Monograph 34: Weapons Flows in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Swaziland, By Tandeka Nkiwane, Martinho Chachiua and Sarah Meek

Conventional weapons systems, so decisive in conflicts where military is pitched against military, have little real effect in maintaining the security of civilian populations during and after wars. The majority of casualties, of abuses of authority and of indiscriminate killings are caused by the availability and use of small arms.

Since small arms and light weapons, which include landmines, machine guns, grenades, pistols and rocket launchers, are standard issue during violent conflict and are not normally controlled during post-conflict processes, the potential of these weapons for illegal use — and abuse — is substantial. Because conflict resolution processes depend on socio-economic development, effective democracy and security (as seen in a credible law and order structure), these remedies require time and stability for their successful implementation. If there is indiscriminate access to the tools of violence (i.e., weapons), stability will be harder to maintain and development in time of peace will not take place.

Seldom, if ever, have all weapons been collected at the end of an armed struggle. Physical security, primacy and economic necessity generate the force that propels the trade in small arms;1 a trade that no longer requires a new influx of weapons to be destabilising. It depends instead on the constant, ever-widening circles of distribution of the massive stocks already in existence.

The Towards Collaborative Peace Project at the Institute for Security Studies

One of the legacies of conflict in Southern Africa is the glut of light weapons and small arms. These weapons are being transported illegally across borders, where they are used to generate political instability and to carry out crimes in many rural and urban areas in the region. Under these circumstances, democratisation programmes (which include demobilisation, disarmament and policing) are being jeopardised to the point that most people feel the need to acquire weapons for self-defence. In consequence, communities have abandoned their traditional, negotiated mechanisms of conflict-resolution and conflict-management, seeking instead to resolve violent situations with solutions equally violent. Although in its infancy, a culture of violence has begun to emerge in the region, threatening democracy and development as a result.

With this context in mind, the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in South Africa has developed its Towards Collaborative Peace (TCP) project which aims to study the dynamics of the illegal trade in small arms in Southern Africa. In the course of this study, the TCP project has been demonstrating the linkages between an increased availability of small arms and the emergence of a culture of violence in transit and end-user societies. The countries in the geographic region chosen 2 manifest a number of similarities which permit their linkage for the purpose of this study. Thus, all are either victims of the violence accompanying small arms proliferation or act as transit points from where weapons are distributed further afield. Likewise, all have been affected, to a greater or lesser extent, by the existence of porous borders which connect them to nation-states that have accumulated a massive surplus of light weapons as a result of decades of internal strife and ill-managed disarmament operations during multinational peace processes (i.e., Angola, Mozambique). A final point of connection is that all countries in the study are members of the same regional and sub-regional organisations, namely the Organisation for African Unity (OAU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

The project, therefore, seeks to discover what is the nature of the small arms proliferation problem in all of these countries; how increased availability of weapons is affecting the societies; and what structures within existing regional groupings could be utilised to diminish the flow and effects of light weapons proliferation in Southern Africa. Furthermore, the project seeks to implement a south-south approach in dealing with this issue by contrasting the existing trends in Southern Africa with the southern part of South America.

The TCP project has several components of which the most important are field research and the publication of a series of books and monographs, the end result of which will be to propose viable mechanisms for both the regional control of weapons flows and the reversal of a culture of violence at local level.

The main purpose of the field research is to establish what the impact of ineffectual demobilisation and disarmament is in countries such as Mozambique and Angola; and what the effects are of the resulting excess of weapons on the surrounding countries. Particular attention is being focused on the way the light weapons, available in such massive amounts, pervert the societies through which the weapons transit in order to determine if a culture of violence follows in the wake of such indiscrim!inate proliferation of light weapons. The examples uncovered in the field research so far touch upon such diverse societal elements as demobilised soldiers, refugees and other migrant communities, rural communities and urban populations of Southern Africa.

If the TCP project’s field research is beginning to show why light weapons should be more effectively controlled in Southern Africa, its publications highlight the underlying reasons for the occurrence of the proliferation of light weapons, the present dynamics of light weapons proliferation and the way in which existing regional structures could be used to stem the flows. There are three books in the TCP project series, and a number of monographs. The books look at the global environment in which the proliferation of weapons occurs and the causes for such a proliferation in Southern Africa (Society Under Siege: Crime, Violence and Illegal Weapons); the existing regional mechanisms that might be utilised as control vehicles for stemming the proliferation of light weapons in Southern Africa (Society Under Siege: Licit Responses to Illicit Arms); and the final volume, which will be forthcoming in early 1999, examines the role of firearms in South Africa from a variety of perspectives: government, communities and grassroots organisations.

To accompany the set of books, the project has been publishing a series of monographs, of which this is the third. These are designed to produce a comprehensive view of the actual status of small arms proliferation within countries and to cover general issues which are relevant to the ultimate recommendations of the entire project. Thus the final monograph of the series will be on the status of weapons flows in Namibia, Angola and Botswana and will complement the present monograph, Weapons Proliferation in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Swaziland and ISS monograph No 25, Connecting Weapons with Violence: The South American Experience. The third monograph of the series, ISS monograph No 22, Buy or Barter: History and Prospects of Voluntary Weapons Collection Programmes, focused on the means of collecting and destroying weapons with case studies from around the world.

The purpose of the current monograph is to detail the existence of weapons within three individual countries in Southern Africa and to give an indication of steps that have been taken by governments, and in some cases civil society, to prevent the further proliferation of weapons. During the course of the research undertaken by the TCP project, we have moved away from identifying countries simply as supplier and recipient countries. Instead we have begun to classify them as source (not necessarily manufacturers), transit and end-user countries. Thus, in this monograph, we see Zimbabwe clearly as both a source country, through its indigenous manufacturing capability, and a transit country. Mozambique is also a source country but for very different reasons. It has been left with the discarded weapons of decades of civil war and these have moved out of Mozambique and permeated the region. However, Mozambique may also be classified as an end-user country as the available weapons are being used by individuals for criminal purposes. Finally, Swaziland has long been a transit country for weapons moving into South Africa during the struggle against apartheid, and more recently for weapons moving from Mozambique into South Africa for criminal purposes. Yet Swaziland is now also an end-user country, as people are arming themselves for self-protection. In choosing to classify the role countries play in weapons proliferation in this manner, the project hopes that each of the countries involved will be able to find new, positive roles to play in preventing the further spread of weapons by identifying how their territory is being used.

This project is a first look at a complex problem, one that is so multilayered that decision makers are often deterred from taking effective action. In gaining some understanding of certain aspects of the problem of the proliferation of small arms, the ISS, through its TCP project, hopes to highlight the nature of the problem and to offer insights for its resolution.

Virginia Gamba

Halfway House, January 1999

ENDNOTES

1. As exemplified in J Boutwell, M Klare and L Reed (eds), Lethal Commerce: The Global Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons, Cambridge, Massachusetts, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1995; and in J Singh (ed), Light Weapons and International Security, Indian Pugwash Soceity and British American Security Information Council, New Delhi, 1995.

South Africa, Mozambique, Swaziland, Namibia, Angola, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Zambia and Tanzania