TC

Vision

Sound

00.03.26

Boy playing guitar

V/O by Jacques Pauw: On the killing fields of southern Sudan, boys as young as twelve are fighting a war. They are the boy soldiers of the SPLA, children marching into Africa's longest and most brutal civil war.

00.03.46

Shots of ‘boy soldiers'

The soldiers have little to eat and even less to wear. Many have never been to school and cannot read or write and don't even know how old they are. But they have guns and are ready to kill.

00.04.03

Some of their guns are captured from the enemy, others are given to them by friendly governments in neighboring states.

00.04.10

But the rebels are also armed by black market arms dealers around the world. As the civil strife continues and hundreds of thousands of people are starving to death South African arms merchants seem to have found a lucrative market for their military hardware.

00.04.27

GUNS FOR SUDAN

00.04.34

Soldiers

Rumors have persisted for years that South African weapons dealers sell arms to the SPLA. Ray believers deny this saying they capture all their arms from the Muslim enemy in the north

00.04.47

Pieng Deng Kual

SPLA Commander

Pieng: This year we captured more than three thousand rifles and these are the rifles we succeeded to arm some of the workforce, we captured more that 16 tanks T55. These are the weapons we have.

00.05.06

Soldiers with weapons

V/O: The SPLA has an estimated 25 thousand soldiers underarms and it is simply impossible that they could have captured all their weapons.

00.05.17

Dr Jakkie Potgieter

Institute for Security Studies

Dr Potgieter: The weapons in Sudan comes mainly from two sources. Black market arms dealers and then the weapons legally purchased by the Sudanese government.

00.05.28

Shot of Dr Potgieter at computer

V/O: Dr Jakkie Potgieter a former defense force officer has investigated illegal arms deals in central Africa for several years.

00.05.38

Dr Jakkie Potgieter

Dr Potgieter: I know that there is some South African arms dealer that is currently selling weapons to the SPLA specifically in Sudan.

Shot from hidden Camera

V/O: Several South African arms dealers have armed the SPLA. At least two Johannesburg arms dealers have had extensive deals with the SPLA.

Shot from hidden camera

Earlier this month a Belgium national was deported from Johannesburg for allegedly selling arms to amongst others the SPLA.

00.06.04

Man smoking

Another weapons dealer was murdered in 1994 while trying to find weapons for the rebel movement.

00.06.14

Dr Potgieter

Dr Potgieter: The free market weapons dealer, black market weapons dealer, are definitely not driven by morals is driven by profit. And the weapons goes to guys but..

00.06.28

People walking

V/O: Weapons in the Sudan are not only used for waging war but also to kill civilians, to loot, to rape. There are an estimated 1,5 - 2 million illegal weapons in the area. Everyone in Sudan it seems has an AK47.

00.06.46

Picture of Africa

Sudan is the biggest country in Africa, stretching from desert in the north to lush forest in the south.

00.06.55

Man with Pipe

It is a potentially rich land with a diversity of people but for several years now television viewers around the world have come to associate Sudan with images of hunger and starvation.

00.07.10

Aid drops

At this very moment hundreds of thousands of people are starving to death or are in urgent need of humanitarian aid. But Sudan is also home to Africa's so called forgotten war.

00.07.30

Shots of Tanks/soldiers

Since 1983 more that 1 million people have been killed in Southern Sudan.

Mark Ubong: Well I have been a fighter all my life even my children have joined me.

00.07.34

Mark Ubong

Shadow PM SPLA

Mark Ubong: definitely I would love to see peace in my lifetime but if it doesn't come I will continue and my children will continue the war.

00.07.41

00.07.46

People singing.

V/O: Civil war broke out with independence in 1956 when predominantly black and Christian southerners rebelled against their Arab and Muslim country men in the north.

00.07.58

Mark Ubong

Shadow PM SPLA

Mark Ubong: Well it is a very simple question, when rule is put on you that you must become an Arab, you must become a Muslim, you must become a third class citizen in your own country, you cannot accept that. That is why I do I revolt.

00.08.12

Shots of marching soldiers

V/O: And this is what the southerners are up against. One of Africa's biggest armies. The Sudanese people's defense force has an estimated hundred and fifty thousand men under arms and is said to be supported by Islamic fundamentalist regimes like the one in Iran.

