The Democratic Alliance welcomed the decision by the National Prosecuting Authority to question South Africa’s ambassador to the U.S., Barbara Masekela, about a meeting she helped set up between President Thabo Mbeki and a French arms company during the late 1990s.

DA spokesman on Public Accounts, Eddie Trent yesterday hailed the NPA’s decision — “at last” — to take seriously the dramatic evidence that continues to emerge relating to the controversial multi-billion rand arms deal. Trent has called on Mbeki to “take the nation into his confidence” over outstanding questions relating to the arms deal.’

The DA has called for a judicial commission of enquiry to be set up to answer these questions.

“As each new chapter about the arms deal is opened, new questions arise whilst the existing ones remain unanswered,” Trent said.

“It is for this reason that we believe the questioning of South Africa’s ambassador to the USA, Ms Barbara Masekela is long overdue. We have sent several letters to her, which to date have remained unanswered.

Trent was responding to a weekend report that Masekela is now under pressure from the NPA to explain the meeting she facilitated between Mbeki and the company Thint in 1998, when she was ambassador to France. The company is now a co-accused in the Jacob Zuma corruption trial.

Masekela’s evidence could involve Mbeki, who said he could not recall any such meeting ever having taken place. However, it was established that a meeting did take place and that Thint’s senior vice president wrote to Mbeki a day after the meeting, saying the company was “honoured” by the audience he granted to them.

Trent, who, among other people, has been a strong critic of the arms deal, said yesterday, that apart from the president himself, there are many others that should be questioned:

•Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad — “who should be questioned on a documented diary entry that details a meeting/meetings between him and Thint’s South African representative, Alain Thetard at the Union Buildings in 1999. The entry has been in the public domain since the Schabir Shaik fraud trial”;

•Chippie Shaik, brother of Schabir, “whose conflict of interest was highlighted in the Joint Investigative Team’s report and who was intimately involved with the arms deal”; and

•South African businessman Jurgen Kogl, “who is alleged to have represented Barbara Masekela’s business interests in the arms company”.

“The president himself must answer how secret meetings — meetings that will stay secret unless all participants come clean — met the constitutional requirement that the acquisition of goods and service must be fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost effective,” Trent said.

He said the DA still believes that the controversy and suspicion surrounding the arms deal will not go away until the questions have been satisfactorily answered. “A judicial commission of inquiry must be introduced to answer these questions.

“I challenge the president who said everything was done according to the book, to give the nation his absolute assurance that neither the ANC or any other individual or organisations benefited either directly or indirectly in any material way as a result of the arms deal, unless such a benefit was legally justified,” Trent said.

With acknowledgment to Sue Segar and The Witness.