Publication: The Star Issued: Date: 2007-08-11 Reporter:

Prepare for Another Arms Scandal

 

Publication 

The Star
Date

2007-08-11

Web Link

www.thestar.co.za

  

It's mind boggling that just as South Africa staggers bemused and bloodied from that arms scandal, we discover that the South African National Defence Force is refleeting the army's mechanised divisions with brand new amoured personnel carriers (APCs).

It's not that I begrudge our soldiers the protection - far from it - but why do we have to look to overseas manufacturers to make something that is one of the few internationally acclaimed successes of our own arms industry, grown in the hothouse that was apartheid?

We might not have been able to make attack helicopters out of cannibalised French troop carriers, but one thing South Africa did do well was to make mine- resistant vehicles and APCs.

In fact, the manufacturers made them all so well - Casspirs, Buffels, Mambas and the vehicle in question, Ratels - that they exported them and have continued to export them throughout the world to a wide variety of markets; from peacekeepers to First World armies and Third World cash-rich dictators.

The Ratel was a particularly good vehicle, the mainstay of the apartheid army's crack conventional brigade, tried and tested in some of the most brutal battles in Africa since the great armoured clashes in North Africa during World War II.

It came in a host of derivatives - troop carrier, tank killer, mortar platform and command vehicle - and it was reliable in difficult terrain where the supply lines were further than Hitler's when he launched his ill-fated assault on Moscow.

So much for the history lesson. Here's the first of my difficulties: my colleague Michael Schmidt tells me the current version of the Ratel, which its manufacturers have been constantly upgrading since the prototype first rolled out of the factory more than 30 years ago, could be upgraded to the defence force's specifications at a cost of about R1-million per vehicle.

According to Schmidt's report today, though, we're going to replace the whole fleet of Ratels at a cost of R30-million apiece.

To make matters worse, the Badger, the Finnish APC that we're buying, has been sold to the Finnish, Polish and Slovenian armies for half that price.

Look, I never understood the first arms deal, especially not the minutiae of offsets, but I could - at a push - accept the argument that the new SANDF needed new fighter aircraft and some decent boats for the navy if we were to defend our country's sovereignty, particularly our coastline and our fishing grounds.

The one thing I don't get is the need to re-equip two mechanised divisions and a quick-response brigade with armoured vehicles that have never been tested in Africa, at twice the cost of what other armies are getting them, when we don't have a war to fight.

Yes, we've got enough peacekeeping commitments in this war-torn continent to make any general's head spin, but you keep the peace with bodies on the ground in uniform; you don't put a mechanised force on the ground with enough firepower to raze an average-sized town in minutes.

Especially not when some of the peacekeeping takes place in countries covered in jungle where the only means of transportation are helicopters or boats.

So, just who is fooling who here?

It looks like we've got another arms scandal on our hands, if not one mired in corruption *1, perhaps, then one addled by rank stupidity.

How do we balance the books on a deal that's going to cost R8,4-billion *2 by the time it's complete - that is, of course, if any arms acquisition programme ever comes in on budget - when we live in a country with no visible military threat, only the real prospect of many of its citizens dying through avoidable diseases, perishing in poverty or eking out a miserable existence in hovels without basic services.

Heads should roll for this one.

With acknowledgements to The Star.


*1       A very large part of the deal is going to The Big One, BAE Systems OMC, in Benoni whose "BEE" partner is DGD Technologies, owned (or previously owned *3) by none other that Thabo's brother, Moleatsi and the ex Treasurer-General of ANC KZN, Dr Diliza Mji.


*2      An astounding fact: Prime Contractor Denel's first price was R15 billion. Armscor negotiated it down to R8,4 billion.


*3      The initial shareholders have probably sold their shares by now for a fantastic windfall now that the investment has been realised in terms of hard contracts.


*4      In the first arms scandal, Armscor and the DoD especially swung the frigate gear box contract from the Swiss company Maag, who had been selected by the German Frigate Consortium as its price and quality was higher, to the German company Renk who had partnered with Gear Ratio, a subsidiary or sister company of OMC. Although the price and risk were higher with the Renk product, the justification for this intervention was "countertrade" *6.

All very confusing because in the case of the frigates's locally designed and manufactured Information Management System (IMS), there was intervention to swing the contract from the South African company CCII Systems to the French company Thomson-CSF Detexis where the justification was "risk" *6.


*5      Very much the same happened with the helicopter engine from the Canadian company Pratt and Whitney where it lower cost and lower risk product was swung by Chippy Shaik of DoD and Llew Swan of Armscor to the French company Turbomeca whose local partner with all the right "BEE" connections was Aerosud; again on the basis of countertrade trumping price and risk *6.


*6      Three glaring examples of where, if you don't like my principles, I've got others.