00.08.37

People in Nairobi, Kenya

Our journey to find out more about the war in southern Sudan started in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.

00.08.43

Interviewer and Mac Anyang Yuang in van

This is where we met up with Mac Yuang a 22 year old Sudanese refugee who lives in Kenya.

00.08.52

Mac Yuang & Man

V/O: Mac is a former boy soldier of the SPLA.

Mac: I joined SPLA army when I was twelve years old.

00.08.56

Mac Yuang

Mac: I am not quite definite of how many people I have killed. But when I was in the army I had my rifle and whenever we were going into combat or when we are attack I just opened my fire, shooting.

00.09.16

Soldiers

V/O: Mac fought with the SPLA rebels from 1987 until 1993.

Mak: I try my best to cope with that life but it is a hard life.

00.09.27

Mak

Mak: When the Arab attack our garrisons my friend Kwali loss him and he's my age.

00.09.37

Countryside - Mak in car

V/O: Mak hasn't seen his parents or family for eleven years. We decided to take the young man with us to Sudan not only to try and reunite him with his family but as our guide and interpreter.

00.09.56

Kenyan Women

Our journey to the Sudanese border took us through some of the most untouched parts of Northern Kenya.

00.10.11

Plane

V/O: For the past nine years Operation Lifeline Sudan and other aid agencies have been flying food and medical supplies from Lokichokio into Southern Sudan.

00.10.22

V/O: South African pilots from the air company SAFAIR do many of the relief flights. From the air it was difficult to imagine that there could be famine in Southern Sudan. The land looked fertile and green.

00.10.37

Inside Plane with aid parcels

V/O: But for several years now ordinary people have been unable to cultivate the land because of the war. These people are now starving to death.

00.10.52

Dead animals

The famine in Sudan is mainly in one province-Bara Kazal. And it has been caused quite deliberately by one man;

00.11.00

Starving people

Kerubino Bol. He was the SPLA commander for Bara Kazal but defected to the Sudanese government in 1994 and became a general in the people's defense force in Hatu.

00.11.14

Arab Soldiers on Horses

V/O:Kerubino Bol was sent back to the area where he set up a third force of Arab militia men on horseback. They devastated the region and killed thousands of people, stole their cattle and destroyed their lands. Kerubino got the nickname of the butcher of Bara Kazal.

00.11.35

John Luk

Head of Information SPLA

John Luk: They kill indiscriminately women, children, old people, burned our villages burned the foods. Took the cattle in large quantities leaving the population terribly destitute.

00.11.50

Soldiers cheering

V/O: But in an amazing turnabout in January of this year Kerubino deserted from the Sudanese army and returned to the SPLA.

00.11.58

Mark Ubong

Mark Ubong: I feel very much glad it is most welcome. It is better to be together with the devil rather than the devil be alone at large, he's been doing a lot of damage to us when he was with the Sudan Government.

00.12.09

Kerubino Bol and John Luk

V/O: Since his return to the rebel movement Kerubino has been an illusive figure and is in hiding. We traced him to a suburb outside of Nairobi where he is guarded by SPLA soldiers.

00.12.24

Kerubino Bol

Kerubino: We are now together now I don't think there is something, that nobody is blaming me then why do you kill people. They know that even in ourselves in our tradition you fight with your brother and tomorrow morning you can come together.

00.12.38

John Luk

John Luk: I think his place was quite empty I think many people missed him. That he has come back now to the SPLA again. I think everybody is very happy.

00.12.52

Kerubino Bol

Kerubino: I was fighting our own brother because we are Zulus and it is finished now. I have told you before they are not blaming me now. Is there anybody who's told you that these people are blaming me? Nobody.

00.13.10

UN Plane

V/O: We were eventually taken to the Bara Kazal province in southern Sudan in a United Nations aircraft that was transporting food to the area. A day later we joined up with soldiers and commanders of the SPLA

00.13.24

Soldiers in Jeep

V/O: Who agreed to take us to the front line a few Kilometers North East of the strategic town of Wael.

V/O: For Kilometer after Kilometer the land was empty and burnt out villages bore witness to the havoc and destruction caused by Commander Kerubino and his Arab militiamen.

