The axing of the ANC leader in the Standing Committee on Public Accounts has precipitated a credibility crisis, writes Carol Paton.

When Andrew Feinstein heard at 8am on Monday that he was to be axed from his position as chairman of the ANC component in the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, he did what he always does in meetings: he sat quietly bowed over his tiny computer, taking notes of the proceedings.

But when he emerged from the meeting with ANC Chief Whip Tony Yengeni, Feinstein was ashen. His political career was over. Not a murmur of dissent had been raised in his defence.

Across the table from Feinstein, Yengeni - the ANC's political head in Parliament - had simply been doing his job. Although Yengeni himself will not say it, the word in ANC circles is that Feinstein had drifted away, beyond the reach of party discipline. In his pursuit of an inquiry into the arms deal, he had his own thing going with the IFP chairman of the committee, Gavin Woods. It was Yengeni's task to close that gap.

At the meeting on Monday, Yengeni, too, probably adopted his standard meeting persona - largely expressionless and speaking in a low, flat tone. "There was no objection to these changes. I explained to the study group that it would from now be chaired by Geoff Doidge and that anything and everything to do with Scopa [the Standing Committee on Public Accounts] must go through Doidge," says Yengeni.

It was not a decision he took alone or one he took lightly, he says. It came with the full authority of Luthuli House (the ANC's head office) and top officials in the ANC. As it was the ANC government that was under attack, it was imperative that the lines of accountability between the ANC members in the committee and the ANC leadership be strengthened.

"I don't want to cast aspersions [on Feinstein]. We really wanted to improve our capacity . . . but we also wanted people who are going to be the political link with ANC structures," says Yengeni. The actual words he is reputed to have used in the meeting were a little stronger, say those present. The study group was being strengthened so that "the ANC, from the President downwards, could exercise political control". Nothing would go from the committee to the plenary of the National Assembly without first going through the caucus, and any leaks would be investigated.

For Feinstein, the prologue to the drama had started a week before, when he had left the first study group meeting of the year in tears after being hammered for his closeness to Woods and aggressively questioned over his "real agenda".

Undeniably, Feinstein and Woods had been close. The Standing Committee on Public Accounts, the parliamentary committee that oversees government finances, had always functioned on the basis of an understanding of non-partisanship, and had never had to resort to a vote.

Woods and Feinstein had got on well and conducted meetings with the utmost decorum. Both were determined that a thorough probe into the R43-billion arms deal should take place. Both say they have seen evidence to warrant it.

Feinstein, an idealistic MP who entered ANC politics not long before 1994 after receiving his master's degree in economics, had, as ANC leader of the public accounts committee, garnered a small group of ANC members around him who shared his strong views on financial accountability.

But this group , which had been pushing for an inquiry, particularly one that involved Judge Willem Heath's Special Investigating Unit, began to fall apart after the aggressive interventions of President Thabo Mbeki and Deputy President Jacob Zuma. Zuma in particular, in a letter to Woods, unleashed an astonishing attack on the committee and its chairman on the Friday before the first study group meeting.

From that moment, the pressure was on to fall into line. As one of the less independent-minded members of the ANC study group is said to have remarked at their first meeting: "The President has spoken. What more can we be expected to say?"

And, to his political disadvantage, Feinstein had kept the evidence for an inquiry close to his chest, making it easy for an attack based on the cry that there was no evidence.

At Monday's meeting, faced with the news that Feinstein was to be axed, his allies buckled. Laloo Chiba, who spent 18 years on Robben Island for sabotage activities, and Billy Nair, another Robben Island veteran, and a courageous champion of non-racialism, had been two of the strongest voices in the committee. When Chippy Shaik, the head of acquisitions for the Department of Defence, had appeared before the committee, they had been relentless. In the meeting with Yengeni, they were silent.

Feinstein is principled. However, in any political party, principles have always competed against party loyalty and unity, values the ANC prizes particularly highly. If Feinstein and his few good men were fighting a battle on principle, the new appointments to the committee were a sign that unity and loyalty had won the day.

The political link to the leadership that Yengeni was looking for was clear among the newcomers.

First among them was Doidge, Yengeni's deputy and a former leading figure in the committee. Doidge, although a senior whip and therefore loyal and disciplined, is known to be fair, honest and hard-working.

But the real party hatchet man is not him but the man who will sit in his chair after the dust has settled.

Vincent Smith, a new MP, has served on the committee for 18 months. He recently carried out several party tasks with distinction, not least presiding over the ANC election list for Johannesburg. He could well have earned the admiration of Mbeki, both for rising above the factionalism and for assisting the President's former parliamentary counsellor, Charles Nqakula, with some delicate behind-the-scenes manoeuvring in the days before the final decision on candidates.

Also among the newcomers to the committee was Andries Nel, who was given one of Parliament's most politically tricky tasks last year when he was asked to chair a committee to consider a contentious report from the Public Protector. The report recommended that the Minister of Justice, Penuell Maduna, be disciplined but that a simple apology would not be enough. Almost a year has passed, and the matter has still not been resolved. By dragging the matter out, Nel has avoided any embarrassment for the ANC.

