EVERY year more than $80bn is spent on arms ­ about 0.15% of the gross world product of $70-trillion. Yet it is estimated that the arms trade accounts for about 40% of all acts of corruption.

Nation states are the customers. So it is civil servants, the military, politicians, their hangers-on and private-sector fixers who engage in this theft of taxpayers’ funds.

South Africa is an ideal partner for arms deal corruption, given the endemic criminality of the late National Party and now some within the ANC. Almost 40 years ago I described the Nats as “out-and-out crooks”.  Today, the same applies to many in the African National Congress (ANC).

Now, while the Nats had their grievous and evil faults, they did know how to run things such as Eskom, South African Airways, Iscor, Sasol, the water boards, dams, roads and so on. Some of their thievery was revealed in the information and sanctions-busting scandals in oil and arms.

This was exposed by the English press, led by the Rand Daily Mail, leading to demands from the Nats for control of the media.

Sound familiar?

The ANC seems unable to run anything while squandering billions on armaments we cannot maintain, do not have the skills to operate and do not, for the most part, need as we face no existential military threats.

Of course, our government is not alone. Britain’s former prime minister Tony Blair suppressed an inquiry into allegations that BAE paid billions of pounds in bribes to Saudi royals to secure an arms contract. India has suffered being hoodwinked, as were we, by the laughable promise of “offset” benefits. Only the crooks benefited.

The temptations can be irresistible. In our deal, an estimate of at least R1.5bn has been paid in bribes to, among others, politicians, including cabinet ministers. BAE alone paid R1.05bn for the aircraft deal.

When he inquired into the South African arms deal, former ANC MP Andrew Feinstein relates in his book After the Party; “(President) Mbeki suggested to me, in what I would not describe as friendly terms, that it would not be good for my political career to investigate.”

Now we have a commission of inquiry into our arms deal, under Judge Willie Seriti, which has had a delayed and inauspicious start. There have been accusations of nepotism, an ANC habit, excessive expenditure on foreign travel (another ANC addiction) and senior investigator Mokgale Norman Moabi has angrily resigned, charging Judge Seriti with having a “secret agenda”.

The Mail & Guardian reports that Moabi is widely respected in legal circles. He resigned when Judge Seriti, having summonsed witnesses, postponed the hearings.

The elusive Fana Hlongwane ­ reported to have either made or acted as the conduit for millions of rand ­ has been removed from the witness list.

One witness, Richard Young, who owns CCII Systems, which unsuccessfully tendered for part of the corvette combat suites contract, has given the commission German legal documents which claim $22m was paid in bribes to “South African officials and members of the cabinet after the coming into effect of the Corruption Act on February 2 1999”.

Young points out that, in terms of agreements between South Africa and the suppliers of the corvettes, a penalty of 10% can be demanded by South Africa if anyone is found guilty of bribery.

Judge Seriti has an opportunity to provide the state with evidence for charges to be laid, opening up the opportunity of clawing back a few billion rands.

Young is also puzzled that the original agreement stipulates delivery of “28 Gripen JAS39 advanced light fighter aircraft”.  However, Parliament was recently told that we bought 26 Gripens, of which 12 are in storage*2.

Anyway, what’s a missing Gripen or two, at R1bn apiece, among friendly arms crooks?*1

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* This article was first published in Sunday Times: Business Times

With acknowledgement to Stephen Mulholland and Business Day. 

*1      What indeed?

Just nobody seems to have picked up on this.


*2      And more grist for the mill.

We do not and did not need the Gripens.

That has to be clear.

The Cheetah Cs could easily still be flying proudly around our skies until 2022, even longer.

As they are now proudly flying around the skies of Ecuador.

The Gripens have cost us some R25 billion in 2013 Rands, plus our virginity as a democratic country.

And they are not going to give us R1 billion of real value.

At the same time they have put some R2 billion to R4 billion of real cash value of the usual suspects.

One of whom never made it past the weir on the Orange River that fateful day in 2004, a week before he was to testify before the Directorate for Special Operations.