Date: Tue, 26 Mar 1996 12:11:22 +0100
To: revs@csf.colorado.edu
From: slein@e1m147.mpibpc.gwdg.de (Stephan Leineweber)
Subject: ZA firms involved in polit. violence?

The following is forwarded from an Internet WWW page of
'Independent Online News Service', South Africa


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Report says security firms are involved in political violence

By Mondli Makhanya, Political Reporter

National body of peace monitors accuses industry of harbouring elements
involved in fomenting conflict and criminal behaviour

The Government must urgently appoint a commission of inquiry into the private
security industry with a view to overhauling and regulating it, says a report
released today.

The "Safety in Security" report commissioned by the Network for Independent
Monitors (NIM) - a national body of peace monitors - accuses the security
industry of harbouring elements involved in fomenting political violence and
criminal behaviour.

Researcher Sarah Blecher said the report would be given to the Ministry of
Safety and Security, the parliamentary safety and security standing committee
and other interested parties, and would be used to lobby for legislation to
regulate the industry.

The report comes just weeks after the ANC called for a similar probe into
security companies. It had accused the security industry of possible
involvement in the recent bugging scandals and in Third Force activity.

Commissioned after the piling up of evidence of the involvement of security
companies in the training and arming of private political armies, the report
describes a security industry that has been deeply immersed in political
violence and criminality in Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal for six years.

Using its own investigations, evidence from the Goldstone Commission, court
cases and media reports, the NIM concludes that private security companies
were instrumental in giving back-up to the Inkatha Freedom Party and
right-wing units involved in violence in the two provinces.

Many of the security companies in operation today, the report alleges, were
formed as front companies for the Department of Military Intelligence and
the security police and were used to fight the former government's opponents.

"It is believed that when the former government pulled the plug on the
funding of such projects, many of the companies had developed a life of
their own. Many of these companies make money from legitimate business
practices aimed at destroying the government and ensuring that no lasting
viable peace process in KwaZulu Natal ever gets off the ground," says the
report.

It calls on the Department of Military Intelligence, the SA National Defence
Force and the SA Police Service to account for all security companies they set
up as fronts, as a way of "cleaning the industry and ridding it of unwanted
elements as well as opening up sinister networks for scrutiny".

It proposes the setting up of an independent body under the Safety and
Security Ministry to regulate the industry, close monitoring of security
companies and their employees, the setting up of a transparent system of
tendering for government contracts, and the drafting of new legislation
governing the granting and use of firearms in the industry.

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 Published in The Star on March 22, 1996

All contents : © 1996. Independent Newspapers. All rights reserved.

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