Speaker 1:

It is a country of refugees and rainforests. A huge sprawl of equatorial french-speaking Africa, almost twice the size of South Africa. A land of rusting railways and roads disappearing under jungle growth, and a magnet for trouble. The Democratic Republic of Congo has sucked six other countries into what began last year as a civil war. When the others pull out, if a ceasefire ever sticks, South African soldiers are very likely to be sent to the DRC to try to keep the peace.

Our National Defence Force has no experience of international peacekeeping. What it does have is Lesotho. By all the rules of engagement Lesotho was a military intervention, not a peacekeeping operation. But behind the scenes the SANDF planned from the start to use Lesotho to try out a new way of doing things. The night before crossing the border operation commander Robbie Hartslief gave this advice to his men.

Robbie H:

[Foreign Language]

Speaker 1:

36 hours later it was all over bar the shouting. The new SANDF had proved itself in battle. It had been restrained but effective.

Soldier:

Come on sunny boy. Come on sunny boy. Come, come, come sunny boy.

Speaker 1:

The soldiers understood peacekeeping central principle, minimal force. But they were the only ones. Why didn't you shoot the looters? The press asked.

Jimmy Masisi:

[inaudible] shall find it unreasonable to kill somebody for a packet of fish and chips.

Speaker 1:

And when the generals arrived to take score, Hartslief had to explain his battle plan all over again at this closed briefing.

Robbie H:

[inaudible] and when we captured the buildings, a lot of [inaudible] we did not shoot them. We allowed them to flee.

Speaker 5:

You are indicating that there are fewer causalities then?

Robbie H:

Yeah, my ...

Speaker 5:

[inaudible] important.

Robbie H:

Order were not to kill indiscriminately.

Speaker 1:

The fallout from Lesotho was fierce as Defence Force chief Siphiew Nyanda himself noted.

Siphiew Nyanda:

People have called the Lesotho intervention as a botched intervention. As the diplomatic and political military disaster, that's it.

Robbie H:

I think what we are lacking now is the political role of your people and that's what we are lacking in this specific operation. It's the role of your people beyond your forces.

Speaker 1:

But this was not the only thing the military learned in the Lesotho.

Deon Ferreira:

Valuable lessons was learned. We also, although it was not be support. We also adapted some of the principles. For example, there was only one civilian as far as I know that was killed in the fighting. No infrastructure was damaged by the fighting.

Robbie H:

And we now, do get some peacekeeping experience to my opinion.

Speaker 1:

Taking this tiny bit of experience to the DRC is another matter. For one thing it's laughable to compare little Lesotho to the sprawling giant in the north.

Deon Ferreira:

We could have flattened Maseru with aircraft artillery, and we could have used our [inaudible]. So I think it's very important that the composition of whatever force we deploy, wherever, should be potent with firepower, night fighting ability and ready to do anything that you can expect in an unstable African environment.

Speaker 1:

But unstable African environments are notorious killing grounds.

Deon Ferreira:

We must be realistic. You don't participate in this game, you don't accept the fact that you will have casualties. And even you be support, I think other countries learn this, that the chances of taking casualties is always there.

Speaker 8:

We are the [inaudible], we go to countries that are at war, and try and make their world a better place.

Speaker 1:

Peacekeeping demands a lot of a soldier. He or she has to be negotiator, mediator and diplomat and be alert for the moment when the waving stops and the firing begins.

Cedric Thornberry although not a soldier, knows all about it. He has been involved in peacekeeping for years and most recently helped run the UN's mission to Bosnia.

Cedric T:

There's an idea that peacekeeping is some kind of magical item and indeed up to a point it is a sort of mutual confidence trick. I mean the people in the country pretend that they love having all these foreigners in a uniform, and the foreigners pretend that they don't have any weapons. It's a very difficult kind of soldiering. Someone once said that it's an impossible job, peacekeeping, and one that only soldiers can actually do.

Speaker 1:

Going to the DRC could represent a danger not only to the soldiers. For one thing, this could be too close to home.