ANC caucus chairman Thabang Makwetla, another MP distinguished by his loyalty, was also named as an addition to the committee.

Yengeni - warned by Zuma only two months ago to refrain from interacting with the study group - will now play a more active role, participating "where necessary".

The involvement in the study group of Yengeni, one of the people named in the allegations around the arms deal, prompted an outcry in the media. In response, he says that reports of his participation have been wildly exaggerated. "I am very careful about what I do and say. Until now I had kept away. I didn't want any suggestions made that I had the intention of stopping the inquiry. But now the President has addressed the nation . . . certain things have to happen in that committee."

So what are they?

The ANC has been keen to get the committee working again as soon as possible. It has declared its intention to deliberate on everything openly. It has made constructive efforts to work with Woods. But the big question is whether there will still be an inquiry, and, if so, who will conduct and oversee it.

Yengeni, Doidge and the ANC have all reaffirmed their commitment to an investigation. Woods is as dogged as ever. But there are difficulties. The Speaker, Frene Ginwala, has suggested that the original report the committee and Parliament passed, calling for a multi-agency probe, ought to be revisited. Since it was not explicit about which agencies it favoured, and since, legally, agencies like the Heath unit cannot be instructed or supervised by Parliament, the committee must go back to the drawing board.

"There are differences [of interpretation]. The committee must come out and say what it means," Ginwala told them this week. The committee could also not "sub-contract its task", she said. If it wanted to investigate, she said, it could do so itself and request funding for research.

The wrangle over an investigation is not the only event still to unfold. Due to the ANC's bungling of the matter and the attacks by the executive on the committee and Woods, there are three upcoming sideshows.

Woods, though a lonely figure without Feinstein, is an inexhaustible strategist, and has an understated knack for finding loopholes and "looking into possibilities". What's more, the attacks by the executive and the ANC's denial that it wanted Heath in particular involved in any probe have put his credibility on the line.

The first sideshow will be the appearance before the committee of four senior Cabinet ministers. The ministers, who recently declared that the committee had not understood the arms deal and hence the inquiry, have asked to address it. Woods has readily accepted.

Although Yengeni believes the appearance of the ministers to be vital for clarifying matters, it threatens to be deeply embarrassing. Already, the officials and individuals involved in the actual negotiations on the arms deal have appeared before the committee. But the ministers will now have to defend their statements and prove, under cross-questioning, that the committee was wrong.

The second is the letter in which Zuma attacked Woods. In this regard, similar issues of whether the committee was right and whether Woods was acting within his rights are at stake.

The third sideshow is the interpretation of whether the committee's original intention was that the Heath unit should be involved.

Said Woods: "These things would just have gone away . . . but because I will not let go we are left with three sideshows. It is not just a matter of who is right and who is wrong. There are constitutional implications."

The constitutional implications are that either Woods acted - as he has been accused by Zuma of doing - outside the law, or that the President and Deputy President have attacked Woods and, by extension, Parliament, without justification.

But it's about more than who's going to apologise. At the heart of the affair beats the question: will Parliament call on the executive to explain itself, and will the executive and the ruling party's MPs take Parliament seriously if it does? The outcome will set a precedent. 

The arms deal: A chronology

APRIL 1998: The Defence Review, a comprehensive study to determine the future role, structure and needs of the defence force, is approved by Parliament.

NOVEMBER 1998: The preferred suppliers of new equipment are announced. Jayendra Naidoo is appointed to negotiate the contracts and look at the affordability of the deal. The contracts include the negotiation of industrial offsets - an undertaking by winning countries to invest in industrial projects.

SEPTEMBER 1999: Patricia de Lille, an MP for the PAC, makes allegations of kickbacks, naming Naidoo and Deputy President Jacob Zuma. In further allegations, ANC chief whip Tony Yengeni is also named.

SEPTEMBER 1999: After detailed negotiations with bidders, the Minister of Defence, Mosiuoa Lekota, announces a package costing R30.3billion.

SEPTEMBER 2000: The Auditor-General, Shauket Fakie, as part of his routine scrutiny of public funds, makes a report to Parliament's standing committee on public accounts questioning why the cheapest arms package was not selected and recommending a forensic audit of areas he was unable to cover.

OCTOBER 2000: Chippy Shaik, head of the Department of Defence's acquisitions, is cross-examined by the committee. He admits that, despite having family interests that benefited from the deal, he did not declare them. He says that on all but one occasion he recused himself. It also emerges that the real cost of the deal is closer to R43-billion, partly due to the rand's depreciation.

OCTOBER 2000: Allegations of corruption flood the committee. Among these are claims that contractors were influenced into choosing Shaik's brother's company as a subcontractor. Yengeni, former Minister of Defence Joe Modise and SANDF General Lambert Moloi, a former Umkhonto weSizwe stalwart, are also named as having companies that benefited. Committee chairman Gavin Woods and the ANC's then leader in the committee, Andrew Feinstein, are certain that grounds exist for an investigation.

