Official: 400 South African soldiers sent to Bangui

South Africa has authorised the sending of 400 soldiers to Central African Republic (CAR) where government and regional troops are battling a rebel insurgency.

“President Jacob Zuma has authorised the employment of 400 South African National Defence Force personnel to the Central African Republic, to render support in fulfilment of an international obligation of the Republic of South Africa towards the CAR,” Zuma’s office said in a statement.

Their mandate is through March 2018, it added.

The South African presidency said the soldiers would help with capacity-building of the Central African Republic defence force.

It “will also assist CAR with the planning and implementation of the disarmament, demobilisation and re-integration processes”, it added.

Earlier a military source said at least 200 South African soldiers had arrived in the capital Bangui to try to secure it from advancing rebels.

“This well-equipped South African contingent arrived in the middle of the week. … Its mission is to secure the Central African capital,” the source told AFP.

The troops, based not far from the neighbourhood housing the residence of President Francois Bozize, “joins in Central Africa a South African military contingent already deployed as part of military cooperation”, the source added.

After the South African troops arrived, the coordinator of the Citizens Coalition Opposed to the Armed Rebels, Levy Yakite, appealed Sunday on national radio for his movement to remove roadblocks set up to prevent attempts by the rebels to infiltrate.

With the Seleka rebel coalition threatening to march on Bangui, Gabon, Congo and Cameroon in recent days have each sent 120 troops, according to a source with the multinational African peacekeeping force FOMAC.

They will join 400 Chadian soldiers already deployed to protect Damara, the last town on the rebels’ road to Bangui, the source said.

Meanwhile, the Central African Republic rebels who are within striking distance of the country’s capital repeated their demand Sunday that any deal in peace talks due to start Tuesday must include the departure of President Francois Bozize.

The central African regional bloc CEEAC hopes to host the negotiations between the rebels and Bozize in Gabon’s capital Libreville in a bid to end the month-long crisis in the mineral-rich but impoverished and coup-prone state.

But prospects for a solution are clouded by the rebels’ insistence that the president, who came to power in a coup in 2003, must stand down and by Bozize’s flat refusal to do so.

Eric Massi, a Paris-based spokesman for the rebels, made the demand again on Sunday, saying the insurgents were hoping to achieve a political solution that would restore peace but that “Bozize’s departure is non-negotiable”.