Cedric T:

There is a danger particularly where you get regional peacekeeping whether it's in Africa or in Latin America or in Asia or wherever else. In Europe indeed, at the moment in Bosnia, there is a danger that the neighbourhood bully may get to be in charge. And Mr Square it's the whole idea with the basis for the presence, disintegrates the idea of consent goes and the and the force becomes a corrosive force, instead of a force which is actually there to help the politicians find a solution.

Thabo Mbeki:

There's a matter that's arising, necessarily will arise, about peacekeeping in the Congo. What does it add to? The South Africans say no Mozambique, you can take care of it. We have got need for houses. Who doesn't?

Speaker 1:

The West burned its fingers badly in Somalia in 1993. The countries that usually stop UN missions shied away from Rwanda a year later and they have been less than eager to visit Africa since then.

Cedric T:

I am not sure that there are many countries at the moment who would be willing to make, to pay the political price, the price in blood to be perfectly frank, of getting immersed in another country's domestic affairs.

Speaker 1:

Even in Africa, there are not many countries left to help the Congolese find peace.

Deon Ferreira:

If our President or whoever is successful in brokering a peace, and peace support operation must be done in the DRC. Then somebody will have to decide who those people will be. It cannot be Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe, it cannot be the DRC itself, it cannot be Uganda or Rwanda or Sudan. So depending on ...

Speaker 1:

Because all of those people have a stake in it?

Deon Ferreira:

Because of the fact that they have been involved in either of the two sides. They will not be acceptable to all parties.

Speaker 1:

It's the politicians, not the military who decide who goes to the DRC. But the soldiers have talked of little else for months. Why should South Africans care that people in the Democratic Republic of Congo are killing each other and might not keep to a brokered peace?

Robbie H:

We are seeing all over the world, everywhere I got to you, we are perceived as a powerful military power and I've been always asked why don't you get involved? Why don't you bring your part? Why don't you support Africa to solve its own problems? So to my opinion, that's that's the moral and ethical responsibility of the South African National Defence Force.

Speaker 1:

The terrain will be difficult, the conditions appalling and one of the main players is likely to deeply resent South Africa's presence. DRC president Laurent Kabila sees South Africa as siding with his enemies, the rebels. DRC has to be done by the book and that means a UN mandate, a legitimate force and the consent of the warring Congolese.

Cedric T:

The most important principle of peacekeeping itself is that, it is done on the basis of consent it may be a rather, an aggrieved consent. But it is a consent.

Deon Ferreira:

And then of course we must also have our domestic mandate. And what is very important, is that we need the support not only of the government but of all the politicians and of the country as whole. It is essential before we deploy in a peace support operation.

Speaker 1:

The SANDF fears a public outcry that could make Lesotho look like a medal parade. Then there's the timing. Lesotho was put together and executed in just eight days. The military says it can't plan a DRC peacekeeping mission in less than eight weeks.

Deon Ferreira:

My worst nightmare is that we will not have enough time to do thorough and proper preparations.

Speaker 1:

Once the soldiers have dug in and learned the rules of their new environment, the next question is how to leave? The peacekeeping mission in Cyprus has lasted 34 years. The UN has been in Lebanon since 1978. Would you think that sooner rather than later you might find yourself side-by-side again in Central Africa?

Jimmy Masisi:

I wouldn't advise that, but it would be wonderful to work with SANDF  again because it's indeed a very different situation in the Central Africa if we are referring to DRC in particular. It's a situation whereby if you commit forces there, you know it's a very long time.

Cedric T:

The old fear of the military and all situations is how do you get out again? The military understands now very well indeed that there is no such thing, as military strategists used to say 20 years ago of the quick, clean surgical operation. It's nonsense.

Speaker 1:

Robbie Hartslief is the SANDF's most highly trained peacekeeper. If we go to the DRC, when we go he will almost certainly have a command role and he has more immediate concerns.

Robbie H:

You have to plan because you are a soldier and you will evoke emotions when you enter a foreign country. And you have to be ready for that first bullet, and if, after the first bullet you also have to be ready for the second one.