With the end of the Cold War proxy conflicts, Southern Africa has been left with large numbers of weapons. These weapons have kept social stability and human development hostage as they are used to fuel crime and violence. Given the regional nature of weapons proliferation, efforts undertaken with one or more partners have the best chance of success.

Various countries in Southern Africa have entered into bilateral or trilateral co-operation agreements around arms control issues. The agreement between Mozambique and South Africa perhaps has had the most success in destroying surplus weapons.

In recognition of the extent of illicit arms smuggling, motor vehicle theft and the damaging effects that both were having on safety and security, Mozambique and South Africa signed a crime combating agreement in 1995. The agreement allows police forces of the two countries to undertake joint operations in response to common safety and security problems.

It was recognised that arms caches in Mozambique were a main source of arms being smuggled into South Africa. The joint operations (known as Operation Rachel) were established to find and destroy weapons within Mozambique left over from the war.

One of the main characteristics of the operations undertaken as part of Operation Rachel is that they have been intelligence-driven. It was agreed that both the Mozambican and South African police forces would gather information about cache locations. A team consisting of Mozambican and South African police would destroy the weapons on site. South Africa would pay the bulk of the costs of the operations and provide expertise on weapons and explosives disposal and destruction. As a result of increasing awareness about the programmes, private companies have become involved, giving incentives to informers who declare the location of arms caches. These informers are often women and children.

The Rachel operations also have an unorthodox policing approach. There is co-operation with individuals with information on arms caches who are often remunerated for disclosing their location. The rationale behind this approach is the belief that most of the cache caretakers have information about the whereabouts of other caches. "If you prosecute at the outset you lose the person’s co-operation to disclose other caches."

Since the initiative was launched, Operation Rachel has gone from strength to strength. By September 1998, three such operations had already taken place. Police statistics indicate that these operations have destroyed more than 300 tons of firearms and about four million rounds of ammunition.

As a result of these successes, Operation Rachel IV was undertaken in October 1998. While previous operations focused on southern Mozambique, Rachel IV went into the central Sofala province. Over thirty bomb, explosive and firearm disposal experts of the South Africa Police Service and twelve Mozambican experts were involved in the operation. The operation destroyed more than 100 tons of illegal weapons, including two cannons, assault rifles, four types of handguns, three types of detonators, eight types of mortar bombs and five types of rocket launchers.

The expectation is that, if these operations continue to be as successful as they are now, eventually most caches in Mozambique will be destroyed and hence one of the sources of illegal weapons will have been eliminated. The lessons of Operation Rachel will prove valuable for other regions considering similar programmes.

The Arms Management Programme of the Institute for Security Studies — understanding the importance of this indigenous operation in the context of regional initiatives for the control, management and reduction of small arms in Southern Africa — offers the first full account of the evolution and nature of the series of recovery operations entitled ‘Rachel’ in this monograph.

The Arms Management Programme believes that examples such as these need to be understood by the national, regional and international communities, since they represent a special type of feasible and desirable subregional initiative, one that — in time — might be perfected in order to generate a working model for other similar situations in the African context.