Arms Embargoed

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Contexto de página: Página principal > Revista 'Transporte Internacional' > Issue 34 - January 2009 > Arms Embargoed

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With repression in Zimbabwe at its bloody height in April last year, it was no time to present its government with a shipload of ammunition. Most people agreed that the An Yue Jiang’s cargo should never arrive there, but it took trade unions and the ITF to prevent it.

There was a sense of disbelief in April last year at the news that, just when state-sponsored terror was at its worst in Zimbabwe, a huge cargo of ammunition was on its way to the government responsible. The disbelief was mixed with resignation. The materiel was shortly to arrive in South Africa, where the government was very publicly standing back and waving it on its way. It looked like another of those times when decent, humane people were going to have to grit their teeth and accept that there was nothing they could do to stop it. This time, though, it turned out that they could.

It began with a rare piece of honesty. Someone on the Cosco (China Ocean Shipping Company)-owned ship An Yue Jiang did what they’re meant to and faxed to their destination port details of the hazardous cargo they were coming to deliver: rocket propelled grenades, mortar bombs and three million rounds of assault rifle ammunition.

For the Chinese government this was a normal, open, commercial transaction with its counterpart in Zimbabwe and there was no need to use the usual euphemisms of “machine parts” or “engine spares”. Once unloaded, the ammunition would be moved by truck to its destination in Harare.

The news leaked. The manifest was passed to the press and protests were sounded. The South African government quickly signalled its belief that this was a lawful cargo. It probably was, but that didn’t make it a moral one.

There was an outcry, but the two governments must have made a hard-headed calculation that outcries don’t stop truck convoys. If they did then they were wrong. A pressure group, the South African Law Commission (SALC), backed by the bishop of Durban, moved with great speed to get a high court injunction to impound the cargo. The judiciary’s act of independence took the government by surprise. Unless the cargo could be transhipped and sent on its way at double speed, it was likely to spend the next few months in a customs warehouse while the lawyers argued over it. What came next turned it from a local story into a world one – and meant that the only place the arms were going was back out to sea.

No go

In Durban the dockers debated whether to offload the arms-packed containers. They were members of the ITF-affiliated Satawu union whose general secretary, Randall Howard, is also the federation’s president. Their defiance, fed by the information gathered by ITF inspector Sprite Zungu, was quickly made public. A Satawu statement made it clear: “Our members employed at Durban container terminal will not unload this cargo. Neither will any of our members in the truck driving sector move this cargo”.

“There was a groundswell of opposition to what was happening in Zimbabwe,” said Howard. “Given the violence there, given the political instability there, given the position of workers there, we did not want to put more weapons into the hands of a repressive government.”

In the face of this resistance, the ship quickly retreated, switching off its transponder to avoid detection and beginning a two-month game of cat and mouse. The dockers’ action was the first step in turning what had begun as a leak from a port office into an international arms embargo. The ITF made it clear that the only acceptable outcome was that the cargo was either impounded or returned to Shanghai.

The ship’s voyage plan, which revealed it making a run for Mozambique, where the government was expected to be compliant, was leaked to the ITF. General secretary David Cockroft got on the phone to the country, where the head of the Sintrat truckers’ union jumped out of bed and into his car then sped to Maputo, where he spent the night persuading dockers to act in solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe, with their counterparts in South Africa and with his members, who were definitely going to make sure that the arms weren’t going to make it to Zanu-PF on the roads of their nation.

With Mozambican workers solid against the load, the An Yue Jiang backtracked, looking for another country where it would get a friendly reception.

For the world’s media the chase was on, as they desperately searched for news of the fugitive vessel’s whereabouts. Trade unions and the ITF were joined by international NGOs in trying to secure pledges that wherever was chosen for the next landfall there’d be no welcome for the arms. When the Southern African Bishops’ Conference offered its help, the ITF asked it to use its influence on neighbouring countries to reject the load and, in the face of the burgeoning world news story, one by one they began to line up and voice their disapproval. However, trade unions in some of those countries warned that the promises were just that. If the ship could be covertly docked with government approval then it could be covertly offloaded too.