00.13.45

SPLA Base

V/O: The front line turned out to be nothing more than an SPLA base in a deserted village. There was an enemy garrison 8 kilometers away, but except for the odd exchange of mortar fire and skirmishes between foot patrols the front line was relatively quite.

The soldiers were amazed to see us with Mac.

00.14.08

Man smoking

Mac: They even go as far as to ask me "now that they have come here and they have seen us some of us are walking naked-

00.14.17

Mac

Mac: Do you think they are going to bring clothes for us and maybe boot and artillery to fight the Arabs?" I just tell them that I don't know.

Mac: They just want the world to know what is going on here.

00.14.35

Landmine Victim

V/O: The frontline is riddled with landmines. This SPLA soldier stepped on an anti-personnel landmine. 

The remains of his foot was removed without anesthetic in a makeshift hospital.

00.14.51

SPLA Soldiers and Weapons

V/O: The SPLA has been condemned by international Human rights organizations like Amnesty International for the killing and torture of civilians and for forcing young boys into its army against their will.

00.15.06

Mark Ubong

Mark: Well you call them boys but they are men really they are men struggling. The state of clothes definitely is bad, we would want it to be better. But given the situation the resources that we have at hand, it is better to fight whether we are naked or not and brave the land rather than wait for the uniforms in order to fight the war no it will just continue.

00.15.30

Nor Garang,

Boy Soldier and Mac

Mac: His name is Nor

Jaques : And how old is he?

Mac: He says only the mother will know I don't know how old I am. I was born in the village.

Jaques: And ask him whether he has been in any fighting.

Mac: Ya he says he's having a fight with the Arab Militia.

00.16.02

Interviewer: And were any people killed?

Mac: Ya, he says some people were killed.

Jaques: And ask him if he was scared.

Nor Garang: No

00.16.15

Mark Ubong

Mark: He shouldn't have been carrying a rifle. He should have been carrying a stick. He should have been carrying a spear. But now things are changing. The spear is becoming obsolete. So the rifles are getting up and once he gets the rifle then he feels it will help him he gets more and more motivated that's why we get our armies really motivated because they are youth and they want to participate in the war.

00.16.41

Rebel Soldiers and Gun

V/O: During our stay rebel soldiers were marching off towards Wael, a town occupied by the Sudanese army.

A cease-fire has recently been declared in Bara Kazal, but like so many before this one too might not hold.

00.16.59

Pieng Deng Kual

SPLA Commander

Pieng: I tell you how we can plan to take Wael, but as I can tell you that Wael we can capture it at any time.

00.17.09

Daniel Makoi

SPLA Commander

Daniel: Our forces actually had surrounded the whole town of Wael, almost 4 km away from the town.

00.17.20

Pieng Kual

Peng: For sure there are going to be casualties for, to the civilians there inside but we will try to minimize the casualties.

00.17.30

Daniel Makoi

Daniel: When the orders come to strike, you see, on the move, we are ready to take Wael, anytime.

00.17.44

Northern Kenya

V/O: We returned from southern Sudan without being able to help Mac Yuang to find his home area or see his parents and family again.

We however heard that his younger brother is now living in a refugee camp in Northern Kenya.

00.18.10

Kikuma Refugee Camp

V/O: Many members of his Dinka tribe have now fled to Kenya and are now living in this refugee camp.

Mac and Headman

He first met one of the headmen of his tribe.

00.18.28

Refugees

Mac: This is a letter from my dad.

I received this yesterday

Interviewer: A message from your father.

00.18.41

Mac and Brother

V/O: He finally found his brother in another part of the camp.

00.19.03

Mac: I am very happy to see my brother it has been a long time. Now it is marvelous, I really like it, it is gorgeous, I see my brother.

00.19.14

Refugees

V/O: Macs father said in his letter that the family is in good health but that food and clothes are very scarce.

00.19.29

Khatroum-river

V/O: Khartoum once a last outpost of British colonialism is today a sprawling city of about nine million people.

00.19.44

Boy and Car

V/O: Since the current military government seized power in a coup d'etat in 1989, Sudan has been turned into a model Islamic state and Sherea law has been imposed as the supreme law of the land.

