An SA arms manufacturer under investigation for illegally exporting weapons said it hadn’t paid staff salaries for the past few months due to cash flow problems, though it denied its plant in Midrand had closed.
Truvelo Specialised Manufacturing, which makes precision firearms and sniper rifles, ran into difficulties after the Hawks seized a consignment of billets valued at R4.3m destined for Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2021 at the Durban harbour.
A criminal case was opened against Truvelo — a division of the Africa Defence Group — for the alleged illegal export of firearms in terms of the Firearms Control Act. The Hawks confiscated the two containers of 410 billets and a mobile workshop.
Truvelo says the investigation led to it losing a number of prospective contracts. The company’s problems were compounded by load-shedding and delays by the National Conventional Arms Control Committee (NCACC) in issuing export permits, according to Nols Fonternel, Truvelo’s newly appointed general manager.
That resulted in some clients and staff not being paid, while a number of workers have also resigned.
“We should resume production towards the end of July,” Fonternel told Business Day.
Truvelo maintains the billets are tooled steel pipes that still needed to be modified into gun barrels for AK-47 assault rifles. The Hawks consider the billets as firearms if the specifications of the act are correctly interpreted.
The Hawks confirmed the investigation has been completed and the docket has been handed to the National Prosecuting Authority to decide whether to press charges.
Fonternel, with more than 30 years’ service at Denel Land Systems, was appointed to revive the company.
“We are trying to pay partial salaries to our loyal remaining personnel. We are fortunate to have such people of whom some have been with us since 1994 [when the company was founded],” he said.
Arms consignments
An R10m order for anti-materiel rifles destined for the United Arab Emirates has been awaiting an export permit from the NCACC for several months, while a R25m order for 200 sniper rifles for Azerbaijan is in the pipeline. Various negotiations with African countries are also under way.
“We are in the process of appointing new people to replace the skills we lost through resignations,” Fonternel said.
Regarding the pending court case, he said Truvelo has obtained legal opinion “at the highest level” locally and abroad to prove that the billets cannot be considered firearms.
The billets were destined for the Virunga National Park in the DRC to replace the barrels of AK-47 rifles used by game rangers. A mobile workshop, with specialists from Truvelo, was scheduled to be deployed to repair and replace the gun barrels, and train Congolese to undertake the repairs themselves.
At the time of the confiscation the Hawks said the nature of the billets and the consignment’s specifications on export documents didn’t state the purpose of the materials. As such the necessary export permits for the export of firearms were also not obtained. Truvelo disagrees.
According to the act, anything designed to fire a projectile is considered a firearm even if it still has to be tooled for that purpose. A billet is therefore also a firearm in terms of the Act.
Sources at Truvelo at the time of the seizure said there were some “problems” shortly before the consignment was to be shipped. One of the officials involved in the negotiations abroad had insisted on being paid a fee for their part in the deal, they said.
Truvelo CEO Heine van Niekerk and his deputy, Maoto Mabogwane — who has his own arms company and was in a joint venture with Truvelo — have since parted ways. After a meeting on 20 July last year Mabogwane was informed that he has been removed as a director.
Mabogwane said he left Truvelo before that meeting because he was uncomfortable with aspects of how the company conducted its business.
Correction: July 13 2023
An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the consignment seized by the Hawks was R4.3bn. The correct amount is R4.3m.
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