The Sunday Times gave the affordability study to a number of economists for their comment. This is what they said about it :

Political economist Patrick Bond, director of the University of KwaZulu-Natal's Centre for Civil Society, said the decision to go ahead with the arms deal in spite of the warnings would have been reasonable only if there had been a military threat at the time.

" At the time the deal was being negotiated by Treasury officials during the late '90s, those same officials mandated sharp cutbacks in social spending.

"With South Africa recording 10 000 protests per year, the world's highest per-person rate, I reckon it is fair to ask whether Treasury did not produce its own military threat, internally.

"And did they simultaneously heighten tensions over scarce township resources that caused some of the xenophobic reactions recently, to the great surprise of the National Intelligence Agency?

"In other words, could the R90-billion or so wasted on the arms deal not have been invested in society, and given us much greater safety and security as a result?

"Emerging evidence of corruption makes it all the more tragic, because now the profound irrationality in cabinet's approval of the risky financing of these arms can be partially explained."

Paul Dunne, professor of economics at the University of the West of England, who specialises in the economics of peace, security and military spending, said the study was accurate in identifying the main risks and problems that actually occurred, such as those involving foreign exchange.

And it "strongly" presented the likelihood that some of the offsets would fail.

"I think ignoring these warnings was most definitely reckless. I also think the analysis of how large the amount involved was, relative to other department budgets, was useful, and again was reckless to ignore, given the needs of the South African economy and society," Dunne said.

Andrew Feinstein, a Cambridge-educated economist, a former ANC MP, and author of After the Party: A personal and political journey inside the ANC, said: "Taken together, this final version of the affordability study indicates the reckless bloody-mindedness with which this procurement was pushed through in spite of massive risks to the fiscus, a most-likely negative impact on all aspects of the macroeconomy and a clearly negative impact on the major social services.

"So the question has to be asked more determinedly than ever before: why did the South African government continue with this huge expenditure on weapons we didn't need ?

"As I have laid out in my book, the reason is to be found in the more than 200-million of bribes *1 that were paid by the winning companies ­ bribes paid to senior politicians, officials and, I believe, the ANC itself."

Economist Dawie Roodt said that, had he been given the affordability study to make a decision, he would not have gone ahead with the deal.

"South Africa had, and has, huge developmental challenges which, in my view, should have been given preference.

" I am no defence boffin, but I can't recall a specific threat to South Africa which would necessitate such an expenditure *2."

With acknowledgements to Megan Power, Jocelyn Maker and Sunday Times.