Four years after first raising the possibility of irregularities in South Africa's multi-billion rand arms acquisition process, politician Patricia de Lille finally had her day in court.

De Lille, who was subpoenaed, testified in the Durban High Court on Tuesday in the fraud and corruption trial of businessman Schabir Shaik.

Her testimony related to count three of corruption against Shaik in which the state alleges he solicited a R500 000 per annum bribe for Deputy President Jacob Zuma from French arms company Thomson-CSF -- in exchange for protection during investigations into arms deal irregularities.

On Tuesday de Lille, party leader of the Independent Democrats, said although she was ostracised for exposing possible arms deal irregularities, she had done so in the interests of the country.

de Lille, who was a Pan Africanist Congress MP at that time, received documents on alleged irregularities, signed by "concerned ANC members" and first raised a motion on the subject in Parliament on September 9, 1999.

She said: "At that time I wanted to help government root out the bad apples."

Prosecutor Billy Downer asked her why she was given this information pertaining to the alleged irregularities. Before she could reply, Judge Hillary Squires stated: "because you're a well-known critic of government."

de Lille smiled and said: "More than that, because people trust me and they know the truth will come out."

de Lille said in 1999 she received a phone call from concerned members who said they had information relating to corruption in the arms deal and wanted her to bring it to the attention of parliament.

She also got a number of documents relating to this three days before she brought up the matter in parliament.

At this point defence advocate Francois van Zyl told the court he had a serious problem with the evidence. He had looked at de Lille's documents and they contained "all sorts of speculation" which could be damaging to a number of people and companies.

Downer said the state was not relying on the truth of any of the allegations but wanted to prove that the allegations were made, how it was made and what was done about it.

He said it was the same information which de Lille had when she made the allegations in parliament. The court was aware of the fact that Shaik had met with Thomson boss Alain Thetard on 30 September 1999. The prosecution said the time frame in which the issue of irregularities was raised was important in relation to the dates in which the alleged conspiracy to bribe arose.

In his plea explanation Shaik said a service provider agreement had been entered into between Kobifin one of his companies and Thomson-CSF for an amount of R500 000 in two instalments. The de Lille dossier contains allegations that high ranking officials in the ANC were using the weapons deal to finance an economic and political centre within the party.

Defence advocate Francois van Zyl asked her if she was trying to bring the entire ANC into the allegations of arms deal irregularities. de Lille said that the attack was not on the ANC but on corruption. The documents also allege that Shaik had raised money for the ANC in Malaysia, that he had worked closely with businesman Vivian Reddy and that they were a front for Zuma.

de Lille said she had the backing of 15 civil society organisations when she approached the Heath Investigating Unit with the allegations. At that stage 91 proclamations relating to investigations were outstanding from the president, and she hoped her request for a proclamation giving Heath the go ahead to proceed with an investigation was not going to become number 92.

Eventually the Heath unit was excluded from the investigation into alleged irregularities, which was carried out by the Attorney General, the Public Protector and the National Prosecuting Authority.

de Lille said that she did not accept that the investigation could be as credible as one done by Heath because none of these bodies had the "legal competence" to complete the investigation as the unit could have.

She said the Heath unit had a record of good results and the legal powers to cancel contracts they found to be corrupt. They were also the only body in the country that could deal with the civil part of the investigation.

Downer asked if anyone else had the documents she had. de Lille said a day after she raised the matter in Parliament (Sept 10) there were stories in various newspapers because they had also been made available to the media.

She said even before she raised her objections to the arms deal in 1999, Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane had questioned the need for the weapons in 1998. She raised a motion on the subject in Parliament on September 9 but the Deputy Speaker at the time objected because certain MPs' names were mentioned.

She presented an amended version on September 21, 1999. The House then decided to have a public debate on the matter, and called for an official commission of inquiry and Cabinet to embark on further negotiations.

Addressing reporters outside the court she said the "de Lille dossier" had resulted in the conviction of Tony Yengeni, led to the Schabir Shaik court case and would lead to more convictions in the future.

Yengeni was sentenced to four years' jail for fraud in March 2003 after the court found he tried to cover up a car deal arranged for him by a representative of a bidder in the arms acquisition process.

She said she was happy when the judge ruled that only certain relevant parts of the dossier relating to the Shaik case were dealt with in court because it was not the people involved but the substance of the allegations which was important.

de Lille also vowed "never, never" to reveal the name of her source.

She was followed in the witness box by Gavin Woods the former chairman of Parliament's standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) who first started his testimony on Monday and then made way for de Lille before resuming his evidence.

Woods said in the Scopa report on possible arms deal irregularities they included a concern about the procurement policy because it contained a significant number of weaknesses. He said the Attorney General (sic - Auditor General) had identified 30 breakdown in policy, some of them serious.

He said government did not indicate that it was unhappy with the Scopa report, however. This emerged when ANC members of Scopa were addressed by the party's executive. Woods said the media also learnt from high-ranking officials that government was not happy about the investigations. Woods then told the court about a hostile letter he received from Zuma.

He said in his 11 years as a parliamentarian he had never experienced a response from an executive like the "sarcastic, contrived and most unusual" letter he got from Zuma.

In the letter Zuma said the executive had no desire to fuel controversy but felt obliged to defend the integrity of government *1. He also referred Woods to two documents which Zuma said indicated that government contested the conclusions arrived by the auditor general and Scopa.

Zuma also said: "Furthermore, we are convinced that in addition to the requirement for us to respect the decision of the constitutional court, there is no need for the Heath Unit to be involved in any 'investigation' of the defence acquisition."

With acknowledgement to Wendy Jasson da Costa and Sapa.

*1 In the Arms Deal, the government had no integrity to defend.