OCTOBER 2000: The committee draws up a report calling for a multi-agency forensic inquiry into the deal, including the Heath Special Investigating Unit, the AuditorGeneral, the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions and the Investigative Directorate of Serious Economic Offences. The report is hurriedly adopted by Parliament at the last sitting of the year.

OCTOBER 2000: Judge Willem Heath requests a proclamation from Mbeki allowing him to investigate.

NOVEMBER 2000: On the basis of the report by the standing committee on public accounts, a meeting is held with the four agencies. It is agreed that all four should be involved in the investigation because of their special skills and powers.

DECEMBER 2000: Woods and Feinstein are called by Frene Ginwala, Speaker of the National Assembly, who warns them that the standing committee on public accounts has no legal basis to oversee the work of the agencies. She orders the committee to stand back from the investigation.

DECEMBER 2000: The public wrangle over whether Heath should be included begins.

DECEMBER 2000: At the prompting of Fakie, Woods writes to Mbeki requesting him to grant a proclamation allowing Heath to investigate the deal.

DECEMBER 2000: Ginwala makes a public statement interpreting the report by the standing committee on public accounts and declaring that it had not singled out the Heath unit for inclusion in the arms investigation.

JANUARY 12 2001: The four Cabinet ministers involved in the deal - Lekota, Trade and Industry Minister Alec Erwin, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and Public Enterprises Minister Jeff Radebe - hold a press conference saying that the committee did not understand the deal as it had not called them to explain. They say the committee was incompetent and irresponsible in calling for an investigation.

JANUARY 15 2001: The Minister of Justice, Penuell Maduna, advises Mbeki that the Heath unit should not be included in the investigation because, in the light of the Constitutional Court's ruling on the unit, it would be unconstitutional. The court had ruled that the unit could not be headed by a judge.

JANUARY 19 2001: Mbeki announces, in a televised address to the nation, that Heath will not be included and agrees with Maduna's reasoning. At the same time, he unleashes a blistering attack on Woods in the form of a letter from Zuma saying that Woods had acted beyond his powers by writing to Mbeki. The claim is based on the letter from Ginwala, which says that no investigating agency had been singled out by Parliament. Woods is therefore accused of acting without a mandate in asking for Heath to take part.

JANUARY 22 2001: Two days later, the ANC members of the standing committee on public accounts come out in support of this view, saying they had never thought Heath essential to the probe.

JANUARY 24 2001: The committee meets for the first time since the parliamentary recess and is split over whether its original intention had been to include Heath.

JANUARY 29 2001: Feinstein is removed as chairman of the ANC's component of the committee, which is also bolstered with party loyalists.

JANUARY 29 2001: Ginwala tells the standing committee on public accounts to go back to the drawing board if it wants to call for an investigation of the arms deal. - Carol Paton

Who's who in the weapons saga

THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS

This committee oversees government finances, receiving all the AuditorGeneral's reports. It can call officials and ministers to account and recommend appropriate action.

Although the ANC has a majority, the committee is chaired by IFP MP Gavin Woods, in line with international practice that such committees are chaired by opposition parties.

PUBLIC PROTECTOR: SELBY BAQWA

Normally known as the ombudsman in other democracies, the Public Protector has the power to investigate any improper conduct in state affairs or in public administration.

He is also obliged to conduct inquiries and to take appropriate remedial action.

The Public Protector may not investigate court decisions.

The Public Protector is appointed for a nonrenewable period of seven years.

AUDITOR-GENERAL: SHAUKET FAKIE

The Auditor-General's job is to audit and report on the accounts, financial statements and financial management of all national and provincial state departments and administrations, all municipalities and any other institution or accounting entity identified in national or provincial legislation.

The Auditor-General has the right to investigate and to make extracts from any record of an institution whose accounts are being audited by him.

He has the right to investigate whether any assets of an institution he is auditing have been obtained in an economical manner, and are being used properly.

He has the right to investigate any matter relating to the spending and income of an institution whose accounts are being audited by him.

All reports must be made public.

The Auditor-General must be appointed for a fixed, non-renewable term of between five and 10 years.

THE NATIONAL DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS: BULELANI NGCUKA

The National Director of Public Prosecutions is South Africa's chief prosecutor. Under this office falls the Investigating Directorate of Serious Economic Offences, the Scorpions elite investigative unit, the Asset Forfeiture Unit, as well as all the country's prosecutors.

It is these units which will form the backbone of the investigation.

In terms of the law, the directorate must, in agreement with the minister of justice, and after consulting the provincial directors of public prosecutions, determine prosecution policy and judge whether cases can be successfully prosecuted.

He may intervene in the prosecution process when policy directives are not complied with; and may review a decision to prosecute or not after consulting his provincial counterparts. 

With acknowledgement to Carol Paton and the Sunday Times.