Njongonkulu Ndungane Tel: +27-21-465-7423

website: ecaar.org/za

Chair

Trustees ECAAR--USA THE DEFENCE BILL

*Oscar Arias [B60 - 2001]

*Kenneth J. Arrow

William J. Baumol

Barbara Bergmann

John Kenneth Galbraith

Robert Heilbroner

Walter Isard Submission to Public Hearings

*Lawrence R. Klein

Robert S. McNamara

*Franco Modigliani Parliamentary Defence Committee

*Douglass C. North Parliament, Cape Town

Robert Reich

Robert J. Schwartz

*Amartya Sen

*Robert M. Solow

*Joseph Stiglitz

*James Tobin May 21 and 22, 2002

Yoginder Alagh, India

J. Paul Dunne, United Kingdom

Jaques Fontanel, France

James K. Galbraith, United States

Akira Hattori, Japan

Kanta Marwah, Canada

Stanislav Menshikov, Russia

Alex Mintz, Israel

Aedil Suarex, Chile

Piet Terhal, Belgium/Netherlands

David Thorsby, Australia

Madam Chair

Thank you for the invitation to Economists Allied For Arms Reduction -- South Africa to make a submission on the Defence Bill [B60-2001]. ECAAR is an international NGO that seeks to promote objective economic analysis and appropriate action on global issues relating to peace, security and the world economy. We support and work for policies and institutions so that change within states can be achieved through peaceful democratic processes, so that international disputes can be managed without war.

There are nine Nobel laureates on the ECAAR board of trustees. ECAAR is accredited to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, and there are now affiliates in twelve countries including South Africa. ECAAR-SA, as you are aware, has filed an application in the Cape High Court for nullification of the loan agreements and guarantees that relate to the arms deal on the basis that these agreements are constitutionally unlawful. The practical consequence of a successful application will be the cancellation of the arms deal.

May I record that the Anglican Church and ECAAR-SA in 1995 jointly recommended to the Cameron Commission that South Africa should apply a total prohibition on exports of armaments, and that the armaments industry should be converted to peaceful purposes? We warned repeatedly during the Defence Review that poverty is the threat to South Africa's transition to democracy, and that offsets are a scam by the armaments industry to fleece the taxpayers of both supplier and recipient countries.

We alerted all Cabinet ministers to the foreign exchange risks of the arms deal and, when we learned about allegations of massive corruption, Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane proposed the establishment of an independent judicial investigation. When that proposal was ignored, ECAAR-SA was responsible through Patricia de Lille, MP in forwarding the allegations and evidence of corruption to Judge Willem Heath.

We have been fully vindicated, despite some of the extraordinary findings of the Joint Investigation Team's report into the Strategic Acquisition Programme. May I venture that the country, the executive and Parliament would have been spared very considerable embarrassments had some heed been taken of this small voice of civil society?

Having led the opposition by civil society to the arms deal, ECAAR-SA is now supported by a wide range of organisations, including the South African Council of Churches, the South African NGO Coalition (SANGOCO), Transparency South Africa and Treatment Action Campaign. A conference of about 150 NGOs meeting in Kempton Park during February 27-March 1, 2002 at the Civil Society Anti-Corruption Summit initiative also passed a declaration:

It is generally agreed that one of the most effective organisations within the "white community" to oppose apartheid was the End Conscription Campaign. The "old guard" was utterly bewildered. My son, as a teenager in the 1980s, was by law obligated to register for conscription. I wish to pay tribute to the End Conscription Campaign for the role that it played in the liberation of South Africa.

At that time, the penalty for refusal to serve in the SADF was a mandatory six year jail sentence. It was an appalling prospect for any teenager, and tens of thousands of South Africans left the country rather than serve in "apartheid's army." The economic consequences were, and remain, disastrous. South Africa has been impoverished. To quote a leading journalist, Ken Owen:

The military leaders spent tens of billions of rand on nuclear bombs, submarines and all manner of paraphernalia to defend apartheid against democracy. Yet the SADF proved utterly powerless against the banking sanctions campaign conducted 12 000 kilometres away in New York. It was a highly-successful non-violent strategy to overthrow the apartheid state that proved the irrelevance of military preparedness in the modern age.

