A South African pacifist organisation has called on the new government of President Jacob Zuma to ratify a treaty banning cluster munitions. Former Defence Minister Charles Nqakula said the country would ratify the treaty, but only after the elections.
Independent Online reports the Ceasefire Campaign’s Kennedy Mabasa demanded the government not only sign the treaty, but also ratify it, thus making it the law of the land. Mabasa said:
South Africa signed the convention to ban cluster munitions in December. We will hold them to their promise.
Earlier, South Africa shocked other African countries by its stance on cluster munitions. After standing against the use of land mines, the country reversed its position on a very similar weapon at a meeting of African countries in Livingstone, Zambia. Of the 39 African countries attending the meeting, only South Africa opposed a blanket ban on these weapons.
Cluster munitions are dropped from aircraft or fired from cannons and disperse smaller ”bomblets” or grenades over a wide area. When deployed against close concentrations of enemy troops, or against military targets like airfields, cluster munitions can be very effective. The reason for the call to ban them is that, similarly to landmines, many do not go off and can later kill or maim civilians.
The Journal of Mine Action says that during the Vietnam War, from 1964 to 1973, between two and three million tons of bombs were dropped over Laos, much of which was cluster munitions. Unfortunately, the bomblets continued taking their toll, with at least 100 people injured or killed in Laos alone as late as 2004, with the figure doubling in 2005.
South Africa is a signatory to the Oslo Declaration of 2007 that is aimed at ridding the planet of deadly munitions like landmines and cluster munitions that have killed civilians in dozens of war-torn countries such as Iraq, Bosnia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola.
South Africa had objected to the wording of the Livingstone Declaration, because it claimed not all cluster munitions caused harm to civilians because some types of cluster munitions had a 98 percent reliability rate. Noel Stott of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) arms control and disarmament programme said:
South Africa’s position has always been more cautious than the rest of Africa, although it is part of the Oslo process.
Coordinator of the Cluster Munitions Convention (CMC), Thomas Nash, says such percentages are unrealistic:
This is an absolutely untenable position. A treaty cannot be based on something as random as a percentage failure rate. Who decides that rate? How do you test it? It cannot work in an international treaty.
Observers say the real reason for the South African government’s hesitation is the profit from cluster munitions made by Denel, the country’s biggest arms manufacturer. There are now only two countries that make and stockpile cluster bombs in Africa: South Africa and Egypt. Stott of the ISS suggests:
It is feasible that this is an economics argument for South Africa. We know Denel’s been struggling over the years and this could be another product that is being taken away that they could make money off.
The South African Government has so far not responded publicly to the Ceasefire Campaign.
