It was not Iraq that brought these lads into the orbit of the pentagon these guys are old friends.
South Africa was the agent of a a proxy war in Angola from the 1970s until late 1980s between the Soviets (using Cuban troops) and the unfree world lead by Thatcher and Reagan. This is one of the reasons the Brits and US refused to move on economic sanctions against the Apartheid regime until very late in the game as they (the National Party) were the wet boys projecting Western dominance throughout Southern Africa preventing Soviet expansion.
Besides providing arms (which in the mid-eighties a $billion worth of small arms were provided) the CIA played a huge role in formulating and coordinating the destablisation program in Southern Africa. In fact as memory serves me correctly the CIA coordinated the sharing of counter-insugency tactics between the Isarealis, the US, and SA. As an aside it was through the South African's that Israel aquired their enriched uranium.
South Africa hadbut a huge security apparatus in the mid 1980s of which only part was dedicated toward policing apartheid, the rest the was busy destabilising the Southern Africa with the full knoweldge and support of the Americans and British. The composition of the types of units talked about in this article South African Rekis (special forces) and counterinsurgency units like Koevoet and the Buffalo battalion were quite mixed and included ex Rohdesian and Angolan's (Portugese). In the wake of the winding down of Apartheid and the end of a cold war a couple of different Merc companies set up and many these professional killers joined. And they have used their apartheid era contacts to get contracts throughout the world not in the least from both the US and Israelis.
Travis
> >Apartheid Enforcers Guard Iraq for the U.S.
> >Marc Perelman, Forward
> >18 Feb. 04
> >http://forward.com/main/article.php?ref=perelman20040218608
> >
> >In its effort to relieve overstretched U.S. troops in Iraq, the Bush
> >administration has hired a private security company staffed with former
> >henchmen of South Africa's apartheid regime.
> >
> >The reliance on apartheid enforcers was highlighted by an attack in Iraq
> >last month that killed one South African security officer and wounded
> >another who worked for the subsidiary of a firm called Erinys
> >International. Both men once served in South African paramilitary units
> >dedicated to the violent repression of apartheid opponents.
> >
> >François Strydom, who was killed in the January 28 bombing of a hotel in
> >Baghdad, was a former member of the Koevoet, a notoriously brutal
> >counterinsurgency arm of the South African military that operated in
> >Namibia during the neighboring state's fight for independence in the
1980s.
> >His colleague Deon Gouws, who was injured in the attack, is a former
> >officer of the Vlakplaas, a secret police unit in South Africa.
> >
> >"It is just a horrible thought that such people are working for the
> >Americans in Iraq," said Richard Goldstone, a recently retired justice of
> >the Constitutional Court of South Africa and former chief prosecutor of
the
> >United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia
> >and Rwanda.
> >
> >The Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and the Pentagon did not
return
> >requests for comment...
>
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