Publication: Mail and Guardian Issued: Date: 2008-12-12 Reporter: Sam Sole

Write A Letter Today

 

Publication 

Mail and Guardian
Date

2008-12-12
Reporter Sam Sole

Web Link

www.mg.co.za


Writing in the Business Day this week the former editor and veteran political analyst Allister Sparks said the arms deal was the biggest scandal in South African history. Yes, that's right, in South African history, not only in our post-apartheid history.

Billions have been lost in the hurried and corrupt purchase of arms we did not need. But the bigger, much sadder picture has been the loss of innocence of a new and hopeful democracy. The arms deal is behind the extraordinary split of the ANC and it has made the ruling party an enemy of the very institutions it played midwife to.

This week the ANC administered a body blow to the National Prosecuting Authority by firing its national director; it has neutered the corruption-busting Scorpions and hurt the cause of judicial independence, all in an effort to prevent the full truth of this dastardly scandal from emerging.

Though under judicial request to set up a commission of inquiry into the arms deal, President Kgalema Motlanthe refused to do so. So put that in your ballot paper and smoke it, Mr and Ms Citizen SA.

It won't do. We encourage readers to send letters to the president to tell him that we want a commission of inquiry into the arms deal, as well as to the British defence giant, BAE Systems.

As our investigative team reported last week, BAE is allegedly responsible for the highest payola splurged in the course of hawking us the jet planes we don't even have qualified pilots to fly. It paid "commissions" through a network of overt and covert companies to satisfy what one of BAE's agents called "third world procedures".

While it appears that European and African middlemen like John Bredenkamp received substantial payments, the bling-loving South African playboy Fana Hlongwane, who apparently received even more, is fingered as the man who holds the clue to whom in the political class got the money that has so eroded our political culture.

Third World procedures are behind the decline of post-colonial Africa and are outlawed by various new global conventions. Let our president and BAE know what you think. It stinks.

Please send your mail to:

President Kgalema Motlanthe
Private Bag X1000
Pretoria, 0001

The Chair, BAE Systems Holdings
First Floor, Building 2
Cambridge Park
South Africa Bauhinia Street
Highveld Techno Park
Centurion, 0046
South Africa

With acknowledgements to Sam Sole and Mail and Guardian.

A word of caution.

There is now a registered fullscale investigation into the BAE Systems and Saab angles to the Arms Deal.

This cannot by law be discarded or abandoned in the changeover from the DSO to the new High Priority Crimes Unit.

But a commission of enquiry is normally not appropriate when a full blown criminal investigation is underway, which it is both in the UK and here.

But the utmost vigilance should be maintained at all times that the investigating authorities do a proper job and fully account for their work and their decisions, not like with the previous NDPP who failed to charge Zuma with his crimes when he could have and should have done so and withdrew charges and Thomson-CSF in the most farcical and puerile way imaginable.

But there are another half dozen angles of the Arms Deal and its massive cover-up that are not currently being investigated and a commission of enquiry by a non-Ginwala type legal expert would be relevant.