A report claiming that SA has become embroiled in war-crimes committed against civilians by Saudi Arabian-led coalition forces in the Yemeni civil war has drawn an exasperated response from SA’s troubled arms export industry.
The report, by investigative nonprofit Open Secrets, notes claims that German weapons firm Rheinmetall circumvented an April 2018 ban on arms exports to Saudi Arabia by diverting the sales through its Italian and SA subsidiaries.
It says SA earned R2.6bn from weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and R5.5bn from its coalition partner the United Arab Emirates (UAE) between 2014, when the war began, and 2019. About 20,000 Yemeni civilians were killed in that time.
Compliance with such sales contracts, authorised under the National Conventional Arms Control Committee (NCACC), can be verified by inspections of the end user to ensure they are not selling the weapons to unauthorised third parties or using the arms to commit war crimes.
But defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula admitted to parliament’s joint standing committee on defence last March that democratic SA has only ever conducted one inspection of exported defence equipment.
The report also covers the building by Rheinmetall Denel Munition (RDM) — a joint venture with SA arms manufacturer Denel — of a $240m munitions factory at Al-Kharj in Saudi Arabia. The facility is operated by the Saudis. Among its products is RDM’s 120mm mortar round, which may have been used in an August 2018 Saudi strike on the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah, followed by another on people hurt in the first strike and on medical personnel attending to them.
The two strikes killed at least 60 people and wounded more than 100.
Eight days later, British investigative journalism outfit Bellingcat concluded that "munition fragments appear to share characteristics with munitions manufactured by RDM".
In January 2019, the UN panel of experts on Yemen reported to the Security Council that "the mortar used for that attack had characteristics of those produced either by Rheinmetall in Germany or by its SA subsidiary ... which reportedly also produces mortar shells in a factory in Saudi Arabia".
Open Secrets researcher Michael Marchant tells the FM it is exceptionally difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the provenance of the remnants of exploded munitions. But he says that while this might not be enough to establish a criminal case, the real question was whether SA was being used as a sanctions-buster.
A senior RDM insider says the company is unable to comment on sales between sovereign states because of client confidentiality and national security.
Complicating matters is that, because the Al-Kharj factory is Saudi-operated, its weapons output and usage are considered Saudi, not South African, says veteran defence analyst Helmoed-Römer Heitman.
The DA’s defence spokesperson, Kobus Marais, argues in a similar vein that because Rheinmetall is the 51% shareholder in RDM, it would seem that, "as a majority foreign-owned company, [the company] falls into a different category of compliance and checks and balances".
That said, it is irrational for the NCACC to "wash its hands" of what happens after a sale has been made, he says.
Marais adds that it doesn’t just have to wait for an official complaint; its members can "apply their minds and read international reports" on where clients may be in breach of contract.
But NCACC secretariat head Ezra Jele tells the FM "the cabinet committee that takes the decisions takes their jobs seriously and acts within the law". It is subject to parliamentary scrutiny and reports annually to the UN via SA’s representative there.
Sandile Ndlovu, acting executive director of the Aerospace, Maritime & Defence Industries Association, says there was a period during which the industry was prohibited from selling to Saudi Arabia and the UAE "while our government was satisfying itself that we were not exporting in contravention of international law".
However, he says, "once we have permission to export, they then hold that country responsible. So what happens to our product beyond the point of exporting, the SA industry cannot be held responsible for that."
Jele says due to sovereignty, there is no statutory provision to authorise surprise inspections of end users.
"Inspections are conducted only if there is … a doubt that something occurred correctly," he says.
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