Arms show a riot for security

The arms merchants peddling their wares in Cape Town this week could hardly have staged a better publicity stunt had they tried - a riot complete with petrol bombs, armoured cars and rubber bullets.

Two days of headline-grabbing clashes between police and Hout Bay protestors came like manna from heaven for the salesmen 10km away at the African Aerospace and Defence show.

For at a time of shrinking defence budgets, arms manufacturers are increasingly shifting their focus from the military to the police and security markets.

Du Pont, for example, launched a new vest at the show that protects the wearer from stab wounds.

Megaray exhibited a locally designed laser strobe that reduces rioters to quivering jelly.

UK Department of Trade and Investment officials at the show said the global market for security gear and services is worth $180-billion a year and is likely to double within four years.

"Spending on security is sometimes easier to justify politically than spending on defence," said Adam Thomas, the department's press officer.

Alan Malpas, regional director for the department, said military technology such as infra-red detection systems transferred "quite easily" from the battlefield to applications like airport or border surveillance.

"Terrorism is one of the key issues," he said. "We now live in a more dangerous world than we did previously, and there are the awkward questions you ask the government when something unfortunate happens: 'Why weren't you looking out for me?'"

Many arms makers at the show couched sales pitches in terms of saving lives, rather than ending them in a hail of lead and high explosive.

Paramount Group chairman Ivor Ichikowitz launched a new mine-protected infantry fighting vehicle in terms that suggested the ideal buyer would be someone like Mother Teresa or Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

"We can take these technologies and go and save lives with them," he said. "The new generation of African leaders is going to take this continent in a completely new direction, a direction that's not just about me and mine but about us and ours."

Ichikowitz, who launched Paramount in 1994 after cutting short a career in the dramatic arts, said the defence industry was largely recession-proof. "As the world economic realities have hit home, countries have realised that they need to start making investments in ensuring stability.

"The world has realised that conflict hot spots need to be dealt with - and they need to be dealt with fast because if you add those realities to the economic realities you have the potential for a major explosion."

Ichikowitz praised the current South African government for encouraging development of the local arms industry. "We went through a phase in our history where the priority of building a defence industry went out the window," he said.

"A strong aerospace and defence industry becomes the driver around which other hi-tech industries develop. We're now preparing ourselves, through the launch of truly world-beating products, to be able to go out there and once again become one of the leading defence industries of the world."

Cedric Costes, a vice-president of French-based Thales, said the arms business in Africa had not been hit as hard by recession as elsewhere. "If you look at Africa, security is an increasing concern. What we lose in defence, we pick up in security."