SA arms dealers caught in coup

South African weapons manufacturer Paramount visited the Central African Republican capital, Bangui, to discuss an arms deal with François Bozizé on the eve of the coup that swept him from power .

Two Paramount employees, Miles Chambers and Clement Salanga, arrived in the country's capital on Friday March 22, with French national Emmanuel Rutman, who runs a waste consultancy in Paris. They were to meet Bozizé to discuss selling weapons to the embattled dictator as rebel forces closed in.

On March 23, believing they were on their way to meet the president, the Paramount team were detained near Bozizé's palace for five hours.

When rebel soldiers engaged in battle with South African troops on the outskirts of the city that afternoon, Bozizé's soldiers fled. The Paramount team ran to a diplomat's home and hid for two days before being evacuated to the airport by French troops and flown back to South Africa in a Paramount jet.

"We hid their South African passports in the garden," said the diplomat. "We were terrified the Seleka guys would come and kill us."

Chambers confirmed his team was in the CAR to present Paramount's products to Bozizé, but claimed he had no idea a coup was imminent.

Paramount CEO Ivor Ichikowitz said: "There was no dealing going on. There was a formal letter of invitation from the president to make a presentation. It was so far down the food chain I wasn't even aware of it."

South Africa suffered 40 casualties in the fighting, including the loss of 13 soldiers. There are only a handful left in Bangui, protected by French soldiers at the airport.

Other companies that concluded deals with Bozizé are DIG Oil, and Inala Centrafrique, a diamond venture majority owned by a Congo-Brazzaville national, Didier Pereira.

Pereira, who has business ties with several ANC heavyweights, was appointed by Bozizé as special envoy to South Africa's military mission to the CAR - which included personal protection for its president. Paramount owner Ichikowitz is also regarded as close to President Jacob Zuma.

The new CAR public works minister and government spokesman, Crépin Mboli-Goumba, told the Sunday Times this week that Bozizé "was a crook who needs to be arrested and tried for murder. You cannot side with him against a people trying to free itself."

He said Bozizé's son and ousted defence minister, Francis Bozizé, visited Zuma twice in South Africa late last year, the meetings brokered "through Pereira". Mboli-Goumba also said a fresh batch of South African troops arrived in the CAR at least a week before Zuma signed off their deployment and told the nation about it on January 2.