The ITF now came into its own as the organisation best able to stop the transfer of the arms by exposing the ship’s plans. Cockroft promised: “The ITF, our member trade unions and the International Trade Union Confederation [ITUC] are doing everything we consider necessary to stop this dangerous and destabilising shipment reaching Zimbabwe. We will continue to do so, we hope with the support of the region’s governments, but without them if necessary. This materiel must not reach Zimbabwe, a country whose people are crying out for food and freedom, not bullets.”

Press storm

Thanks to invaluable outside support with tracking the ship, the ITF was now the only organisation with both the maritime expertise to anticipate next ports of call and with international reach to mobilise press and public pressure on the governments involved within minutes of receiving a location report. Over 2,000 news reports used the ITF’s information in the first two weeks alone.

By exposing all attempts to let the ship quietly dock, the federation was able to both shame those governments into publicly withdrawing their support for its mission and, thanks to its affiliates and contacts on the ground, hold them to their word by showing that workers were not going to let any such attempt succeed.

With the ship just outside South African territorial waters and heading north at reduced speed to conserve its dwindling fuel, transport unions in Namibia mobilised and pledged that they would not allow the load to be landed and sent through their country if it docked at Walvis Bay. It also faced two injunctions if it did.

In response, the An Yue Jiang’s moved further out to sea to escape detection. Given its fuel reserves, the only viable destinations were now the ports of Lobito or Luanda in Angola, whose government had failed to issue an unequivocal promise they wouldn’t hand the arms over to Zimbabwe. The situation was further confused when the world’s Portuguese-speaking press reported that the ship was docked in Luanda, the arms were en route to Harare and everyone could go home. In a typical piece of bluster, Zimbabwean deputy information minister Bright Matonga claimed that the ammunition had indeed been landed and was already in Zanu-PF’s hands.

The ITF spent a tense day warning everyone to hold their positions and pointing out that the An Yue Jiang was still hundreds of nautical miles away. Rumours fed on rumours and there was a strange resignation among many of the groups opposing the arms transfer, who seemed to almost want to believe that evil had triumphed and it was all over. The ITF was kept busy explaining why the containers couldn’t have been unloaded onto mysterious flying boats far out on stormy seas (they wouldn’t be able to land or take off), transferred to small boats (they’d sink) or have been whisked to Congo Brazzaville and back in a few hours (the An Yue Jiang would need hydrofoils and rocket motors). Matonga’s claim would eventually be disowned by his superiors, but not before causing further bouts of speculation.

The ITUC provided invaluable help by calling on its contacts in Angola. And at the same time the An Yue Jiang came close to escaping detection, slowing almost to a standstill for four days, awaiting orders. Then they got them and headed at high speed, seemingly for Lobito.

Once again trade unionists jumped in cars in the middle of the night and raced to the harbourside. Their efforts would have been in vain if it hadn’t have been for a significant piece of luck. The Angolan government was threatening port and maritime officials and ordering them to keep quiet and say nothing, but an alert listener picked up a single radio message. The ship was bypassing Lobito and would be ushered into Luanda under cover of darkness. Armed with this knowledge, the ITF was able to publicise and help stop what looked very much like a government-approved attempt to secretly get the arms ashore.

Instead, when the An Yue Jiang arrived, it was met and watched by representatives of the port workers’ union and the Angolan trade union congress, who checked the cargo being offloaded. The ammunition stayed on board. As the ITF had requested, the crew was rested, the ship was refuelled and set sail for China, still under surveillance by the ITF’s sources – to which the organisation owes much, including anonymity. Two weeks later it arrived in China, with its military load still onboard.

Worldwide response

The resistance to the An Yue Jiang saga galvanised not just public but political opinion too. The US Congress commended the ITF and the participating unions, as did the UK and Australian foreign ministers. The British prime minister backed an arms embargo on the Zimbabwean regime – successfully in the case of the European Union, which also praised the part played by unions.

The UN sent an expert team to pick up tips on shadowing illegal arms shipments. If there were lessons for them in how something can be done even when the rules seem to say otherwise, then the same lesson could be celebrated by everyone actually involved. Cockroft concluded: “When governments refuse to do what they should, it’s in the power of ordinary people – in the ITF, our member unions, the ITUC, SALC and the churches – to do what has to be done. We will draw on that experience if we learn that any further attempts are being made to hand Mugabe’s thugs the weapons they would doubtless use against the people of Zimbabwe.”

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Issue 34 - January 2009

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