Even the highly-militarised Americans have learned that their proposed Missile Defence System would have been totally worthless against the attacks on the World Trade Center.

As a family, we learned that the Army's right hand knows nothing of its left hand. By simple refusal to register, my son escaped conscription into the SADF. Many other sons (and their families) are scarred for life, and then we wonder why South Africa is such a violent society. Thankfully, conscription has been abolished but, evidently, the old guard just won't let go.

Undeterred by South Africa's disastrous experiences, the Defence Bill makes provision for reintroduction of conscription through the back door by way of what it terms (paragraph 56) the "obligation to serve." What if, under paragraphs 64 and 65, the SANDF decides it has a shortage of doctors, or auditors, or engineers, or plumbers? Might such persons out-of-the-blue find that they have an "obligation to serve?" Conscript labour is only half-a-step removed from slave labour. Paragraphs 85 and 86 regarding mobilisation during a state of national defence confirm that concerns about the reintroduction of conscription are warranted. The Minister himself on several occasions last year expressed himself in favour of conscription, even though this is a seemingly illogical proposition given the SANDF's efforts to reduce numbers.

The Bill is riddled through with the influences of the militarist old guard. It is pages of gobbley-gook that utterly fails to address the circumstances of post-apartheid South Africa. We are told under paragraph 2 that "the primary object of the Defence Force is to defend and protect the Republic, its people and its territorial integrity."

The militarist mind assumes that the only form of national defence is military. Instead, our Constitution declares in Chapter 11 in terms of Security Services:

The Constitutional priority, quite clearly, is human security relating to people rather than traditional notions of military security of the sovereign (or military dictator). The people are sovereign in a democracy. The Bill of Rights, under Chapter Two, is internationally unique in its commitment to socio-economic rights.

The Minister of Defence used to say before he became a politician that post-apartheid South Africa wouldn't need an army because we would not be fighting our neighbours, and our neighbours would have no need to fight us. What has changed? The most casual glance at any world map confirms that our country is the least vulnerable to foreign military attack. Thousands of kilometres of oceans protect us to the east, west and south. To the north, poor Zimbabwe hasn't enough petrol to fuel its economy, let alone to attack South Africa.

Only the United States has the capacity to mount a naval attack against South Africa. Rather than rely on three submarines as a deterrent to protect us from the Americans, I suggest that we need another plan. The strategic importance of the Cape sea route was grossly overplayed by PW Botha and his cronies during the Cold War. It is irrelevant in the 21^st century.

Unfortunately, the ethos of the apartheid era is still evident in this Defence Bill. It is the ethos of a colonial army of occupation and repression, as is still the case with armies throughout Africa. The armies of Uganda, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola, Togo, Lesotho and others are parasitic. As armies, they may be a sick joke. But the abuse of citizens by soldiers with guns is no laughing matter for the people of Lesotho, or the Congo or Nigeria, just as it was no laughing matter in South Africa of the 1980s.

Only sixty years ago Europe was being torn apart by Nazi barbarity. Just because Europeans and Americans are militaristic is no reason for South Africa and our continent to emulate their bad example. The militarism of apartheid was devastating for all South Africans, and will take generations to overcome.

Yet the premises of the 1996 White Paper that we are no longer fighting our own people have been tossed aside. Jobs, education, housing, health services, and freedom of fear from crime are far, far more relevant than any prospect of foreign invasion. The housing backlog is approximately one and a half million units. The Department of Housing estimates that every R3 billion spent on housing construction sustains 45 000 jobs in the building industry, and an additional 43 000 jobs in the provision of building materials.

The Minister of Defence now claims that South Africa has an obligation to become involved in peacekeeping operations in Africa, such as Burundi and the DRC. "Peacekeeping" is the buzzword of armies these days in order to justify their existence, and their budgets. The Defence budget rose by 29.4 percent in 2000/2001, by 15.2 percent in 2001/2002 and by 14.7 percent in 2002/2003. The Education budget, by comparison, rose by 7 percent in 2002/2003, and increases for other social upliftment priorities were even lower.

