South Africa to Leash 'Dogs of War'

JOHANNESBURG -- To the chagrin of South Africa's two-year-old government, former soldiers who once staffed some of the apartheid era's most controversial military and intelligence units are selling their skills to the rest of Africa and beyond.


South African President Nelson Mandela's struggle for black-majority rule was thwarted for decades by military and intelligence tactics used by some of the very men who, now mercenaries, are cropping up in conflicts around the continent. Some are former spies and commandos of white-minority rule who helped carry out domestic repression of blacks and military attacks on neighboring countries that supported Mandela's African National Congress.


Now, with these soldiers organized in a corporate structure and hiring themselves out to the highest bidder, Pretoria tends to see them as rogue military elements whose activities are an embarrassment and must be curtailed from destabilizing African countries.


Former South African special forces officers operating under a firm called Executive Outcomes helped the Angolan government of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos win a war against a tenacious rebel force.


The Angolan government announced earlier this year -- under pressure from Washington -- that it has terminated its contract with what it called South African military trainers. But they remain a visible presence in parts, providing security at government oil drilling and diamond mining installations and, UN peacekeepers say, stoking hostilities.


Eeben Barlow, general manager of Executive Outcomes, said his company's services are in great demand. Four other African governments have approached the firm, he added, and operations outside the continent could be imminent.


When white-ruled South Africa fought the dos Santos government, Barlow was an officer in the South African army's 32 Battalion, which consisted largely of Angolans opposed to dos Santos.


Barlow also was an agent of its Civil Cooperation Bureau, which carried out covert operations in the name of apartheid. Critics of Executive Outcomes say it uses the same technique to hide illegal activity ranging from gun deals to diamond mining -- all of which Barlow denies. Executive Outcomes is the best known and apparently largest firm here offering overt and covert security services. The firm claims it provided only military training and logistics support in Angola. However, some accounts say its men took a fighting role. Executive Outcomes says it works only for legitimate governments -- and for big money. Its Angola contract has been estimated at $20 million to $100 million a year.


But now South Africa is taking a hard line on what some call the "dogs of war.'' The departments of Justice, Foreign Affairs and Defense have agreed to submit legislation to Parliament that would make outlaw such firms.


"The fact is that we have brought stability into Angola through the training of [its armed forces]," Barlow said in a recent interview. "We have helped bring stability to Sierra Leone. We have employed a large number of people who were not employed ... taken them out of circulation in terms of them not posing a threat.''


?Gunmen massacred 11 people, one a babe in arms, in a political attack in South Africa's bloodsoaked Zulu heartland, hours after a visit to the troubled province by President Nelson Mandela, police said Friday.


Police said the child died after its mother was shot dead by the gunmen who attacked two homesteads Thursday night, killing another six women and three men.


The massacre took place after Mandela told meetings in the KwaZulu-Natal province, ruled by his ANC's main political rival, that blacks were still slaughtering one another there.











Police said the attack on a settlement near the KwaZulu-Natal town of Donnybrook was politically-motivated.


"All those killed were ANC supporters," said a police captain.