major source of light weapons in Zambia were arms caches left by various liberation movements. But currently, given its long land borders, Zambia is increasingly becoming a transit country for arms. However, these arms fuel internal crime and political unrest while in transit.

Hence, the obvious conclusion: as long as available arms continue to proliferate in the region, peace, real stability and development will continue to be kept hostage by these arms.

The circulation of small arms in the region

The movement of small arms in the region can be examined from two different perspectives: intrastate and interstate movements. The intrastate movement of small arms is characterised by the way in which weapons change hands from legal to illegal possession, on the one hand, and among illegal owners, on the other hand. The interstate movement refers to the cross-border movement of arms which takes place legally and/or illegally.

Internally, there are two ways in which arms move from legal to illegal owners. Corrupt police and army officers deliberately rent or sell their assigned weapons to criminals, and weapons are stolen or lost from official armouries or from legal licence holders. As pointed out above, estimates indicate that about 30 000 weapons stolen from individual legal owners, and 8 500 lost or stolen from the police and defence force, enter the criminal market annually in South Africa.5 In Mozambique, 12 000 weapons were reported stolen in 1994 alone.6 There are reports of security agents being involved in criminal activities where arms that were officially issued, are temporarily used illegally.

The internal circulation of weapons is further aggravated by:

increasing crime and the lack of effective policing which, in turn, is partly caused by the transition process itself;



the rise of private security companies using weapons; and



demobilisation and disarmament in situations where mechanisms for reintegration of demobilised soldiers on the one hand, and control and regulations of arms and military skills, on the other, are inadequate.

Apart from exceptional cases such as Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola supplying arms to the DRC government to fulfil the needs emerging from the conflict in the country, there are no major legal transfers of weapons between Southern African countries. The cross-border movement of illegal weapons, however, is quite commonplace. Cross-border arms trafficking is broadly facilitated, on the one hand, by the existence of increasingly well organised transnational criminal organisations and, on the other hand, the existence of well established covert arms supply networks across the region.

Indeed, one interesting phenomenon of cross-border arms trafficking is that the networks and routes utilised by organised criminal organisations which trade in weapons, seem to resemble old pipelines of illegal trade.

Being unable to operate within their respective countries, liberation movements across the region devised mechanisms to procure arms supplies. They established regional supply structures through covert networks for the common cause of fighting colonialism and minority regimes. These networks operated between liberation movements themselves, and between these movements and their primary suppliers outside the region. After independence in the early 1960s, Zambia, Tanzania, Malawi and, in the late 1970s, Angola and Mozambique hosted the remaining liberation movements in their territories, from where the activities of these networks were further promoted.



As an antitheses to this development, colonial and minority regimes, and later one-party states that were subject to increasing international isolation, had no other way but to establish their own covert networks. Arms covert networks involving secondary and tertiary dealers that had linkages between themselves and between them and their suppliers elsewhere, were put in place to circumvent international sanctions.7 For example, the IISS Military Balance 1974-1975, quoted by Nkiwane, states that

"There are no known formal agreements between the white minority territories of Southern Africa, but the links exist in practice. Periodical meetings on common security matters have taken place between the defence authorities of South Africa, Rhodesia and Portugal: there are hot pursuit agreements relating to certain frontier areas ..."8



The old African smuggling routes for prohibited goods have been reinforced by the human relationships that have been forged through large population movements steered by the war. In other words, refugees crossed the borders to neighbouring countries during the wars. Most of them may have remained in the host countries for more than five years. Under such circumstances, they established relationships with the local population and gained valuable knowledge of the society as a whole. Once back in their home country, these relationships have made it easy for them to use their networks and knowledge for both legal and illegal deals. To this end, the traditional supply networks of prohibited goods have been ‘resurrected’.

Thus, the connections between old networks are clearly being used for new small arms trafficking. On the one hand, when Cold War proxy conflicts ended and minority regimes were defeated, these covert arms supply networks were already in place. On the other hand, the end of these conflicts had altered the strategic and the security environment. Security needs were scaled down and the focus of security policy shifted. As a result, the security apparatus had to be downsized and restructured. Demobilisation, rationalisation and disarmament have been common features of the political discourse in Mozambique, South Africa, Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia, to mention but a few examples. As a result of these processes, both the soldier being demobilised and his weapon became redundant.

The movement of arms has also been fuelled by ineffective demobilisation and reintegration processes and a lack of economic alternatives for some key communities that were involved in former security organisations. When retrenchment of large numbers of demobilised soldiers took place in an unstable environment, "... frustrations at the slow pace of transitions prompted some of those who had learned little during the conflict but the use of arms [to] occasionally [employ] this dangerous skill or the availability of weapons to earn themselves a living."9 Thus, disaffected sectors of both former liberation and rebel movements and security agents of colonial and minority regimes are currently running arms smuggling operations for commercial and criminal objectives. For example, among the prominent South Africans suppliers to UNITA are Portuguese-speaking businessmen10 with interests in Mozambique and South Africa who are certainly involved in supplying arms to rebel movements after the independence of Mozambique and Angola. By similar considerations, the Zambian government is unable to stop existing arms supply operations to UNITA. Meek has indicated that "... arms smuggling routes from Mozambique through Swaziland are generally those used by Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) and Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA) cadres during internal conflict in South Africa."11 There is no doubt that the networks smuggling arms from Mozambique into South Africa include former South African Defence Force officers, ANC cadres, demobilised RENAMO guerrillas, FRELIMO soldiers, hunters aiming at getting rich quickly, and very likely former refugees. The controversial arrest of a senior South African Foreign Affairs official in Mozambique on charges of arms smuggling in 1998, is a strong suggestion of involvement by a variety of players.12

The knowledge and political and social connections that sustain these networks are well rooted, as the new, often understaffed and underresourced security agencies13 are unable to effectively trace such trade in arms. By the same token, research has struggled to trace arms smuggling routes. However, it is certain that weapons following old routes move freely throughout the region. Whenever a conflict erupts in the region, weapons will certainly reach such a new destination in a matter of days without any problems whatsoever.

