JOHANNESBURG - South Africa has halted arms sales to Zimbabwe, but has approved weapons sales to Venezuela and is considering similar requests from Syria, says Justice Minister Jeff Radebe. He chairs the National Conventional Arms Control Committee (NCACC), the government arms sales watchdog. Speaking in the National Assembly last week in reply to a question from David Maynier of the opposition DA party, Radebe said that since July, South Africa had decided to halt all pending arms sales to Zimbabwe. Radebe said the decision had nothing to do with pressure from the opposition DA. “For your information, we have not taken any decision to sell arms to Zimbabwe since July because we monitor transactions on a case-to-case basis,” he said. Radebe insisted that the government would not be dictated to by the DA on its arms deals.
“We are guided by our conscience and the constitution and the laws of this country. We cannot be dictated to by the DA who to trade arms with…”
Maynier caused a stir in August when he released documents that revealed that the government had either approved or had arms sales pending to a number of rogue states, including North Korea, Iran, Syria and Zimbabwe.
This elicited an angry response from the ANC, which demanded that he be charged for being in possession of classified arms trade documents, in contravention of the National Conventional Arms Control Act.
An ANC request to National Assembly Speaker, Max Sisulu, that Maynier be axed from the defence committee was not granted, for a lack of grounds. But the Speaker has since suggested that “necessary rules” be developed to prevent MPs from disclosing sensitive information that could harm national security.
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