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Letter in Response that SA Defence Target Declined to Publish |
S.A. DEFENCE TARGET
LETTERS AND COMMENTS
2000-11-14
Dear Richard,
After careful consideration, the editorial committee
of the SA Defence Target decided not to include you letter addressed to the
editor in the October issue of the newsletter. This decision was taken due
to the official investigation launched by government into the package deals. We
feel that this matter is to sensitive at this stage to publish even in our
newsletter. We will publish articles on progress made with the
investigation received from government but will not even quote other
publications with regards to the package deals at this stage.
I am truely sorry that we could not publish your
letter.
Kind regards
Leona Redelinghuys
Member of the Editorial Committee
SA Defence Target
The following letter could not be
published due to the "sensitivity of the matter" :
2000-10-17
Dear Editor
Thank you for publishing our letter in the January 2000 edition of S.A. Defence
Target which corrects incorrect news published in your November 1999 edition.
Our letter was intended to be just that, a letter that sets out the correct
facts, which you yourselves acknowledge by means of a footnote to our letter.
That is all.
It is nevertheless interesting to see Mr Moynot's response in your February
edition. His reference to "sinister manoeuvres", as well as accusations
of "damageable insinuations", are not only factually
irrelevant to the statements set out in our letter, but inflammatory and
litigatious.
But seeing that Mr Moynot takes the liberty of using your publication as a
platform for veiled threats of legal action against us in a court of law, as
well as other completely irrelevant statements concerning the SA Navy's new
submarines, we have no hesitation in providing you and the defence fraternity
with the real facts of this matter; ones that we have brought to the attention of the
highest levels of the Department of Defence and Auditor-General, as well as ones
that we are quite able and willing to substantiate in a court of law.
The undisputable facts of the matter are that the Information Management System
(IMS) was developed, at significant expense to the South African taxpayer, as
well as to our own company, specifically for the SA Navy's light frigate or
corvette programme. It was furthermore nominated as an element of the combat
system within the corvette request for tender baseline and was selected by the
SA Navy/Armscor Corvette Joint Project Team prior to Best and Final Offers.
However, Thomson-CSF and ADS, by virtue of their exclusive status as sole bidder
for the Corvette Combat Suite, manipulated risk and cost factors to the
detriment of the C²I² Systems IMS in favour of their own Thomson Group
company's proprietary Fast Ethernet-based combat suite data bus, the Diacerto
data bus. This seemingly left the DoD no choice other than to accept the foreign
product - very unwilling I am told.
But herein lies the rub, was the IMS deselected by the State, or was it, for all
practical purposes, deselected by Thomson/ADS? Maybe this will have to be the
question put before the court of law, along with a question as to their
exclusivity as bidder for the Corvette Combat Suite.
Moreover, an internal DoD technical investigation reported the following
findings :
"
Mr Moynot's remark that the matter may "lead to disputes with an end result
potentially damageable to the country" is especially interesting. Prior to
cabinet approval of the defence packages, senior management of both Armscor and
of the SA Navy requested that C²I² Systems refrain from legal action which
might jeopardize the corvette programme. We acceded to this request on the
understanding that a solution, mutually acceptable to all stakeholders, was
found. That the latter has not happened is obvious, despite extraordinary
efforts by ourselves.
Furthermore, Mr Moynot's threat to our substantiating various matters in a court
of law is welcome, because neither they nor the DoD have responded
satisfactorily to numerous legal correspondences requesting that we be provided
with the actual facts of the matter regarding nomination, selection and
deselection.
Mr Moynot can be assured that we shall endeavour to find out the various truths
behind this unfortunate matter, whatever it takes.
Richard Young
Managing Director