Irrespective of the patterns of circulation, the real problem with the increased availability of small arms in Southern Africa is not so much the actual trade itself or the movement of weapons to conflict areas, although this is particularly grievous to regional stability in Southern Africa. The more pervasive and long-term damage generated by the availability of weapons in the region manifests itself in terms of their impact in the creation and maintaining of a culture of violence among rural and urban communities in Southern Africa.

This is an important element when considering the reasons and need for proposing an international code of conduct for the control of trafficking in light weapons. In analysing the effects of the increased availability of unregulated and uncontrolled light weapons on society, it is clear that the influx of guns can change the value systems of individuals and societies, making them more — not less — insecure, as well as more violent. Thus, from a humanitarian point of view, it is in everybody’s interest to connect light weapons with violence for, if weapons are left uncontrolled, the negative impact of their presence in societies will continue to produce intolerance, abuse and death.

In short, two points need to be made clear. It is important to understand that the movement of small arms in Southern Africa is fuelled by different motives on both the supply and demand sides. For this same reason and taking into account the complexity of the issue in respect to the dynamics of the movements, visually different categories of roles should and can be constructed for members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) with regard to the circulation of small arms. This can promote the potential to control arms at regional level. The categories that can be entertained, are as follows:

countries where weapons originate (although they may not be producers): South Africa, Mozambique and Angola;



countries through which weapons mainly transit: Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Swaziland; and



end-user countries: mainly Angola, South Africa and the DRC.

The problems associated with each category must be seen in their own light and control measures that primarily affect the supply of weapons across borders could specifically be tackled with reference to each group of countries. However, for programmes that can actually lead to the reduction in the demand for small arms, a different approach needs to be taken which have more to do with policing, development and education than with regional control mechanisms.

The linkage of despair, violence and intolerance to the increased availability of light weapons is becoming more apparent in the daily lives of entire populations. If other connections, such as those between organised crime and guns, and between international relief organisations and guns,14 are also taken into account, the international community would have no choice but to accept that the control and regulation of light weapons are of equal — if not greater — importance than control over arms of other kinds.

Regional Control Potential

Despite its infancy and structural problems, the Southern African community of countries has the potential to control illicit small arms trafficking and to reduce existing stockpiles of weapons. This potential is manifest in the fact that:

most of the countries in the region genuinely desire peace and development, having seen the disruptive effect of conflict in their territories: Namibia, Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Swaziland are examples;



a subregional structure already exists in the body of SADC that provides a forum for high level discussions of common concerns;



there are reasonably efficient existing ad hoc organisations through which small arms issues could be co-ordinated among member states, while they finalise the strategies and vehicles for long-term control of this issue, i.e. the Southern African Regional Police Chiefs Co-operation Organisation (SARPCCO); and



some countries in the region have already decided to prioritise policies related to the control of crime, violence and weapons availability in their own national strategies — South Africa and Mozambique.

With the growing willingness to co-operate on these issues, and with some structures for consultation already in place, the Southern African community has an advantage over other subregions in Africa in terms of the control of illicit small arms trafficking. The big question is how to go about to make the existing structures operational and effective, not only in the short term, but also in the long term. On the negative side, there is as yet no agreement in the region on each member state’s responsibility towards the control of illicit small arms trafficking, and there is as yet no regional thinking on this issue. This will eventually be established. The process, nevertheless, can be accelerated if ongoing international and extraregional initiatives such as those of the UN, the Organization of American States (OAS), the European Union (EU) and, eventually, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) undertake to share their experiences and responsibilities — co-ordinating their efforts to fit broad objectives as guideline generators, implementers or assistants to other ongoing processes. Moves in the right direction have emerged during 1998, leading not only to an increased willingness of the OAU to take on a leadership role on the continent (as seen in the dissemination of a series of newsletters on the problem of small arms proliferation, and by the report that its Secretary General has been mandated to become involved at the 1999 summit in Algiers), but also to an increased interest in reinforcing and strengthening SARPCCO as a mechanism for action in controlling and reducing illicit small arms. By the same token, countries such as South Africa have reinforced their own initiatives in this direction, leading the way with initiatives to destroy rather than sell surplus weapons in their national armouries and encouraging the discussions within SARPCCO to generate a regional convention similar to the one signed by the OAS on the control of illicit weapons.

If this co-operative and co-ordinated approach to small arms is adopted by the countries concerned, everyone will have the opportunity to benefit from others’ experiences. Each region will have something to teach the other, and controls will become a reality which might stand a chance to reduce this global scourge successfully in the future. In this context, the lessons accrued from successive Rachel operations become vital to any regional initiatives that might develop further in Southern Africa and — indeed — in Africa as a whole.