00.19.59

Citizens of Khartoum

V/O: Khatroum is a hostile and unfriendly city where outsiders are viewed with much suspicion. Our passports were confiscated upon our arrival and every move we made was monitored.

00.20.14

People praying in Mosque

V/O: The Sudanese government has been accused by Human rights organizations of sponsoring acts of terrorism, of doing little to end the civil war and of slavery, abduction, torture and executions.

00.20.41

Man chanting Prayer

V/O: It has been branded as a terrorist state by the United States

Mosque

And has been condemned by much of the international community.

00.20.51

Women singing

V/O: Sudan is today not only at war with the SPLA but is in conflict with most of its neighbors.

It is facing a rebel onslaught not only from the south but also from the east.

The Sudanese government has declared a Jihad or Holy war against its enemies.

00.21.15

Gen. Abdel Sirelkhatim

Gen. Sirelkhatim: Others are trying to eliminate us is what we feel. That's why it is a holy war that is why it is Jihad.

00.21.26

Sudanese Soldiers

V/O: The people's defense force is an ever growing and expanding army. The Sudanese government has said that by the year 2000 they want 900 thousand men under arms.

The university was recently closed and the students sent to the front line.

00.21.46

Gen. Sirelkhatim

Gen. Sirelkhatim : We feel that this aggression will continue and we are being targeted by some of the huge powers, so we have to be ready, so we are trying to train every individual, man or woman, to be ready to defend the country. That is our policy and we are going according to that.

00.22.12

Soldiers swear allegiance

V/O: Soldiers swear their allegiance to the Koran. When the Ugandan soldiers invaded southern Sudan last year and helped the SPLA to take a strategic town, young Sudanese soldiers strapped themselves with explosives and stood in the way of the enemy tanks.

00.22.29

Gen. Sirelkhatim

Gen. Sirelkhatim: If you have a cause you will definitely be ready to die for it. And this is what we are doing. Actually we are calling for Shihada. And seeking Shihada.

00.22.45

Interviewer: What does that mean?

00.22.46

Gen. Sirelkhatim: That means you have to die for your cause and you will definitely succeed in this and God will support you.

00.22.56

Al Salaam Refugee Camp

V/O: The war in the south has also had a devastating effect on Khartoum. More than a million southerners are living in desperate circumstances in refugee camps in and around the capital.

One of the southerners in Khartoum is a former SPLA leader by the name of Riek Machar.

00.23.17

Capital

He defected to the Sudanese Government in 1997 and is now an assistant to the president.

We asked him what life was like in the Capital.

00.23.26

Riek Machar

Riek: Normal. I am not only southerner in Khartoum. The war has brought nearly 3 million to the north in particular the Khartoum state. Many of them are here; they're living normally.

00.23.50

Catholic Cathedral

(Singing)

V/O: Most southerners would not agree with Machar. They are unemployed and say they are discriminated against. Although religious freedom is guaranteed in the Sudanese constitution, Islam is the state religion.

00.24.09

Alex Manase

Alex: In the church you have to go and pray. After praying, back home. Don't talk about problem. Remember tongue on you, if you enter into the policy you speak of some things you'll be caught.

00.24.36

Fighting

V/O: Both the SPLA and the people's defense force have recently claimed victories in the war. The Sudanese forces still hold three of the biggest towns in southern Sudan but the rebels have made advances in the east.

Boy on ground

There is however no victor in this war.

00.24.57

Playing of drums

Weapons dealers justify their supply of weapons to the SPLA by saying that they are supporting Christians who are suppressed by a fundamentalist regime who want to impose Islam on them.

00.25.09

Dr Jakkie Potgieter

Dr Potgieter: The only people that are suffering from this provision of war weapons and war material is the people on the ground and they suffer to such an extent that the Christian moral issue is not justifiable.

00.25.23

Man and cow

V/O: It is safer, it seems, to be a soldier in southern Sudan than a civilian. Three out of every four people who die in the war are civilians.

00.25.33

Dr Potgieter

Dr Potgieter: Once the weapons are supplied to the rebel group what the rebel group does with the weapons is basically its concern. That's why you find boys of 9, 10, 12, that are carrying weapons and have seen a fight or two in their lives already.

