Grintek *1 chief executive officer Shaun Liebenberg will take over from Victor Moche *2 as CEO of Denel, the state-owned military equipment manufacturing company, as from "the end of May", Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin announced on Friday.

"The task now facing us is to turn Denel's fortunes around. Mr Moche has led a process of restructuring in Denel that now has to be taken further and more focus engendered. There is agreement that this will best be done by handing the change baton to a new CEO.

"Accordingly, after a tough and successful stay at Denel, Mr Moche will hand over to Mr Shaun Liebenberg at the end of May," said Erwin.

"The last week has seen much speculation on this move, based on the inevitable sources. I have labelled this as speculation with just cause since as I indicated at the outset, process and individuals have to be respected. The speculation was clearly from self-serving sources and does not credit those sources or the reporters involved.

"The fact of the matter is that a sensible business decision has been made based on the position in front of the board and the shareholder," said Erwin, in his Budget vote in Parliament on Friday morning.

With acknowledgements to Donwald Pressly, I-Net Bridge and the Mail & Guardian.

*1 Grintek has always supported the defence establishment in the form of DoD, Armscor and Denel very, very well indeed, thank you, during the period since the Arms Deal furore broke the surface.

Quido, Prodo, Wonga.

*2 In the meantime, Mr Moche and his Chief Financial Officer, Pottie Potgieter, recently went a wimperin' and a wailin' to Parliament and its Defence Committees about what a bum deal Denel got from BAE Systems et al on the Arms Deal DIP (Defence Industrial Participation).

Denel, meantime, are a multi-billion Rand conglomerate, wholly owned by the SA Government, who had the full ears of the DoD, Armscor, Dept of Trade and Industry, Dept of Public Enterprises, inter alia, as well as the relevant trade unions during the Arms Deal and specifically the DIP and NIP negotiations.

Apart from Thomson-CSF and some others who decided it to be contractually prudent to circumnavigate the constitutional imperatives to be fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost-effective in defence procurement and therefore use the alternative "inside track" with Mandela, Mbeki and Chippy Shaikh, inter alia, in securing their slice, the rest of us in the Defence Industry did the best we could under the most difficult of circumstances to secure our previous investments in the procurement opportunity and are delivering products more-or-less successfully, both technically and financially, into the systems.

[Sorry about the long sentence, but there are some commas.]