ZIMBABWE: 8 SOUTHERN AFRICAN ARMIES ON JOINT MANOEUVRES

(17 Apr 1997) English/Nat

Eight southern African armies are on Thursday completing joint manoeuvres which are seen as a first step towards setting up a local peace keeping force to intervene in African conflicts.

African nations are determined to form a military force capable of carrying out humanitarian missions in flash points across the continent.

It's a task that's made all the more pressing by the West's reluctance to deploy troops in Africa following its humiliation in Somalia three years ago.

These troops could prove the nucleus of a future African peacekeeping force.

Soldiers from eight southern African nations have been learning peace keeping techniques and developing what strategists call "inter-operability" between troops of diverse training and cultural backgrounds.

Under the United Nations flag, the joint peace keeping force has been drilled in confronting almost every situation that could be imagined during a genuine peace keeping operation.

Soldiers from Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe were joined by observers from Angola and Botswana.

It's been the first time that South African troops took part in the joint manoeuvres

British and Zimbabwean officers who designed the exercise have drawn on their experiences in Angola, Bosnia, Rwanda and Somalia to make the peace keeping theatre as authentic as possible.

SOUNDBITE:
The aim of this exercise is to get the inter-operability of all the forces on the same level which means the exchange of ideas, of training to get everyone up to the same level.
SUPER CAPTION: Major Cobus Valentine of the South African Army

Local villagers have been drafted in to make the exercises as lifelike as possible and to give the troops practice in crowd control.

Officers and soldiers alike say they value the opportunity to work together with their counterparts from countries which have often been bitter enemies in the past.

SOUNDBITE:
This exercise must not be the first and last, but let's try to make it continue so that our colleague can learn much from this exercise.
SUPER CAPTION: Zimbabwean soldier

Impoverished African countries may not have the military hardware or the cash to mount large scale peace keeping operations.

But Western countries say they'll put the cash and the logistics up front if Africans will do the job.

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