Publication: Business Report Date: 2006-02-05 Reporter: Terry CrawfordBrowne Reporter:

Manuel's Persecution is a Sideshow; He Must Account for Arms' Deal

 

Publication 

Business Report
Date

2006-02-05

Reporter

 Terry Crawford-Browne

Web Link

www.busrep.co.za

 

Thank you, Naiem Dollie, (The Week In Review, January 29) for suggesting that Trevor Manuel has more important things to do than attach my late mother's bed-sit in a run-down retirement home in a no-go zone of Durban, and try to auction it for R915 000.

In November the Cape high court rejected his application for my financial sequestration.

His purpose in both instances was to paint me as dishonest. Manuel is obsessed with trying to prove that I am hiding millions under every bush, and that I am actually fronting for arms dealers *1 (Hansard, June 21, 2005).

Having relinquished my banking career during the 1980s to oppose the apartheid government through the banking sanctions campaign, I am equally committed that a corrupt ANC government does not destroy South Africa's hard-won democracy.

Manuel, without parliamentary or constitutional authority, has ceded control over South Africa's economic and financial future to Barclays Bank, the British government and the International Monetary Fund.

The 20-year loan deals in my possession for the BAE warplane contracts signed by Manuel have been verified as authentic, and are a textbook example of Third World debt entrapment by European banks and governments.

Manuel signed those loan agreements despite warnings from the department of finance and others that the arms deal was a highly risky proposition that could lead the government into "mounting fiscal, financial and economic difficulties".

Action to have the loan agreements declared ultra vires will reveal Manuel's perfidy, hence his desperation to silence me.

We have 42 percent unemployment on Manuel's watch; 6 million South Africans will die of Aids-related diseases by 2010; and 7 million South Africans are living in shacks. Why are people rioting all over the country?

South Africa's housing, education and health services represent the betrayal of the struggle against apartheid, and are in chaos thanks to the ANC's prioritisation of the arms deal before investment in people.

The former British secretary of state for trade and industry, Patricia Hewitt, admitted bribes had been paid to secure BAE's warplane contracts with South Africa, but then pleaded they were "within acceptable limits".

What are those "acceptable limits"? British Prime Minister Tony Blair *2 put massive pressure on our government to buy BAE warplanes that the SA Air Force and former secretary for defence Pierre Steyn considered too expensive and unsuited to our requirements.

Our government buckled under British government coercion.

As Judge Hillary Squires commented in his judgment on Schabir Shaik, bribes were standard practice in the arms trade. Bribes are how political parties are funded in Europe, especially France and England.

BAE Systems, with the tacit approval of the British government, maintains a spider's web of front companies in the Cayman Islands, Virgin Islands, Switzerland and elsewhere to pay bribes to politicians and parties to promote British arms exports. British researchers estimate that the bribes for BAE's R15 billion warplane contracts with South Africa amounted to £160 million (R1.75 billion).

What they don't yet know is how those bribes were split between the British Labour Party and the ANC *2.

Terry Crawford-Browne
Via e-mail

With acknowledgements to Terry Crawford-Browne and Business Report.


*1  Other than the vice versa, just which arms dealer would employ old Terry as a front, as an agent or as a secret lobbyist?

*2  Actually, the Hawk deal was already a done deal in 1995 when Prime Minister John Major met Deputy President Thabo Mkeki.

*3  No, the donations were made to the British Labour Party, the British Conservative Party and the ANC.

British Aerospace is far too astute and long-term a player just to give the wonga to the incumbents, even more so when their star is waning.