The 95 Libyan nationals who are charged with misrepresentation in an application for a visa following their arrest at a suspect training camp in White River, Mpumalanga. pic NPA
Cape Town - Expert analysts monitoring potential acts of terrorism in South Africa said there should be significant concern among local authorities that our country was being used as a potential training hub for designated terrorist organisations which may pose a discernible threat to our national security.
This is the view of Ryan Cummings, who is the director of analysis at Africa-focused risk management company Signal Risk.
He is also an independent consultant to various international news media outlets and speaks on issues of terrorism, conflict, migration, and political instability in Africa.
The past week as the news broke about the 95 Libyan nationals who are charged with misrepresentation in an application for a visa following their arrest at a suspected training camp in White River, Mpumalanga, the question arose nationally how safe South Africa was from being targeted by extremist groups to carry out military training on African soil.
This week, Monica Nyuswa, spokesperson for the Directorate of Public Prosecutions in Mpumalanga confirmed that after the first appearance of the group at the White River Magistrate’s Court, an Arabic interpreter was needed at their next court date set for August 5.
The court revealed the men are foreign nationals, who applied for a study visa but that during police’s investigations, together with Home Affairs, it was discovered they were receiving training in a suspected military base.
“The Libyans are alleged to have been in the country since April 2024. Their visas have since been revoked,” Nuyswa said.
“The NPA has since not ruled out that the group will be facing additional charges and did not respond to queries from the Weekend Argus.
Cummings said training camps were not something new to South Africa, dating far back as a decade and even more and that the latest incident did raise questions and concern.
“First verifiable reports of South Africa hosting training camps for the al-shabaab terrorist group surfaced in 2013 following the attack on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping complex. Details of this were contained in an intelligence dossier provided to Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta,” he said via his X account which he shared with Weekend Argus.
“Organised by the alleged mastermind of the Westgate assault, Abdukadir Mohammed, the plot was reportedly hatched within South Africa.
“The same dossier further claimed that in October 2011, al-Shabaab planned to launch attacks against the OTC bus station and Kwa Mwaura Bar in Nairobi by South African-trained operatives. Both facilities were eventually attacked in October 2011 and March 2012 respectively.
“In October 2013, ISS researcher, Anneli Botha, had interviewed an al-Shabaab member who had been sent to SA for two years to receive training.
“He said he lived and worked here and obtained a South African passport while in the country,” she had noted.
“In 2007 Nazier Desai and cleric Ahmed Sadek Desai were accused of running and financing a training camp outside Port Elizabeth.
“Then head of the National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee Barry Gilder, conceded that there could be training camps operating in South Africa.
Cummings said this week’s unravelling was just the tip of the iceberg.
“In several occasions, going back to 2007 where there have been training camps being sited by intelligence sources in South Africa, that has been linked to transnationalism and extremists, such as Al Qaeda, al-shabaab , or recently the Isis,” he told Weekend Argus.
“What happened in White River could be that our country is being exploited by criminals and extremist organisations to engage in acts of training, acts of financing, and various kinds of auxiliary activities, with links to transnational crimes in terrorism.
“The concern should be is these guys could be in shift focus in South Africa and there should be a change in our domestic and foreign policy.”’
Dr Pieter Groenewald, FF+ leader and Minister of Correctional Services said he had raised the flag regarding military training camps during a Parliamentary debate before but it was ignored.
“There are many questions hanging over the military training that 95 Libyans reportedly received at a private training camp near White River in Mpumalanga, especially because the government appears to be ignorant,” he said.
“I recently posed several questions in Parliament about the military training that foreign groups are reportedly receiving in South Africa, particularly in the Eastern Cape. Each question was met with a negative answer.
“The White River incident offers irrefutable proof that it is indeed the case, and the government could have something to hide.
“South Africa simply cannot be allowed to turn into a training base for international terrorist groups endangering citizens’ lives,” he said.
Professor Helen Duffy, of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights at the Grotius Centre, Leiden University, and honorary/visiting Professor at Glasgow, Melbourne and US universities, who also penned a monograph on global trends in counter-terrorism: implications for human rights in Africa last year said this was nothing new .
“Sub-Saharan Africa was described in 2022 as an epicentre of terrorism, accounting for 48% of global deaths from this cause. ‘Unprecedented’ levels of terrorist violence in the Sahel led to terrorism deaths rising 1 000% between 2007 and 2021.
“In Somalia alone it is estimated that more than 2 million people have been internally displaced and more than 900 000 externally displaced.
“The number of affected states is growing.”
Weekend Argus also approached the SANDF for comment on terrorism and their preparedness but they said it was a matter for the police and judiciary.