Unaccountable 00040| Willem ‘Ters’ Ehlers – apartheid’s secretary turned genocide arms dealer

by Mamello Mosiana, Hennie van Vuuren and Daniel Ford for Open Secrets

Willem ‘Ters’ Ehlers was a naval officer, apartheid loyalist and private secretary to PW Botha. Like many apartheid securocrats, Ehlers took his knowledge and contacts from the apartheid military state and privatised his services; this led him to a life of lucrative arms dealing. In 1994, Ehlers facilitated a deal to send weapons to government forces in Rwanda at the height of the genocide. He has never been held to account.

South Africa and Rwanda embarked on two disparate paths in April 1994. One country towards a democratic election, the other towards a genocide that would kill an estimated one million people in just 100 days. Unspoken and sometimes forgotten are the ties that bind these two moments. While South Africa was ushering in democracy, apartheid’s personnel had found new opportunities to sow misery in Rwanda in pursuit of profit. This Unaccountable profile tells the story of one such man, Willem “Ters” Ehlers. 

This profile is based on Open Secrets’ investigative report, The Secretary: The Middlemen and Corporations that Armed the Rwandan Genocide, published in May 2023. 

Mandela’s photographer, Botha’s aide

Ehlers was no ordinary photographer. As Botha’s private secretary and aide-de-camp, the commodore was his confidant and belonged to the powerful and paranoid state president’s inner circle. Military expenditure skyrocketed to over 30% of government spending by the mid-1980s. Many state secrets which passed across Botha’s desk went, by extension, through Ehlers. This would have given Ehlers access to some of the most closely guarded secrets of the state — the development of the South African nuclear weapons programme, clandestine offers of weapons from across the globe, and the booming arms trade with countries such as France, China, Israel, West Germany and many others.

Apartheid’s old boy network

In late 1989, Ehlers lost his position when Botha was ousted from power. Ehlers became part of what Human Rights Watch, in a report published in 2000, described as South Africa’s “old boy network” spanning national defence and private business and drawing on experience gained dodging apartheid arms embargoes. This network would go on to run the arms trade in Africa and globally, which included dealing with some of the world’s worst human rights offenders.

In 1990, Ehlers made a seamless transition from the security state to one of its most curious, secret front companies — the Seychelles-based GMR. Named after the Italian Giovanni Mario Ricci, GMR was a sanctions-busting front for the apartheid regime from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. Ehlers was tasked with taking over the reins of GMR from Craig Williamson, whom he knew from his days in Botha’s presidency. GMR’s primary purpose was to soften the blow of disinvestment from apartheid South Africa. Williamson is on record as having said that GMR was used to “avoid any inhibiting laws” preventing the import of goods to South Africa. 

According to press reports at the time, Ehlers served as chief of GMR until 1992 and in July 1994 the company confirmed that he had left its services. However, by then Ehlers had transitioned fully into being an international arms trader, and his networks in the Seychelles and around the world would come in handy. One transaction facilitated by Ehlers through the Seychelles was for weapons that were used in the Rwandan genocide. 

The Malo arms

On 9 June 1994, Alfred Gakuba Kalisa was arrested in a First National Bank (FNB) branch at the Carlton Centre in Johannesburg while trying to deposit Thomas Cook traveller’s cheques worth $1,597,000. Kalisa was informed that the cheques were stolen and taken downtown to John Vorster Square police station and interrogated. He told the police an intriguing tale about Ehlers facilitating a weapons deal for Zaire (now DRC).

According to Kalisa, he had recently been contacted by a “Mr Camille”, a man claiming to work for the Ministry of Defence in Mobutu Sese Seko’s government in Zaire, and another man known as “Jean Jacques”, who in turn worked for Camille. Camille had asked Kalisa whether he could put him in contact with someone from the state-owned arms company Armscor, to which Kalisa replied that he “was not in that type of business” but could put Camille in touch with his “good friend” Ehlers, who also worked in the armaments business.

Kalisa arranged a meeting between himself, Ehlers, Camille and Jean Jacques in Johannesburg in May 1994. Kalisa provided testimony to the International Criminal Tribunal (ICTR) for Rwanda in 1995, in which he discussed the details of this meeting. Kalisa said that Camille and Jean Jacques told Ehlers they were interested in purchasing weapons for Zaire. Ehlers, in turn, said that he could supply weapons stockpiled in the Seychelles. 

The weapons stockpiled in the Seychelles had travelled from Serbia aboard a Greek ship, the Malo. The ship had set sail from Montenegro in the Mediterranean towards Somalia. The vessel was intercepted by Seychellois authorities in March 1993. This was because Somalia was under a UN embargo due to the conflict there. Moreover, the origin of the weapons was Serbia, which was also under an embargo because of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. The weapons stockpile included 2,500 AK-47s, 6,000 mortars and 5,600 fragmentation grenades.

What did Ehlers know?

