Publication: The Times Issued: Date: 2007-11-02 Reporter: Anton Ferreira

Arms Deal 'Tainted' Mbeki and Zuma

 

Publication 

The Times
Date

2007-11-02
Reporter

Anton Ferreira

Web Link

www.thetimes.co.za

 

The Morning After: Andrew Feinstein's new book reveals shady links between senior ANC members and arms dealers Picture: Esa Alexander 

Former ANC MP who probed dodgy deal releases bombshell book exposé.

President Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma should quit the ANC leadership race because they are tainted by corruption in the multi-billion rands arms-procurement deal.

That is the view of ANC dissident Andrew Feinstein, who launched a scathing attack on the president for his role in the arms deal and for prevaricating in the fight against HIV-Aids, in a speech to the Cape Town Press Club yesterday.

"The frontrunners in the race to be ANC president have not displayed the requisite moral leadership to lead an organisation with the proud history *1 of the ANC, or to lead the country," said Feinstein.

He is in South Africa to launch After the Party, a memoir of his experiences as a member of the ANC. He now lives in London

"They [Mbeki and Zuma] should make way for people untainted by the last few years of excess and decline *2."

Feinstein was an ANC MP for seven years before resigning in 2001 in protest at the party's refusal to investigate corruption allegations arising from the multi-billion rands arms deal. Feinstein was the ANC point-man in the parliamentary investigation of the deal. The investigation was ordered by parliament's standing committee on public accounts.

"Mbeki chaired the committee that made the final decisions on the arms deal ... he undermined our institutions of democracy in his hubristic and inexplicable support for our embarrassing health minister [Manto Tshabalala-Msimang] and our appalling police commissioner [Jackie Selebi]," Feinstein said.

He said ANC leaders, including people he had respected, such as Pallo Jordan and the SA Communist Party's Jeremy Cronin, had closed ranks to prevent a full investigation of the arms deal.

Feinstein said he suspected that some of the kickbacks from the arms deal were used to fund ANC election campaigns.

"I was called to the house of a member of the [ANC] national executive committee who said to me, 'Look, Andrew, you can't win this thing. The party will close ranks around the arms deal. How do you think we fought the 1999 election?'."

Feinstein, an economist, said the financial offsets the government had boasted of when the arms deal was signed made "absolutely no sense".

"We were taken for a ride [by the arms manufacturers], pure and simple. All the usual tricks were used on the government. Persuade the boys they need far bigger toys than they really do, ensure they pay inflated prices for their toys and promise them all sorts of economic benefits.

"The arms manufacturers laughed all the way to the bank. *3"

Mbeki's spokesman, Mukoni Ratshitanga, referred questions about Feinstein's allegations to the ANC, whose spokesman, Tiyani Rikhotso, said it was up to the organisation's branches to decide who should be leadership candidates.

Rikhotso said: "It's not for any individual to dictate. Feinstein is a member of the ANC. He should know what platform to use to influence the choice *4. It is the exclusive right of the branches."

Zuma's spokeswoman, Liesl Gottert, said Zuma was not available to respond to Feinstein's allegations. She said Zuma had recently told reporters that ANC members would express their views at the national conference next month, and that he would follow the wishes of the organisation.

With acknowledgement to Anton Ferreira and The Times.


*1       Between 1992 and 1994.


*2      After 1994.


*3      The arms purchasers also laughed all the way to their banks.


*4      He knows - The Press.