Publication	Business Report
Date	2006-06-28
Reporter	Donwald Pressly, I-Net Bridge
Web Link	www.busrep.co.za

Johannesburg - The arms deal, the developments at Coega and the rapid-rail link, Gautrain, between Johannesburg and Pretoria have been dismissed as "vanity projects" by National Assembly transport portfolio committee chairman Jeremy Cronin.

At the Cape Town Press Club, Cronin was asked whether South Africa would live to regret the multi-million rand arms deal - to re-equip the South African Air Force and South Africa Navy.

He said he believed South Africa was already "living to regret" the arms deal.

Corvettes were not needed in peacekeeping operations and they were also "too big" to use to protect South Africa's fishing stocks.

But the project had driven "a huge procurement process", he noted.

Cronin, who is deputy general secretary of the South African Communist Party, ascribed the projects to the convergence of "class interests".

The defence deal was "a wrong set of policies driven by old interests and emerging interests", he said.

Three groups of people were benefiting particularly from the 20 billion rand Gautrain project - which will provide just a fraction of South Africa's transport needs at great cost - and they were foreign investors mainly in the construction sector, local capital usually in the financial sector and "emerging black capital".

Politicians liked these projects - including the Coega project, the industrial development area outside of Port Elizabeth - because there were "ribbons to cut" but they were effectively a "whole lot of vanity projects".

He said even the construction of a white elephant culture park would initially create jobs during the construction phase and Gautrain too would also create jobs initially - but the operating expense burden would fall on the South Africa taxpayer after the construction was completed.

The outspoken MP - who was elected to Parliament in 1999 - argued that the private sector would, indeed, carry risks during the Gautrain construction phase.

However, after they walked away "we the public, the taxpayers will carry the liability."