TRC Final Report

Volume 4

Chapter 2

Subsection 7

The arms industry

73 Various submissions drew particular attention to the armaments industry as a case where businesses made an active decision to involve themselves in what COSATU, the SACP and the Centre for Conflict Resolution¹³ describe as the “military-industrial complex”. The ANC articulated it as follows:

This was no reluctant decision imposed on them by coercive apartheid legislation. Many businesses, including subsidiaries of leading corporations, became willing collaborators in the creation of the apartheid war machine, which was responsible for many deaths and violations of human rights both inside and outside the borders of our country. It was, moreover, an extremely profitable decision.

74 According to the Centre for Conflict Resolution:

[by providing] the material means for the maintenance and defence of apartheid .... elements within the business community are guilty of directly and indirectly perpetuating the political conflict and associated human rights abuses which characterised South Africa between March 1960 and May 1994.

75 As noted above, the armaments industry falls into the category of second-order involvement with the apartheid regime. The moral case against the armaments industry is essentially that business willingly (and for profit) involved itself in manufacturing products that it knew would be used to facilitate human rights abuses domestically and abroad.

76 The only submission by business that attempts to justify participation in the arms industry came from the Armaments Corporation of South Africa (Armscor). Armscor noted that, in carrying out its function to obtain armaments, it was “carrying out a function which is normal in all governments except that the policies of this [apartheid] government were abnormal”. The submission continues:

We do not deny that in executing its mandate, Armscor would have contributed to the military capability of the country. For most members of the South African defence family the enemy was not the people of South Africa. It was the threat posed by an external aggressor - usually a communist linked state such as Cuba or the Soviet Union.

77 Thus, the argument presented is that arms procurement is a normal activity of all governments for the (honourable) purposes of defence and that South African companies involved with Armscor thought that they were contributing to such defence (albeit probably mistakenly). The issue therefore boils down to one of motivation.

78 Is it credible to argue that those producing South Africa’s arms thought that their products were going to be used to fight an external aggressor? Certainly, given the extent of government propaganda about Communism and the ‘total onslaught’, it is possible that many people did hold this opinion. However, once the army rolled into the townships in the 1980s, the scales should have fallen from the eyes of all perceptive South Africans. Unfortunately, no evidence was presented before the Commission about the mindset of arms manufacturers.

79 In its submission, Armscor proudly observes that its commitment to executing government policy has ensured its survival today:

[Armscor] has come to be described as a national asset by the Minister of Defence, Minister Joe Modise and by the Chair of the Joint Standing Committee of Defence, Mr Tony Yengeni.

80 This “national asset” now produces arms for export – a matter that is further addressed in the recommendations chapter.