By Fifi Rhodes
WALVIS BAY
The coastal town of Walvis Bay and the Namib Desert in particular was the scene on Friday for an operation wherein South African, Namibian and Angolan Special Task Force bomb disposal experts destroyed illegal firearms.
A huge explosion just before noon set the desert trembling with a massive cloud of dust rising 100 metres into the sky. The team used 1 500 kg of explosives for the destruction of more than 14 599 rounds of ammunition, guns, railway detonators, mortar bombs, rockets and anti-tank mines. Amongst the firearms were AK-47s and RPG-7s.
The specialist teams spent nine weeks in northern Namibia and in southern Angola lifting arms caches and collecting arms and ammunition from the communities. The arms and ammunition were gathered at a site in northern Namibia, sorted and loaded onto sponsored Isuzu bakkies where they were transported to Walvis Bay to the destruction site in the desert.
A police helicopter secured the area to make sure that there were no people or animals nearby before the go-ahead was given for the destruction.
Media teams arrived before the destruction in 28 of the latest KB-300 range sponsored Isuzu bakkies driven by media personnel from South Africa and Namibia. Much work was done before the destruction could take place two hours later. When the media were allowed to see the site at the destruction hole police groups were unloading the weapons before “packing” them for destruction.
The packing is a precise and meticulous process and the composition of the stack depends on the type of weapons, their net explosive content and the type of ammunition present.
Assistant Commissioner Mike Fryer, the head of the operation, told New Era that Operation Mandume potentially saved millions of lives. He said he found it most worrying that at least 60% of the weapons recovered were in full working order: “This is a major threat to Namibia and Angola as these weapons are a threat to social stability and human development as they are used to fuel crime and violence, not just in Angola and Namibia, but also in the rest of the southern African region.”
Operation Mandume is an information-driven weapons and ammunition destruction crime-combating operation that has been jointly carried out by the police services of South Africa, Namibia and Angola for the past weeks. A similar operation code-named Operation Rachel was carried out in Mozambique since 1995 and the last destruction of these weapons and ammunition was in October.
General Motors and its product Isuzu have over the years sponsored the cross-border programme to destroy illegal weapons and ammunition in countries in southern Africa, with resources worth N$40 million.
Major General Arno Lamoer of the South African Police said the escalation of crimes such as armed banditry, car hijackings, murder, rape and armed robberies in southern Africa brought the Southern African Development Community countries (SADC) to the signing of an agreement in 1995.
“Weapons used in these violent armed crimes and weapons seized that were moving illegally across borders, were traced back to hidden and abandoned arms caches in Angola and Namibia. Our governments in 1995 were keen to address the problem and did so by the signing of an agreement that would contribute towards the newly found peace, stability, security and prosperity and that would assist countries in combating crime, especially violent firearm-related crimes.
“Out of this agreement Operation Rachel in Mozambique was the first to be born, followed by Operation Mandume some 12 years later.
He said the agreement covers more than just the cooperation on arms destruction.
“It covers the need for cooperation on general crimes and organized crime, but most importantly on the exchange of information on crime and assistance or logistical support whenever it is reasonable, practical and possible.”
Namibia’s Deputy Minister of Safety and Security, Gabes Shihepo, officially witnessed the destruction and said he was concerned about the consequences of the proliferation of small arms and light weapons that the world at large experiences.
“We have noticed unnecessary losses of lives in Angola, DRC, and also in Dafur Region.
“Namibia experiences a high degree of brutality pertaining to passion killings, murders and armed robberies. The police are hard at work to ensure the safety and security of the Namibian people is not compromised,” he said.
Shihepo said the police needs the full cooperation of communities to keep the country safe and secure. He reminded all present of the binding obligations as per SADC Protocol on the control of firearms, ammunition and other related materials.
“Article 10 of this protocol stipulates the disposal of state-owned firearms and disposal of confiscated firearms. State parties to this protocol undertook to identify and adopt effective programmes for the collection, safe storage, destruction and disposal of firearms rendered surplus, redundant or obsolete.”
State parties also undertook to conduct joint operations across their borders in order to locate, seize and destroy caches of firearms, ammunition and other related materials left over after conflicts and civil wars.
From 1995 to 1998 four big Operation Rachels were conducted in the central and southern provinces of Mozambique. Since Mozambique was still littered with landmines, these operations were conducted with heavy landmine-resistant vehicles.
Assistant Commissioner Mike Fryer told New Era that since 1999 a new approach was implemented whereby arms caches were destroyed as soon as they were discovered.
“The multi-disciplinary teams were able to react swiftly on information about arms caches, either by destroying that cache or removing the arms to a police station for safekeeping until they could be destroyed in a big operation.
“One big operation, sometimes more than one depending on the amount of information, is conducted per year. Such an operation is made up of a number of smaller multi-disciplinary units working on information collected over a longer period. This new method soon proved itself to be more cost-effective than in the past and from 1999 to 2004, twenty-three of these operations were conducted over the entire Mozambique as various provinces are now covered in the same operation.”
Twenty-six men and women from SADC countries were also trained to compete in the African operations as part of the task team.