Publication: The Times Issued: Date: 2008-01-06 Reporter:

Maybe It's Time for Some Truth and Reconciliation about The Arms Deal

 

Publication 

The Times
Date

2008-01-06

Web Link

www.thetimes.co.za

 

A little while back I had a rather interesting conversation with an eminent member of society and, as things tend to go, the arms deal came up.

Yes. That darn deal that was the beginning of the death of our innocence.

Since 1994, the eminent person said, we have had amnesties for almost everything under the sun.

We had an amnesty for apartheid-era crimes and forgave all those who made full disclosures. We had an amnesty for tax evaders. There was an amnesty for people who had ferreted money in offshore accounts.

And we even had amnesty for small businesses whose tax affairs were not in order.

(He should have added that there was even a sort of amnesty for the taxi owners to regularise their operations.)

Why then, the eminent member of society wanted to know, do we not have an amnesty for people implicated in the arms deal corruption?

"This thing is going to be with us for a long time and each time people want to settle scores and destroy someone they will haul out a file," he said (loosely paraphrased, of course).

He argued that this approach had the potential to destroy leaders and institutions, and undermine the strength of our democracy *2.

This amnesty would essentially entail encouraging those who have knowledge of arms deal corruption ­ whether from the point of view of a beneficiary or an inside observer ­ to come forward with information *3.

In return, they would be offered immunity from prosecution and whatever deal might be agreed upon.

The more I hear snippets and revelations, the more persuaded I am by this proposal.

During the course of 2008, we will be subjected to more arms deal dirt as the trial of Jacob Zuma and the French arms dealers comes before court.

We will hear of secret meetings, coded correspondence and the exchanging of money and favours. The prosecution will seek to show us how the French and Schabir Shaik sought to get Zuma to scupper the arms deal investigations *5.

If the indictment and the witness list is anything to go by, the trial will give us a good glimpse into that murky world.

But this will only be the tip of the iceberg, as it involves the alleged cover- up and not the actual arms deal.

Zuma was not directly involved in the arms acquisition process as he was still a provincial MEC at the time. His alleged role *6 in derailing the investigation came in 2000 when he had been elevated to deputy president of South Africa.

The actual acquisition process ended in 1999 with the signing of the multi- billion-rand deal for the buying of navy, air force and army equipment.

It was after this that stories of corruption began to bubble *7.

When it was obvious that the government could not keep a lid on these stories, it assigned the National Director of Public Prosecutions, the Auditor General and the Public Protector to conduct a probe into the matter.

Their conclusion, now trumpeted by ministers and government spokesmen at every point *8, was that there was no corruption at the primary level of the deal. The only instances where they could find hints of wrongdoing was at the secondary level *9, where companies were bidding for the rights to do the fittings in the aircraft and navy ships.

They recommended investigations into these. That was the birth of the Shaik investigation, which mutated into the Zuma investigation.

But despite this clean bill of health for the primary contracts, the belief persisted that there was widespread corruption at that level *10.

This was driven mainly by the knowledge that some of the buying decisions went against the wishes of the military chiefs *11 who would be using the equipment, that some of the contracts went to uncompetitive and exorbitantly priced bidders and that senior ANC people knew the real story *12.

Then there was the fact that it was an open secret in the international armaments community that money had been channelled to senior South African government and ANC figures.

Each time the South African authorities protested that our arms deal was clean and above board, gales of laughter would roar through the circles of those who know that no arms deal ever goes down without palms being greased.

"We know you South Africans believe you are a 'miracle' country and all that, but not even you can pull that one off," was the standard comment.

Subsequent developments have proved them right.

German and British investigators are hot on the trail of their own companies that are suspected of bribing South African political players during the arms deal negotiations. And documentation has revealed high-level meetings between senior players and French arms dealers.

And then there is the explosive book by former ANC parliamentarian Andrew Feinstein, whose revelations send the bile right to the gullet.

Should the foreign investigations continue unhindered, we could all be in for a very uncomfortable ride and a loss of faith in those we admired and revered.

The moral and logical thing for South Africa is for us to seriously consider an open judicial commission of inquiry, with the incentive of amnesty. It will help us to understand how our virginal innocence was abused by filthy arms peddlers *13. And it will help us understand how global capital works when it comes to large projects and acquisitions.

With acknowledgements to The Times.


*1      There are still plenty of files out there?


*2      They made there beds, now they must lie down in them.


*3      Ostensibly that was the objective of the public phase of the Arms Deal investigation under Selby Baqwa SC. But all he did was allow the crushing of the witnessing who had evidence to the State's dislike.

Now I agree that a judicial commission of enquiry should be held and maybe roleplayers in the deal making should get amnesty from criminal conduct, but persons involved in the cover-up to the investigation *4 should have their googlies crushed.


*4      These include especially Selby Baqwa SC, the Public Protector, Shauket Fakie CA(SA), the Auditor-General and Bulelani Ngcuka the National Director of Public Prosecutions because they failed in their public duty to expose this nonsense.


*5      Why did the French and Schabir Shaik need to get Zuma to scupper the arms deal investigations?

Because the French had previously sought Thabo Mbeki to secure their portion of the arms deal.


*6      His alleged role includes attending an ADS shareholders' meeting meeting in November 1998 and with Thomson-CSF in London 1n June 1999.


*7      No, the contracts were signed on 3 December 1999. The stories of corruption were already bubbling, but they boiled over into the public domain on 9 September 1999 when Patricia de Lille disclosed this in Parliament.


*8      Their conclusion, now trumpeted by ministers and government spokesmen at every point, is absolutely corrupt because it was formulated by the very person they were investigated.

A permanent pox on them in the present life and a place in hell for eternity for them for failing to do the constitutional duty to The People.


*9      While true that there was wrondoing at the secondary level, these wombats even got it wrong in the case of Thomson-CSF and ADS who were operating at the primary level as the relevant agreement was directly between them and the South African Government.


*10     There was widespread corruption at that level.


*11     In certain cases like the corvettes and LIFT, the buying decisions went against the formal quantitative evaluations by DoD and Armscor, but were simply over-ridden by MINCOM using the flimsiest of qualitative NIP criteria to load their own choices.


*12     Like Schabir Shaik told two French pimpernels, Yann Leo Renaud de Jomaron and Alain Peter Thetard at their damage control meeting in Mauritius, "we'll be in big trouble if such and such in the ANC opens their big mouth".

This surely was not for telling about Jacob Zuma facilitating Nkobi Holding resuming its clearly contractually legitimate place as ADS shareholder by meeting other French pimpernel Jean-Paul Perrier in London.

This was about how Thomson-CSF had had its supply of own Tavitac NT combat management system and the combat suite sensors guaranteed to it by Thabo Mbeki via interlocutor Yusuf Surtee (who also arranged some other French pimpernels the N4 motorway concession - according to another encrypted French fax). It also probably had a lot to do with the extra R300 million it cost the taxpayer for the French to secure to combat suite contract.


*13     Who is the more filthy, the arms dealers trying to secure a sale of their equipment or the acquisition decision-makers lining their pockets?

As General Bantu Holomisa says, the troughs are still the same, it's only the pigs that have changed.