Self-proclaimed president Michel Djotodia also becomes defence minister as allegations emerge over use of child soldiers
The self-proclaimed president of the Central African Republic (CAR) has announced a caretaker government as allegations emerged that he sent child soldiers to their deaths during a bloody coup.
Michel Djotodia will also act as defence minister while several members of his Seleka rebel coalition are to run other ministries, a decree broadcast on national radio said. Civilian opposition representative Nicolas Tiangaye will remain as prime minister.
Djotodia, who drew several hundred residents in a march of support on Saturday, has vowed to run the former French colony until elections in 2016. He seized power last month when rebels swept into the capital, Bangui, after the collapse of a power-sharing deal, forcing president François Bozizé to flee the country.
The internationally condemned coup caused bloodshed and widespread looting. Last week the Red Cross said 78 bodies had been found. Thirteen South African soldiers were killed, the country's worst military loss since the end of racial apartheid and the subject of growing political controversy.
Soldiers who were among South Africa's 298-strong force defending the Bozizopposition representative Nicolas Tiangaye will remain as prime minister regime have told of their trauma at realising they were shooting at children in the ranks of an estimated 3,000 rebels.
"It was only after the firing had stopped that we saw we had killed kids," one survivor of the battle of Bangui was quoted as saying by South Africa's Sunday Times. "We did not come here for this… to kill kids. It makes you sick. They were crying calling for help… calling for [their] mums."
A paratrooper told the paper: "We killed little boys… teenagers who should have been in school."
Other reports said many of the rebel fighters appeared to be 14 to 16 years old, some under the influence of alcohol or drugs. The surviving soldiers have also complained that they began running out of ammunition and only had one doctor to provide medical support.
The incident has cast an unflattering light on South Africa's ambitions to project itself as a continental power and raised questions about its support for Bozizé, a deeply unpopular figure who himself came to power in a coup a decade ago.
Mondli Makhanya, a columnist for the Sunday Times, compared the adventure with Britain's involvement in the Iraq war and demanded: "What the heck are we doing over there?"
On Monday the leading opposition party in South Africa announced that it would table an urgent parliamentary motion to force the withdrawal of troops from the CAR. "Latest reports are that South African troops were involved in direct combat with both the Seleka rebels, including young children, as well as Bozizé's own mutinous soldiers," said Helen Zille, leader of the Democratic Alliance. "The conclusion is inescapable that the South African troops were deployed to defend the faltering and dictatorial Bozizé regime."
She added: "What makes this intervention even more disturbing is that the deployment was reportedly undertaken against expert military advice, allegedly to protect the business interests of a politically connected elite, both in South Africa and in the CAR. If this is so, President [Jacob] Zuma's position both as president of the republic and commander in chief of the armed forces, becomes untenable. The nation must know the truth."
Last week the Mail & Guardian newspaper published an investigation into South Africa's extensive business interests in the mineral-rich CAR. Its front page headline asked: "Are these the deals our troops died for?"
On Monday Jackson Mthembu, national spokesperson for the governing African National Congress (ANC), responded: "We want to put it on record that the ANC as an organisation does not have business interests in CAR. Secondly, the deployment of soldiers in CAR was a government decision deriving from our foreign policy and endorsed by both the African Union and the United Nations."
Mthembu also threatened legal action, claiming the Mail & Guardian was "pissing on the graves of gallant fighters who put their lives on the line in service of our country and our continent".
Zuma is due to attend an extraordinary summit of the Economic Community of Central African States on Wednesday to be hosted by the Chadian leader Idriss Déby Itno.
via The Guardian World News http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/01/central-african-republic-leader-government
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