An African gorilla… or a pussycat?

[iolsa]

The battle fought by an exceedingly small South African force in Bangui on March 22 and 23 gave the government fair warning to either do things properly or not at all. And it was not the first such warning.  

In October a South African patrol in lightly armoured Mamba personnel carriers and in ordinary bakkies was ambushed and grossly over-matched by a force with 23mm cannon and 82mm mortars.

It was only skill, training and luck that enabled that small force to disengage with the loss of only one soldier killed and two wounded.

In November, M23 rebels drove off the Democratic Republic of Congo army, intimidated Monusco (the UN Stabilisation Mission in the DRC) and moved into Goma. That left the small South African contingent at the airport vulnerable to attack and with no combat vehicles or heavy weapons with which to defend itself. Had M23 chosen to attack, the likelihood is that it would have been overrun and captured or scattered. There is precisely nothing South Africa could have done to help its soldiers. Even worse off would have been the companies and platoons based in outlying villages.

And last month the tiny South African force in Bangui stood off a force of several thousand to such good effect that they requested a ceasefire. But South Africa had to stand by and watch, unable to respond quickly enough to either reinforce them or extract them.

It is time to heed the warnings. We have been lucky three times in six months, and twice only because skill, training and courage saved the day. We cannot count on that forever.

The "Battle of Bangui" must either be accepted as the high water mark of our engagement in Africa as a regional power, and we must wind our neck in politically; or we must begin to do things differently.

Differently means, in part, configuring the defence force to conduct regional missions, with due regard for the increasing levels of training and weaponry demonstrated by even irregular forces. That will, of course, also mean a commensurate increase in the defence budget.

The present budget is sufficient to fund patrolling our land border, maritime zones and air space. It does not allow for peace support deployments or even patrols of the Mozambique Channel through which much of our oil flows.  

Those missions are being undertaken at the expense of proper operational training and proper equipment maintenance; the defence force is consuming itself and will implode. To do this job properly, the defence budget needs to grow to at least R45 billion or 1.25 percent of GDP plus some emergency funding to address the most critical gaps, such as the lack of maritime patrol aircraft. If we want to continue the present external missions – DRC, Darfur, Mozambique Channel – and have a small "fire brigade" in hand for emergencies, the budget needs to grow to around R55bn, or 1.5 percent of GDP, also plus some emergency capital funding. If we want to perform the regional security role much of Africa would like to see us take on, the budget would need to grow to around R75bn or 2.1 percent of GDP.

That sounds terrible, but much of that money would be spent within South Africa, on salaries and on equipment we would be acquiring in quantities sufficient to justify local development, industrialisation and manufacture. That would also produce some export earnings. So the cost to the fiscus would be higher, but the cost to the country would not be unaffordable.

But there is another lesson to be learned: in the run-up to the N'Djamena meeting of April 3 to discuss the situation in the Central African Republic (CAR), the South African government seems to have fallen prey to believing in its own mythology of the new Africa; a resolute Africa willing to tackle its own problems and not willing to tolerate coups d'état or similar adventures.  

Only that can explain what appears to have been a considerable forward deployment of forces to the DRC and to Uganda, to provide forces able to respond promptly and decisively to an expected Economic Community of Central African States/AU decision to reverse Seleka's seizure of power, and to create a situation that would enable other forces to take over and keep the peace until the negotiation process could resume and be brought to true fruition.

Instead they rolled over like puppies and accepted the promises of the coup leaders that they would abide by the N'Djamena decision, form and pay attention to an electoral college, appoint an interim president. And who, precisely, is going to force them to do this?

What is the lesson here? It is that if we are going to play the regional power role, we need to stop being naive about the intentions of our supposed allies and friends. It may go against ubuntu, but we need to take the same hard, cold-eyed look at situations that the US, France, China and Britain do, and intervene when and where it is to our advantage, and do it properly: within the regional framework and with AU and/or UN approval if possible; without it if they drag their feet or decide not to decide.

That is precisely what South Africa did in Burundi, albeit without an eye to self-interest, and it worked. The only errors there were the failure to pay attention to South Africa's interests, and that we withdrew too early, as the renewed intolerance of Burundi's rulers and renewed flickering of insurgency suggest.

The international and African reaction to Mali is a good example of how not to do things: it was decided that the rebels had been naughty and that something should be done. But it would take nine months or so to gear up to do it, whatever "it" was going to be. The situation changed only when the rebels became greedy and over-confident and resumed their advance. Then Paris took a hard look, decided this had gone much too far, and intervened decisively. But how many people had been killed or maimed by fanatics in the meantime? The DRC is another example: much hand-wringing, deployment of inadequate forces and uttering of platitudes, but people continue to be turned into slaves and continue to be raped and killed.  

A regional power is the proverbial "800-pound gorilla" and must behave as such. It can be a courteous, friendly, helpful 800-pound gorilla, but it must never let others forget that it is that 800-pound gorilla. Otherwise it will be laughed off or, worse, regarded as a convenient cash cow. Just ask other African leaders; they cannot understand our failure to insist on what we believe to be important and in our interest. And, increasingly, they do not take us seriously. We have had our fair share of warnings. It is time to decide and then to act accordingly, be it to accept the regional power role or to sit back meekly and watch what happens around us. Anything else is pointless and, insofar as it costs lives, immoral.

- Heitman is an independent defence analyst.



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