The ending of the last investigations
into arms deal corruption after 10 long years almost to
the week with little to show for it other than severe
damage to the credibility of the government and key
state institutions represents a failure of our young
democracy at the first big hurdle that was put in its
way.
After having overcome so much to hold inclusive
elections and pave the way for clean and representative
governance, we deserved better than this.
Future generations will pay the price for the precedents
that have been set as regards political accountability
and the independence of institutions such as the
National Prosecuting Authority (NPA). History is going
to judge us harshly for naively falling into the trap of
assuming a democratically elected government could be
trusted not to abuse power.
While there are undoubtedly several senior African
National Congress (ANC) officials who are breathing a
sigh of relief that their concerted effort to kill the
probe seems to have paid off, it is a pyrrhic victory.
Just as the NPA’s decision to drop the corruption
charges faced by President Jacob Zuma ,
rather than leave it to the courts to decide whether he
had a case to answer, has left his name forever tainted,
so walking away from the arms deal corruption
investigation with so many questions left unanswered
means the ANC will never be able to shake off its
association with graft.
Now when accusations are levelled against elected
officials of the ruling party, or state tenders are
awarded to ANC front companies, the assumption is going
to be that there is corruption involved. This may not be
of much concern to the party while it is still winning
elections with ease, but is destined to become a
crippling burden in the not-too-distant future when it
experiences real competition at the polls.
If the Hawks priority crime investigation unit sees no
likelihood of obtaining convictions on the basis of the
copious amount of evidence that has been collected over
the years, this is because the political will to ensure
it finds those convictions does not exist.
It has been clear for some time that much of the Zuma
administration’s first term of office has been dedicated
to ensuring that the theoretically politically impartial
institutions that would make these decisions primarily
the NPA and the Hawks’ predecessor, the Scorpions were
either compromised or removed.
However, the failure to bring anyone of consequence to
book despite
compelling evidence of widespread corruption in the arms
deal cannot be blamed solely on
domestic skullduggery.
There is an international reluctance to bring the dark
dealings of the global arms trade into the open, as
illustrated by the British and German governments’
heel-dragging on this and related issues.
The real winners are not the politicians and bureaucrats
who took kickbacks, or even the ANC, which is generally
assumed to have financed its 1999 election campaign
through donations from grateful arms deal contract
beneficiaries, but the
shadowy international
arms middlemen *1 who are the real
corrupters.
While the Democratic Alliance’s call for Parliament’s
standing committee on public accounts to conduct a
special hearing into the termination of the Hawks’
investigations is unlikely to change things, it is right
that both the Hawks and the NPA should at least be
forced to explain their actions and justify the
decisions they have made. If the NPA insists it has done
everything in its power to build a prima facie case but
has nevertheless failed, this could open the way for a
private prosecution.
SA has lost its innocence, but it is important that it
be replaced by healthy scepticism and a vigilant
attitude rather than resignation and cynicism.
With acknowledgements to Business
Day.
*1 It
is not so much the shadowy international arms middlemen
(although there are some of them), but the supplier
companies themselves, British Aerospace, Thomson-CSF,
Thyssen and Ferrostaal. They come up in this instance
and they come up almost every time there is a deal
somewhere.
Their business models are all the same, bribery and
corruption.
They are the permanent face of international deals while
the local corrupt government and party officials are the
temporary face.
And it's not only armaments companies, Mercedes Benz and
Siemens are two recently convicted of bribery on a
massive scale.
Sometimes the twain meet, a la DASA/EADS and GFC/Siemens.
British Aerospace and Thomson-CSF try to vertically
integrate all of their products in all of their projects
and one of these products is corruption.