As discussed in more detail below, the arms were always destined for Rwanda rather than Zaire. The arms were flown from the Seychelles, then into Goma in the DRC which borders Gisenyi, Rwanda — their ultimate destination.  So just how much could Ehlers have known about the final destination of these weapons? 

Ehlers would likely have been aware of the role of Zaire as an issuer of end-user certificates for the apartheid government. Moreover, Kalisa, a man who described himself as Ehlers’ “friend”, was apprehended before the deal was carried out, which means that Ehlers’ payment was put in jeopardy. 

Kalisa had Bagosora’s identity confirmed to him by police and a call he subsequently made to Bagosora to inform him of the failed transaction. This led Bagosora to make alternate plans for the payment to proceed. It is highly unlikely that this would have been missed by Ehlers: he was with Bagosora in the Seychelles, he was a “friend” of Kalisa’s, and he would have noticed that the payment arrangements changed. 

In particular, he would have noticed that he was now no longer being paid in traveller’s cheques but by a bank transfer from the BNP account of the Rwandan government. That should have been enough confirmation for Ehlers that he was doing business with the Rwandan government. 

Beyond this, Ehlers was procuring the arms from government officials, like Colonel Payet in the Seychelles, who was duty-bound to verify the identity of the end-user. They either flagrantly abandoned this duty or willingly assisted the purchase. This is evidenced by the fact that a Seychellois newspaper later identified Bagosora as a Rwandan official and thereby prevented the transfer of a third consignment of arms that was part of this deal. That knowledge of this deal — in particular Bagosora’s involvement and the final destination of arms being Rwanda — came to light so quickly, makes it difficult to believe that Ehlers would not have known who he was dealing with and where the arms were destined to be used.

In August 2022, Open Secrets sent detailed questions to Ehlers via WhatsApp and email. Instead of replying to our questions, Ehlers asked to meet with Open Secrets for an interview. On 26 September 2022, we met with Ehlers at the Intercontinental Hotel in Johannesburg. Ehlers firmly denied that he was an arms dealer, admitting to only one arms transaction stating  that ‘‘I can categorically state that I sold two years before the Seychelles transaction…I sold a small amount of ammunition to the Zairis. And I say I, in my personal capacity.”

Throughout our interview, Ehlers denied knowing that the destination of the Malo arms was Rwanda. Rather, he claimed he was doing a favour for his friend, the president of the Seychelles, France-Albert René, by helping facilitate a deal with Zaire. Ehlers also insisted that the allegations that he had sold arms to Rwanda were part of a smear campaign by a family member due to a dispute over an inheritance. 

Bisesero

The influx of automatic rifles, grenades and mortars into northwestern Rwanda in mid-June 1994 had a significant effect on violence in the region. The weapons Bagosora purchased from Ehlers arrived just before troops and civilian militia departed by bus for Bisesero, a site of significant violence that occurred towards the end of the 100-day genocide. Bisesero is a range of hills in western Rwanda. It is about a three-hour drive from Gisenyi, where FAR troops (Forces Armées Rwandaises or Rwandan Armed Forces) were based at the time and was one of the main sites that refugees fled to during the genocide.

The final attack on Bisesero was one of the FAR’s last desperate acts before many of its leaders fled the country. Preparation for the attack took place in early June 1994, at a meeting in a hotel in Gisenyi, near the FAR base. On 17 June, a day after the first arms transfer, Anatole Nsengiyumva (the ranking military officer in Gisenyi) received orders from Édouard Karemera (who was accused of orchestrating an earlier large-scale assault in the Bisesero hills in mid-May 1994) to send troops to the Bisesero region to participate in a “clean-up” operation. Orders were given for the slaughter to commence no later than 20 June, presumably to get as much killing done before the anticipated French intervention.

The result of this coordinated and premeditated assault was devastating and claimed well over 1,000 lives. Those who took part in these murders included the military, militia, and civilians. Other estimates have placed the number of people slain in the Bisesero hills as high as 50,000 over the entire period of the genocide. 

Witness accounts and letters indicate that weapons such as those imported by Bagosora and Ehlers were used in the June 1994 attack. The first of these accounts is in a letter from one regional leader to another, dated 24 June, that confirms the arrival of militia forces from Gisenyi. This letter was central to the court’s decision to find Nsengiyumva guilty of dispatching troops to Bisesero. This important evidence was presented at Karemera’s trial in late 2006, and it reliably indicates that firearms were used in the Bisesero assault.

Other accounts of the Bisesero assault provide supporting evidence of the use of firearms and grenades. One example of such evidence comes from the accounts of multiple eyewitnesses who described an attack on a cave in which more than 40 refugees were hiding. Grenades were used to flush out and ultimately kill the civilians within.

The weapons procured by Ehlers and Bagosora included hand grenades and rifle-propelled grenades. As part of the preparation for the Bisesero assault, grenades were specifically requested. It is impossible to overstate the brutality and the scale of the events in Bisesero, which were very likely worsened by the arms provided by Ehlers and Bagosora.