What South Africa needs now is an arms deal truth and reconciliation commission.

While Zuma’s more rabid supporters ignore the charge sheet and claim a political vendetta against their man, we should all rather be asking the governing elite why no further arms deal prosecutions have been allowed, who doctored the Auditor-General’s arms deal report, and why then in 2001 Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts was turned into an ANC-elite whitewash.

The Zuma trial, with witnesses such as Gavin Woods, Andrew Feinstein and Patricia de Lille, promises to reveal enough about the main players in arms deal skullduggery to make many of them eager for amnesty.

This could be provided by the new TRC, again on condition that the full truth is revealed and that any ill-gotten gains are paid over to bodies such as Transparency International.

All the bribery exposed will enable us to cancel the deals and strike a heavy blow against the world’s most corrupt industr .

— Hilton Hubbard, by SMS

With acknowledgements to Hilton Hubbard and The Times.