00.25.50

Johannesburg

V/O: Several South African arms dealers have recently and in the past provided arms to the Sudanese rebels in southern Sudan.

00.25.59

Dr Potgieter

Dr Potgieter:  It is difficult to say how many of them are involved in that because a lot of people are, a lot of these arms dealers are supplying weapons to somebody in Uganda or to somebody in Kenya or wherever and they then find their way back to the Sudan.

00.26.18

Countryside

V/O: Weapons are usually bought in Eastern Europe from where they are transported to a neighboring state and driven or flown into southern Sudan.

00.26.26

Dr Potgieter

Dr Potgieter: Weapons are not sold for cash especially when it comes to rebel groups like that.

00.26.35

They do have cash support from international organizations. But what they can sell off is mineral concessions, hardwood concessions.

00.26.47

River Nile

V/O: Southern Sudan is a vast area with an abundance of natural resources.

Huts

It has oil, gold and teak forests. The forests in the south it seems are especially attractive to weapons dealers.

00.27.03

Dirk Stafburg

Dirk Stafburg is a former weapons dealer, apartheid assassin and a self confessed arms supplier to Iraq, Iran and Libya.

00.27.14

Explosion

Stafburg and his seventh wife were murdered in July 1994. According to documents we had found, he was at the time looking for an arsenal of weapons for the SPLA in return for a teak forest in southern Sudan.

00.27.30

Document

Stafburg's so called shopping lists were tanks, missiles and mortars around the world.

00.27.39

Dr Potgieter

Dr Potgieter: The provision of deconcessions is a big issue in the Sudan and you can buy your way and your protection by supplying weapons for those concessions.

00.27.51

Hidden Camera shot

Ivan Whitehead, and Luci Ficosecco are registered Johannesburg weapons dealers with a long history and complicity with the Sudan peoples liberation army.

They were appointed the so called Technical advisers to the SPLA 1993

00.28.08

Documents and soldiers

and have arranged for the supply of weapons to the movement. They are unofficial ambassadors for the SPLA in South Africa. They also have several other clients in Africa,

00.28.20

People with Umbrella by river

Diamond mines in the neighboring Central African Republic and business interests in Ethiopia. They refused to participate in this program.

00.28.33

Geyser Masosi

Earlier this month a Belgium national by the name of Geyser Masosi was deported from South Africa to Belgium where he has been charged for weapons smuggling.

00.28.43

River

He has supplied weapons to amongst others the SPLA. South African companies often transport the arms from Eastern Europe to Sudan.

00.28.54

Dr Potgieter

Dr Potgieter: once the arms dealer is brokering a deal of arms between, say for instance Bulgaria and Central Africa, Central African state, and the weapons are not crossing South African soil, there is very little that the South African authorities can do to stop that as the legislation's currently are.

President Mandela

00.29.18

00.29.25

V/O: The supply of weapons to Sudan comes at a time when South Africa is trying to broker peace in the area.

Mandela: We want peace, between the Sudanese government and the Sudanese people's liberation army. And that peace will come if we come to an arrangement which is at to the satisfaction of the government of the Sudan as well as the Sudanese people's liberation army.

00.29.53

Soldier in Jeep

As long as guns continue to flow into southern Sudan, there can be no peace and the local population will continue to suffer.

00.30.02

Woman with food

More than 2 million people face starvation this year because of the effects of war.

00.30.09

00.30.14

Carcasses

If the conflict continues, aid organizations say, more people may die next year.

Mac: We are really backward.

00.30.17

Mac Yuang

Mac: Because no roads, no hospitals, no school but only starvation and fighting. It is pathetic. So it is really hurting, but there is nothing we can do, that is our land and that's when we were born in.

00.30.33

Mac Yuang

(previous pictures)

V/O: People like Mac Yuang face a bleak future. He started carrying a gun when he was only twelve. He fled to Kenya at the end of 1993, entered school and passed matric. But he has no money and cannot continue his studies or find a job in Kenya.

He doesn't even know whether he will ever see his parents again.

00.30.57

Mac Yuang

Mac: I always pray, "God just protect my parents and maybe let them just survive with those kind of life and don't let them pass away without seeing them again".

00.31.13

Boy playing Guitar and singing

Music.