The fact is that instead of peacekeeping, British military intervention in Northern Ireland over the past 30 years has vastly compounded and prolonged that conflict. We see the tragedies of Israeli peacekeeping in Palestine. Military peacekeeping in Colombia for the last 38 years has had similarly disastrous consequences. Our own involvement in Lesotho was disgraceful. The Americans had made a hash of peacekeeping in Somalia, but the SANDF was going to fix the Congo.

Armies the world-over are notorious for spending R500 on a R25 screwdriver. This committee, Madam Chair, learned on May 8th that the daily cost of maintaining each soldier in Burundi is

R1 604 (R585 460 per annum). The cost per soldier in the DRC is R1 220 per day (R445 300 per annum). The Committee was also informed that there were 60 133 uniformed members in the SANDF on April 15th, and that the 2002/2003 budget is R18.414 billion. That, Madam Chair, amounts to an annual cost to taxpayers for each soldier of R306 221.

Members of the Committee on May 8th expressed their concern about rank-creep. This Defence Bill and its bureaucratic implementation will compound rank-creep. The former Deputy Minister of Defence used to comment that democratic South Africa had inherited enough generals and admirals for France and Germany combined. It is apparent that the situation is even worse today.

It is reprehensible that the annual cost of each soldier is R306 221 when -- according to the government's 1998 report "Poverty and Inequality in South Africa" -- just under 50 percent of our population survives on R353 per month and less. There is no money for a basic income grant, we are told, yet the annual cost to taxpayers for each soldier is R306 221.

There was until recently no money available for a comprehensive HIV-AIDS programme. Yet

R30 billion was supposedly available to buy warships and warplanes for use against a non-existent foreign enemy. The R30 billion has, of course, become R43 billion and currently

R52.7 billion. No one knows what the final cost will be; except that in terms of Section 38 of the Constitution ECAAR-SA has applied as a class action suit on behalf of the poor people of South Africa for cancellation of the arms deal.

The military hierarchy tip-toes around the AIDS disaster. Lindy Heinecken of the Centre for Military Studies at the University of Stellenbosch notes:

It is reported that the incidence of HIV in the SANDF may be as high as 60 percent. No one believes the SANDF's estimate of 17 percent. The incidence in the Zimbabwean army is said to be over 80 percent.

Not only will AIDS have devastating consequences for the military capacity of the SANDF, it will have devastating economic consequences. This demands that military defence in South Africa needs to be completely and radically reconsidered. This Bill fails to address this matter, which is a massive security issue both for soldiers and civilians. It is estimated that six million South Africans will die of AIDS-related causes by the year 2010. The life expectancy rate for South Africans is forecast to fall from 60 years to 40 years.

By any standards this is an economic and social disaster. The United Nations human development index in the year 2000 ranked South Africa in 103^rd position, one place higher than war-ravaged El Salvador. Even this appallingly low ranking is overstated because it is distorted by the affluence of the white community. Areas such as the Eastern Cape would be lucky to rank above 150^th.

The people have been amazingly patient in waiting for delivery. How much longer? The crises facing South Africa demand a thorough reevaluation of what constitutes "defence." Our Constitution requires commitment to the delivery of socio-economic rights. The Bill of Rights and sections 26 to 29 deal with the obligation of the State to rights to housing, health care, food, water and social security, children and education.

There is no conceivable foreign military threat to South Africa to justify expenditure of

R53 billion plus on warships and warplanes. Should ECAAR-SA's court application be successful, the practical consequence will be the end of the Navy and of the Air Force. The Navy's warships are literally ready to sink.

Economics is about choices. Does South Africa spend tens of billions on armaments, or do we invest in the human security and socio-economic rights of people? It is childish and irrational to choose "both." These are hard choices and decisions to make. The Defence Bill, in effect, attempts to choose both, and thus ignores the realities that face South Africa.

