Details of South Africa's arms trade over the past three years remain under wraps after a planned meeting between MPs and the committee charged with supervising the trade to discuss its outstanding reports was postponed.

It is the umpteenth time MPs have failed to secure a meeting with the National Conventional Arms Control Co-ordinating Committee (NCACC), which is supposed to report quarterly to parliament.

MPs have not been briefed on reports by the NCACC for several years.

Now, the NCACC has forwarded to Parliament reports covering the period up to the end of 2006 but MPs don't yet know what these reports contain.

The defence portfolio committee chairperson, Fezile Bhengu, last month instructed the NCACC, which is headed by cabinet minister Sydney Mufamadi, to appear before his committee.

His letter came after the international furore that erupted over the NCACC having issued a permit for a large arms consignment aboard the Chinese vessel An Yue Jiang to be transported through South Africa to Zimbabwe.

Bhengu also planned to get the NCACC to explain its reports.

But the meeting which was scheduled to take place last week was postponed because Mufamadi was unavailable.

The lengthy delay and apparent secrecy surrounding the NCACC reporting has outside observers baffled.

Noel Stott of the Institute for Security Studies said he had no idea why the reports were not made public as required by law.

Piers Pigou of the SA History Archives said he had been repeatedly refused access to the outstanding reports and Saha was considering legal action to get the information made public.

The NCACC oversees the country's conventional arms trade and its reports detail South Africa's arms exports and imports as well as listing permits that were granted.

Problems experienced with getting the NCACC to report to MPs were raised in the joint portfolio committee on defence annual report last year, and Bhengu has raised the matter with Speaker of Parliament Baleka Mbete.

DA spokesman on defence Rafeek Shah said the NCACC has not fulfilled its reporting obligations to Parliament and its functioning should be reviewed.

During the long wait to get the NCACC to report to Parliament, a secret forensic probe commissioned by the secretary of defence, January Masilela, revealed numerous irregularities, including problems with the conventional arms permits. The investigation was completed in late 2005 but the report has never been made public and it is unclear whether the recommendations were implemented by the Department of Defence.

The investigation looked at the donation of a Ratel to the King of Jordan; allegations of tender irregularities at Armscor; the flooding of the American market with South African National Defence Force surplus ammunition in its original form by Spreewerk Lubben as well as alleged irregularities/illegal activities with regard to the issuing of permits at the Directorate of Conventional Arms Control.

Its findings included that not only surplus SANDF ammunition was exported and re-exported *1 but also Portuguese, Israeli and Austrian ammunition.

There were no permit applications for the export and the re-export of this foreign ammunition.

* This article was originally published on page 12 of The Cape Argus on May 11, 2008

With acknowledgements to Chiara Carter and Cape Argus.