More than three years have elapsed since the “memorandum to Patricia de Lille, MP from concerned African National Congress MP’s” outlined the involvement of high-ranking ANC officials, including Deputy President Jacob Zuma, in the arms deal saga and related corruption scandals.

Seemingly written by people more familiar with AK-47s than with pens, the memorandum has proved amazingly accurate. Idasa, the public organisation promoting democracy, ranked the arms deal as “the litmus test of SA’s commitment to democracy and good governance”.

During the subsequent three years, while school and hospital budgets have been repeatedly slashed, the cost of the arms deal has rocketed from R30bn to the most recent estimate of R67bn.

Even worse, the acquisition costs represent only about 10 % of the maintenance and operating expenses of the warships and warplanes.

The finance department’s “affordability study” in August 1999 warned the cabinet of the foreign exchange and other risks that would affect education, health and social services.

Those warnings were also ignored, most notably by Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, who in January 2000 signed the foreign loan agreements that give effect to the arms deal.

The British-SA government loan agreements signed by the minister will cripple SA, and will entangle its future in third-world debt and the consequences of social and economic enslavement.

He has recklessly burdened SA’s current and future assets, gold holdings and guaranteed that, in the event of default, this country will draw on International Monetary Fund and other foreign resources.

In October this year, national treasury director-general Maria Ramos challenged Economists Allied For Arms Reduction SA to produce those agreements.

She obviously thought we were bluffing. After months of stalling, court dates of March 19 and 20 next year have at last been set down for consideration of Economists Allied For Arms Reduction SA’s application for cancellation of the arms deal as being strategically, economically and financially irrational and therefore unconstitutional.

As Zuma has now learned (Business Day, December 4), the auditor-general’s whitewashed arms deal report was not the end of the saga.

Perhaps it behoves President Thabo Mbeki and his colleuges “to come clean” ahead of the congress in Stellenbosch?

With acknowledgements to Terry Crawford-Browne and Business Day.