Prosecutor Billy Downer completed his cross examination of fraud and corruption accused Schabir Shaik in the Durban High Court shortly before lunch on Wednesday.

"I am indebted to the court for its indulgence my lord... "I appreciate your patience," said Downer.

Shaik who has been charged with one count of fraud and two of corruption, has been under cross examination since Monday last week. On Wednesday, an irritated Judge Hilary Squires asked Downer "is the finishing post in sight."

Downer used Wednesday morning to wrap up what he called "loose ends." When he got to the topic of talking to John Lennon who wanted to open a tourism school in KwaZulu-Natal, Shaik said he was angry that foreign white companies were using black companies to get contracts *1 in South Africa. He said he needed to put it on record "and if I need to go to jail for that I will."

Squires told him to just answer the question and Shaik replied that was just what he was doing. He said what Lennon was doing was disempowerment and "I don't mind going back to the struggle to fight it."

The State alleges that Shaik used his ties with Deputy President Jacob Zuma to become the black economic empowerment partner in the tourism school project.

Re-examination by Shaik's advocate Francois van Zyl is expected to take place after lunch.

With acknowledgements to Sapa.

*1 This is really rich. The whole arms deal was structured so that "white" foreign companies could get contracts to earn South African's taxpayers contributions, some of which would flow back to officials in the form of bribes and other of which would flow to BEE companies closely connected to these officials and still other to the ruling party in government. This is precisely what bumiputera means in practice. Local black companies can't generate these kinds of contracts when they are in their infancy.

In the arms deal, local companies were discarded for foreign companies. But local defence companies just didn't have the wonga at that time to pay the bribes and donations - so the purchasing went foreign.

Interestingly, the USA was not invited to tender because they have an Anti-Bribery of Foreign Officials Act, whereas in Europe the OECD's Anti-Bribery Regulations had not yet been formulated into law by then.

This, of course, didn't stop Thomson-CSF from formulating a sophisticated OECD Circumnavigation Policy and promulgating it throughout the third world through their "delegates" such as Alain Thetard.

Apart from donations to trust funds, the backdated Service Provider Agreement was thought by Thomson-CSF to be an appropriate wonga-spreading mechanism that would not attract the wrath of the OECD and the Americans tired of being out-bidded by the traditional method of gym bags full of $100 bills, secret weekend overseas visits to head office and a round of golf with Robin.