South Africa’s $5-Billion Plan to Buy Arms Comes Under Fire

In a classic guns-vs.-butter dilemma, the government of President Nelson Mandela is negotiating to buy $5 billion in European military equipment, even though more than a third of South Africans still do not have access to electricity or safe water and millions live in shantytowns.

The government says the purchase of state-of-the-art jet fighters, helicopters, submarines and warships from four European countries is essential to keeping the South African National Defense Force in a state of preparedness.

“This decision has sent out an enormous message that we can back up our talk,” Deputy Defense Minister Ronnie Kasrils said at a recent news conference here.

Critics, including some within the ruling African National Congress, say the country cannot afford huge arms purchases when so many ills of apartheid have not been addressed. Some fear that the deals could lead to a regional arms race, while others say they perpetuate the apartheid-era military machine that was so despised across Africa.

“It is most extraordinary that the government says to us, ‘You mustn’t expect First World health care or education because we are not a First World nation, but when it comes to weapons, we have to have the best,’ ” said Peter Vale of the Center for Southern African Studies in Cape Town.

Reports released this week about the rapid spread of AIDS in South Africa only highlight the urgency of the country’s competing social and military needs. For example, the proposed $5-billion arms expenditure, which would be spread over 15 years, is nearly 50% more than the amount spent last year on health care. It is equivalent to six times the annual budget for housing.

“The expenditure . . . comes at an unfortunate time as we struggle to cope with poverty and transformation,” said Anglican Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, who recently held nationwide hearings on the poor. “South Africa should maintain its forces in a state in which they could protect the country. Expenditure on such a scale suggests, however, that we have gone beyond this.”

Defense Minister Joe Modise, who last month won approval from Mandela to open negotiations with arms manufacturers in Germany, Britain, Italy and Sweden, said the defense forces are in desperate need of an overhaul. Because of arms embargoes imposed against South Africa’s apartheid regime, much of the nation’s military hardware is obsolete or in disrepair.

Aside from patrolling its own borders, newly democratic South Africa has the evolving role of peacekeeper in conflict-ridden Africa, government officials say. In September, the country made its first cross-border military incursion since Mandela’s 1994 election, sending troops to shore up the government in neighboring Lesotho. Although the deployment has been roundly criticized, military analysts say it is a likely sign of things to come.

“We can’t say that we don’t have any responsibility for peacekeeping on the African continent because we need to build a house,” Deputy President Thabo Mbeki told reporters during a recent visit to Sweden, where South Africa wants to buy 28 Gripen jet fighters. “The notion that there’s a hungry South African there who does not understand the need to defend his country is wrong.”

The proposed $5-billion weapons expenditure, government officials say, would require commitments of $20 billion in so-called industrial offsets--investments by the four European countries in South African manufacturing. The government estimates that the investments would generate about 65,000 jobs over the next decade.

South African trade officials have wholeheartedly supported the proposed procurement as a way to deepen commercial ties with the European Union, the country’s biggest trading partner.

U.S. arms manufacturers were not considered for the new contracts because of a lingering dispute between the United States and the Armaments Corp. of South Africa, the state-run weapons company. The disagreement over apartheid-era sanctions violations has blocked the transfer of U.S. military hardware and technical data to South Africa.