The Mail & Guardian reported last week that the government plans to spend many more billions to refurbish the South African National Defence Force. We question the wisdom of spending these sums on "defence" in the absence of a reasonable threat to national security, particularly when the money could be more profitably spent on addressing poverty.

Of equal concern are indications that officially sanctioned corruption is playing itself out under cover of the weapons deals. We hear distressing accounts of moves by senior government members to sideline officials in the Department of Trade and Industry who continue to insist that original guarantees are met. We are told of ministers accepting gigantic bribes and of officials involved in the process holding shares in companies contracted to supply components for the weaponry. 

We are baffled that South African companies are being sold to foreign interests at a fraction of their real value. Yet the government seems to have no interest in getting to the bottom of the affair. When Pan-Africanist Congress MP Patricia de Lille raised these issues in Parliament eight months ago, she was reviled. The M&G and other newspapers that have reported on aspects of the corruption have been largely ignored. The auditor  general was not allowed to investigate anything beyond the procedures followed in awarding the deals, leaving the real issues of corruption and self-enrichment out of the picture. And the already squeezed Heath special investigating unit, though it is sitting on many boxes of relevant documentation and is convinced something is rotten, has yet to request that the government authorise an investigation.

We call on the Heath unit to either force the matter by calling for a proclamation or to hand over the documents to the media. Mostly, we call on the government to allow meaningful investigations and to make it clear that its interest lies in getting to the bottom of corrupt practices, and not merely papering them over.

With acknowledgement to Ivor Powell and the Mail & Guardian.