ABSTRACT
It is only natural that the Organization of African Unity (OAU) should also be active in this issue. The condemnation of the OAU Council of Ministers in response to the mercenary threat to Guinea (1970) was followed by a timely resolution of the OAU Summit (1971) in Addis Ababa. The report of a committee of experts presented to the Council of Ministers in Rabat (1972) referred to the grave threat posed by mercenarism to the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the member states. The African community of nations also share the view that a mercenary is anyone who, not a national of the state against which his actions are directed, is employed by or links himself to a group or an organization whose aim is to undermine the territorial integrity of the said state and to overthrow by force of arms or by any other means the government ofthat state. The trial (1976) of the British and American mercenaries in Luanda, Angola's capital, showed the criminal nature of their activity even in the wording of the defence of their lawyers who blamed their lack of education, unemployment and alienation for their inhumanity and sadism. That trial was a warning and message for the contemporary and future mercenaries to heed.7
