Mozambique Destruction :: Operations Rachel
Operations Rachel is an arms destruction process aimed at destroying arms caches in Mozambique
left over after the end of the civil war in that country. This destruction process takes on
the form of combined police operations between the Mozambican Police Service and the South
African Police Service comprising of multi-disciplinary teams reacting on information on the
location of the hidden and abandoned arms caches, and once identified their contents is
destroyed.
The arms and munitions not collected by the UN (UNMOZ 1993 – 1995) process or not handed
in by ex-combatants after the conflict ended started to find new markets by moving to
other conflict areas or in to the hands of criminal elements in the Southern African
region.
Violent crimes where the use of firearms played a prominent role started to increase in
both countries and both the South African and Mozambican Governments lacked effective
measures for coping with the resulting increase in these crimes and the increased
availability and mobility of firearms and munitions. The moment of change and the
political will to address this problem took place in March 1995 when the “Agreement Between
the Government of the Republic of Mozambique and the Government of the Republic of South
Africa in Respect of Co-Operation and Mutual Assistance in the Field of Crime Combating”
was signed by the then Presidents of the two countries, President Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
and President Joaquin Alberto Chissano.
Operations Rachel is information driven; meaning that it is largely depended on information
supplied to the police on the location of hidden and abandoned arms caches in Mozambique.
Information is forthcoming from ex-combatants, the general public and mostly by an informer
based network maintained by both police agencies.
Funding/Costs
From Rachel Operations 1 – 5 the South African Police Service paid the bulk of the costs for
each operation and provided the resources and expertise on weapons and the explosives for the
disposal to the operations.
In Operations 6 and 7 the European Union supplied the funding needed for the operations.
In Operations 8 the South African Police Service again supplied the bulk of the financial costs.
In Operation Rachel 9 SaferAfrica (a South African based NGO) supplied the financial means to
successfully conduct one big operation and two smaller Ad Hoc operations.
In Operation Rachel 10 (1) the SAPS again made internal funds available for the successful
execution of the operation.
In Operation Rachel 10 (2) again SaferAfrica secured the financial means for a successful
operation from the UK Government.
In Operation Rachel 11 (1) SaferAfrica secured the financial means again from the UK Government (DFID).
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