ECAAR's board of trustees includes Oscar Arias, the Nobel Peace laureate for 1987 and former president of Costa Rica in Central America. Costa Rica has been internationally unique because in 1948 the Army attempted a coup d'etat, but lost. In reaction, the Costa Rican Congress abolished the Army. A police service guards the borders and performs other police functions, but Costa Rica has no army, air force or navy. The money that would have been spent on the military goes, instead, to socio-economic upliftment.

Costa Rica has been a thriving democracy for more than 50 years in dramatic contrast to neighbouring countries in Central America that have been devastated by military dictatorships and civil wars. The UN's human development index in 2000 ranked El Salvador at 104^th, Nicaragua at 116^th and Guatemala at 120^th. In the same year, Costa Rica ranked 48^th in the world. Its education and health standards have reached so-called "first world" levels because Costa Rica does not squander its public financial resources on a military establishment.

For defence against foreign attack, Costa Rica relies upon the international security system focussed upon the United Nations. Our South African government gives lip-service to similar commitments but, in practice, still adheres to the outdated Roman-era maxim: "if you want peace, prepare for war."

Within SADC, when Mauritius gained independence in 1968, unemployment rates were over 30 percent. Mauritius is now an example of a country that has successfully transformed its economy and dramatically improved the living standards of its people. Mauritius has no armed forces. National security is maintained by the police and a coastguard. In the process, Mauritius has entrenched a stable democracy through commitment to human rights. Its UN human development ranking in the year 2000 was 71^st compared with South Africa's 103^rd position.

The international prestige of both Costa Rica and Mauritius far outweigh their prospective economic or military strengths. Both countries are peaceful and secure, and have recently served on the UN Security Council. It is a radical proposal but, in all seriousness, I recommend that this committee and Parliament must consider the Costa Rica and Mauritius precedents of constitutional demilitarisation of South Africa.

That entails the abolition of the Army, Navy and Air Force. For defence, I suggest instead, that South Africa requires a coastguard and marine protection service, a respected and effective police service and a civil defence system to deal with natural disasters such as fires and floods.

Only eight years ago, South Africa was on the brink of civil war. It was touch-and-go right up until the election in April 1994. The world still marvels at our political miracle, but social and economic transformation still eludes us. We remain the only country to have given up nuclear weapons, and we helped lead the international campaign to ban anti-personnel landmines.

Where is the vision of an Africa at peace, and economically prosperous? The poverty that afflicts the majority of South Africans is a disgrace that mocks the transition to democracy. I hope that this parliamentary committee has the courage to repeat what it did with the NCACC Bill. The example of constitutional demilitarisation of South Africa could yet lead the world away from the economic and social devastations of war.

In conclusion, I have been authorised by lawyers in New York and Cape Town to announce that a class action suit will shortly be filed in the United States on behalf of victims of apartheid. The respondents will include the governments and prime contractors listed in Deputy President Jacob Zuma's letter dated January 19, 2001 to Dr Gavin Woods, then chair of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA). As the Deputy President's letter and the Joint Investigating Team report confirm, the arms deals were government-to-government transactions against preferential export credit agency financing arrangements.

The British Department of Trade and Industry's ECGD report for 2000/2001 damningly reveals:

Similar arrangements were confirmed in June 1999 by the German Parliament for DM 1.767 billion for three German-supplied submarines, and for DM1.164 billion for the four frigates.

There was no limit to the corruption and sleaze attached to the militarists of the apartheid government. South Africans are entitled to demand why the democratic government disregards the histories of corruption and dishonesty of the prime contractors and European governments involved in the arms deals.

These governments and companies deliberately defied and flouted international law as expressed in the United Nations arms embargo in effect from 1977 until 1994. It is well documented that European armaments and/or technology supplied to the apartheid government were used to terrorise the people of South Africa. Despite their complicity with the apartheid government, the same governments and companies now violate their own EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports. Damages will be sought from courts in the United States for a minimum of US$20 billion for distribution as reparations to victims of apartheid.

Madam Chair, you noted in the National Assembly last week that the SANDF is un-transformed. Some of us believe that it is un-transform-able, a relic of the apartheid era with which the country should stop tinkering. This bill is mere tinkering.

Terry Crawford-Browne

May 16, 2002