March 16, 2000
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (PANA) - The South African government has revealed the names of nine influential residents who allegedly flouted United Nations sanctions by engaging in illicit trade with the rebel National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).
This comes in the wake of a report which gives a comprehensive look at how the rebel Angolan group has been successfully circumventing UN sanctions by buying weapons, mainly from Bulgaria.
These were then shipped to friendly African countries and paid for with funds from diamonds obtained from Unita controlled areas in Angola.
In an address to Parliament, Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad said that although the explosive UN report cleared the South African government of any involvement in supporting UNITA, several of the people who were all fingered in the report include South African diamond dealers.
The men have been identified as Joe de Decker, Johannes Pereira, Piet Hand, Victor Bout, Ronnie Decker, David and Maurice Zollman, Hennie Steyn and Dennis Coghlan.
Pahad said some of the men are accused of smuggling diamonds between Angola, South Africa and Europe's main diamond centre in Antwerp, Belgium where about 80 percent of the world's trade in rough diamonds passes.
The deputy minister warned that South Africa would deal harshly with people it found breaking the sanctions, although he failed to specify what action would be taken against the men named in the report.
The report, which was compiled by the Angola sanctions committee of the UN Security Council, also found that Lanseria airport outside Johannesburg is still used for smuggling activity which benefits UNITA.
"Typically, flights will leave from Lanseria declaring Zambia or the Democratic Republic of Congo as their destination. Once they cross into Zambian airspace, the planes divert to locations in Unita-controlled territory," said the report.
The document named three companies known to have been involved in smuggling from Lanseria airport as Interstate Airways, Air Cess and Air Pass.
Britain and Canada have called on the UN Security Council to impose targeted sanctions against countries accused of violating the embargo against the diamond trafficking of UNITA.
Belgium, which has been accused of indirectly supporting UNITA by permitting the sale of illicit diamonds, has slammed the report.
The UN report also heavily criticises several African governments, including Burkina Faso and Togo for allowing UNITA to use their territories as transiting points for arms and diamonds.
South Africa and Cote d'Ivoire have been accused of not strictly enforcing the travel ban on UNITA members while the report claims that Rwanda received military help from UNITA in its campaign in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Other governments named in the report are Switzerland, the United States, France, Bulgaria and Portugal for various different violations of the sanctions.
After Angola's independence from Portugal in 1975, South Africa supported UNITA against the Cuban-backed Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA).
The post-apartheid government in Pretoria has supported the Angolan government, but relations have soured recently following differences on how to end the 25-year-old war.