The Mail & Guardian applauds the pressure the new African National Congress (ANC) leadership is putting on President Thabo Mbeki to come clean on his role in the arms deal. It is a welcome sign of the new, more open political climate in South Africa that he is being challenged on a crucial matter no ANC member would previously have dared raise with him.
The rumours that have persistently swirled around Mbeki's meeting with arms bidders, together with allegations that he himself received "commissions" or channelled money to his party, are extremely damaging to the Office of the Presidency and need to be confronted.
Equally suspicious were his determined moves to squash any independent investigation into the arms deal, which entailed sabotaging a parliamentary probe, subverting the neutrality of parliamentary speaker Frene Ginwala, destroying the political career of ANC MP Andrew Feinstein and setting up a sweetheart inquiry to give the arms deal a clean bill of health.
The hard fact is that the government no longer controls the flow of information on the arms procurement: the German and British authorities are conducting their own investigations, which look certain to turn up some embarrassing truths. And as we report today, the Scorpions, undaunted by moves to disband them, are reopening inquiries stalled by former prosecutions boss Bulelani Ngcuka, Mbeki's close ally. Again, we welcome this, but believe the unit should open up the entire can of worms, including the German warships contract where Mbeki's role is under particular scrutiny.
In this context, the president would be well advised to take South Africans into his confidence -- but by the same token, so should Jacob Zuma. What worries us is that the current ANC moves to clear the air are aimed exclusively at Mbeki, and give every appearance of being another ploy in the political war between the party's Mbeki and Zuma factions. Indeed, the apparent strategy is to force the president to declare an amnesty on all crooked arms transactions, to get Zuma off the hook.
If Mbeki is concerned about his legacy, declaring a general amnesty at this point would be about the worst thing he could do. It would tell the country and the world that to protect himself, he is willing to sweep corruption on a massive scale under the carpet. It would tend to confirm suspicions of his own guilt, and shed retrospective light on his ruthless stage-management of inquiries into the arms deal. It would reinforce perceptions that our leaders are incorrigibly slippery and self-serving. And it would mean that the South African public will never know the facts.
Those turning up the heat on him should also be aware of the partisan impression they are creating. The arms deal has been described as the "poison well" of South African politics, and until it is thoroughly purged, it will continue to destabilise our system of government. It is not just Mbeki and Zuma's business. The ANC entire leadership, which was part of the decision-making on the deal, has a collective responsibility to ensure that the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is brought into the open.