The question of how South Africa regulates its multiple Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) and how effective that regulation is has recently come into question with the discovery of illegal military training camps in Mpumalanga. Bolstering the efficiency of inter-agency cooperation to ensure such activities stay within the law has become a new and urgent requirement.

On 26 July the South African Police closed a military training camp just outside White River in Mpumalanga. 95 Libyan nationals were arrested and are awaiting trial for contraventions of the Immigration Act 13 of 2002, since the Department of Home Affairs revoked their visas on the basis of having obtained these fraudulently. South African media reported that the Libyans are linked to a group trying to topple the UN-backed Tripoli government  and were sent to South Africa for military training.

According to the website of the company that provided the military training, Milites Dei Academy, it specialises in “military style learning programs.” It also states that its qualifications are accredited by the Safety and Security Sector Education and Training Authority (SASSETA) and the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority (PSIRA).

To better understand why the discovery in Mpumalanga is stirring controversy, South Africa’s role, when it comes to the export of South African trained private military contractors (PMCs) or mercenaries has to be noted. Since the end of Apartheid, South Africa has been a major supplier of so-called private security contractors. The Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act 15 of 1998 was President Nelson Mandela’s direct and immediate response to the role of South African mercenaries in the Civil War in Sierra Leone in 1995 by the South African company Executive Outcomes, which specialised in supplying private military solutions in the form of what became known as “army in a box.” Executive Outcomes became a well-recognised player in the field of private military contractors/private military companies (PMCs) in Africa and beyond.

Since then, South Africans have been involved in various conflicts. This includes the 2004 failed coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea by a mercenary group which included South African and British nationals,;the presence of South African mercenaries in Iraq working for the US-led coalition from 2005 to 2011; and more recently in 2015 when then-Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula threatened South Africans hired by the Nigerian government to assist in its fight against Boko Haram with arrest. The role of South Africans in fighting foreign wars was again in the news in December 2023 when the  government threatened criminal prosecution of dual national South Africans serving in the Israeli Defence Force in the war between Israel and Hamas.

South Africans are prohibited from engaging in any form of mercenary activity  without authorisation of the National Conventional Arms Control Committee (NCACC). The key legislation is the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act 15 of 1998 (RFMAA) which bans any South African from taking part in foreign conflicts unless such actions have been authorised by the NCACC. This prohibition was reiterated by the government in a statement in December 2023 regarding joining foreign armed forces.

This brings us to the Milites Dei Academy, the security company where the training of the Libyans took place. While private security and military training in South Africa share similarities in terms of taught content and learning outcomes, they are still different. One is focused on policing and protection and the other has a clear military and kinetic focus. According to the company’s website, both types of training are offered. This alone does not necessarily make the training offered suspicious or even illegal, since the security training industry has been a major player in South Africa for decades and is part of the wider security industry worth US$6 billion.

The question thus is, could the training of the Libyan nationals qualify as a violation of the RFMAA, namely as “the rendering of foreign military assistance by South African juristic persons, citizens, persons permanently resident within the Republic and foreign citizens rendering such assistance from within the borders of the Republic”? Given that the company has both PSIRA and SASSETA accreditations, it will be problematic to prosecute the company for a violation of the prohibition of rendering assistance to foreign militaries unless there was additional evidence that the training in question did not fall under the categories of the authorised training offered. Newest reports indicate that the company ran the military training camp illegally beside its normal place of operations, and that the curriculum offered was “militarized” and outside the remit of authorised security training.

Also, it is speculated that the 95 Libyans were apparently sent by the Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar who opposes the UN-supported Libyan government in Tripoli. Any military training of Haftar’s personnel is prohibited under the Libya sanctions regime, which was established in 2011 by the UN Security Council. South Africa is obliged to ensure compliance with these sanctions, as it binds all UN member states.

Since a violation of both the RFMAA and the UN-backed sanction regime seems now likely, a lack of interagency cooperation and potential intelligence failures might be evident here. One must ask if PSIRA and SASSETA fulfill their mandate in monitoring the operations/training of companies which are officially accredited. The failures that become apparent from the whole episode raise several questions. One, how do these authorities ensure that the training provided by companies such as Milites Rei do not fall under the prohibited activities of the RFMAA? Second, how do these authorities ensure that private security training does not turn into military training which, if unauthorised by the government, would be a criminal offence?

The Minister of Correctional Service, Pieter Groenewald, slammed the intelligence services for allowing the Libyan nationals to undergo military training in South Africa undetected. Was it an intelligence failure of South Africa’s National Intelligence and Crime Intelligence as the minister suggested?

To answer this question and many more surrounding this training camp, there needs to be a comprehensive parliamentary investigation to get to the bottom of it all, which would include establishing all the facts, the viability and efficiency of the current accreditation system of such training facilities, and the assurance that there is sufficient interagency oversight and coordination regarding the training of foreign nationals in security on South African soil.

Dr Sasha-Lee Stephanie Afrika (LL.B, LL.M,LL.D), Attorney of the High Court of South Africa and former lecturer at Stellenbosch University and University of Johannesburg. Sasha-Lee is a researcher of international and domestic legal issues in a South African and global context.

Sascha-Dominik (Dov) Bachmann is Professor in Law and Co-Convener National Security Hub (University of Canberra), University of Canberra, and a Research Fellow with the Security Institute for Governance and Leadership in Africa, Faculty of Military Science, Stellenbosch University. He is also a Fellow with NATO SHAPE – ACO Office of Legal Affairs where he works on Hybrid Threats and Lawfare.

This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.