Military camp sets alarm bells ringing for Jewish community

When a secret military training camp in Mpumalanga was discovered just days after the United States treasury sanctioned two South African individuals linked to Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), it set off alarm bells for South African Jews.

“The Jewish community continues to face a discriminate threat of terrorism by Islamist extremists within South African borders, with that threat heightened given current developments in Gaza,” says Ryan Cummings, the director of analysis at Africa-focused risk management company Signal Risk. “This incident will certainly lead to greater scrutiny of border control and regulation of the private security industry. [The latter] could be exploited by actors with nefarious intentions.”

While analysts note that the camp was probably an illegal base training soldiers linked to Libyan warlord General Khalifa Haftar, they say its existence raises concerns about South Africa’s intelligence, and its ability to clamp down on camps that may train terrorists.

“Does this increase the danger to the Jewish community? Of course, especially with the current antisemitism rampant in the world and the rhetoric of the South African government,” says Willem Els, senior training co-ordinator at the Institute for Security Studies. “There’s a heightened security risk to the Jewish community even without terrorists being trained here.

“What’s alarming is the reluctance of the government to act against the radicalism that fuels antisemites,” says Els. “In South Africa, with the direction that the government has taken, it places more risk on the community. Radical Islamists in South Africa might take it that the government would support them acting against Jews. That might lead some groups to take action, or it might lead to actions by lone wolves who are being radicalised. It may not be a sophisticated attack.”

Jevon Greenblatt, the head of Gauteng operations at the Community Security Organisation, disagrees. “I don’t think this incident signals a specific increase in risk to our community, but it does suggest that South Africa is seen as a destination for less than savoury individuals or groups to receive military-style training,” he says.

“As such, there’s no reason to believe that individuals linked to terror groups and radical ideologies won’t take advantage of this.

“We do have a new police minister, so perhaps this does indicate a shift that will result in a clampdown on such activities in South Africa, but it’s too early to make such an assessment,” Greenblatt says. “We know that there are those with radical views who see Jews as legitimate targets. Sadly, we can never drop our guard, and must continue to do everything within our power to protect ourselves, our community, and our Jewish way of life.”

Cummings agrees that “it appears that this training camp was specifically carried out by a Private Security Industry Authority-registered company, which was providing contracted services to a stakeholder in the Libyan government, namely the Libyan National Army under the command of General Khalifa Haftar”.

However, he says, a there’s most certainly reason to believe that extremist actors may have used – and continue to-use – South African territory for the purposes of training militant actors.

“Such accusations have been levelled against South Africa by the US treasury and have even been disclosed by militant groups themselves – most notably al-Shabaab, which has claimed to have trained some of its members in South Africa.”

Hussein Solomon, senior professor in the department of political science at the University of the Free State, says, “According to our Foreign Military Assistance Act, we may not train people from a conflict zone, and Libya is a conflict zone. So that would have been illegal, and how they got their visas for this training is questionable. That would be interesting to uncover, given issues of corruption in Home Affairs.

“One of the media reports that I saw said that [the camp] was discovered because there was a spike in crime among local residents, who believed that it was related to this military training camp, that the people there were basically stealing from them. They alerted the authorities. If this is the case, this once again suggests a massive failure in intelligence.

“So, this wasn’t a long-term sting. This wasn’t a great success for our intelligence services. This was local people getting robbed and then notifying the authorities that there was something odd going on at the camp. They operated based on that tip-off, which once again points to the inadequacy of our intelligence services.

“There are rumours of other camps, and indeed security officials themselves acknowledge that there are two other camps in Mpumalanga,” says Solomon. “There’s been talk of Islamist training camps in Mpumalanga going back to the 1990s. One wonders why there wasn’t action taken before. I would also flag that in spite of us having a new Cabinet and a government of national unity, the president hasn’t appointed a minister of intelligence. It’s a vacant position at the moment.”

Says Els, “We saw the US treasury cited the two people a week ago – one for financing and trafficking of terrorists for ISIS, and one for terrorist training. That gives us an indication that there must be some training going on in South Africa. Some years ago, there was an Al-Qaeda camp near Graaff Reinet in the Karoo, but the government just swept it under the carpet. There were also some camps near Pretoria, for ISIS and Al-Qaeda, which were also swept under the carpet. It’s been happening here for a long time.

“It seems that the Americans know more than the South Africans about what’s going on here,” he says. “So that means that yes, this poses a risk, especially for the Jewish community, in the wake of the current situation in the world.

“Do I think that the incident will herald the clamping down on terrorism activity in South Africa? It will put some pressure on the government and the police to actually inspect these sites. But it should also put some onus on our intelligence fraternity to identify and detect training camps. So, I think there will be a clampdown.”