Press Statement by :

Economist Allied for Arms Reduction - South Africa

October 29, 2003

ECAAR-SA
3B Alpine Mews
High Cape
Cape Town 8001

021-465-7423
ecaar@icon.co.za 

The German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Joschka Fischer is to speak at the University of Cape Town on Friday October 31 from 14:30 until 15:30 at Leslie Social Sciences Lecture Theatre 2B. Coincidental to his visit to South Africa, the German-built corvette SAS Amatola is to arrive on November 4. All the shacks in Khayelitsha could be replaced with houses for the cost of the four corvettes. Accordingly, a letter has today been delivered to the German Embassy asking the following five questions:

"I am Terry Crawford-Browne, chair of Economists Allied For Arms Reduction -- South Africa. We are taking the South African government to court to cancel the arms deal, including the German supplied corvettes and submarines. The matter will come to court on November 17 and February 17. The tender procedures were such a farce that even Armscor's legal department recommended that the German Frigate Consortium should be disqualified.

These were government to government deals. Germany would win the warship contracts. Britain and Sweden would win the warplane contracts, and Italy would get the helicopter contracts. The needs of South Africans were deemed irrelevant.

We are confident that the court will find that the arms deal is unconstitutional, and that the financial consequences of cancellation will then fall to German rather than South African taxpayers.

You will have visited Khayelitsha and seen the conditions there. All those shacks and the human misery they represent could be replaced with houses for the cost of the four corvettes South Africa is buying from Germany.

1. A former German ambassador to South Africa informed me in 1996 that the government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl had been determined at all costs to win the naval contracts? Why? Were there financial kick-backs to the Christian Democratic Party in Germany and to the African National Congress in South Africa?

2. Your government inherited this scandal. Why didn't you intervene in terms of Criterion Eight of the EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports to cancel the German contracts? How does the Green Party reconcile arms exports to a country with 42% unemployment and massive crises of poverty -- but no conceivable foreign military threat?

3. The former director of EADS in South Africa, Michael Woerfel was indicted for corruption together with the ANC's former chief whip, Tony Yengeni. What progress is being made with German investigations into this case in terms of the OECD Conventions Against Bribery of Foreign Officials?

4. The offset against purchase of three submarines was to have been construction of a stainless steel plant by Ferrostaal. This was cancelled, as was the subsequent condom factory. Offsets are internationally notorious for corruption, and are prohibited in terms of World Trade Organisation rules. Knowing that offsets are so discredited, why does the German government encourage/permit German companies to offer offsets as a lure to win arms deals?

5. What is your reaction to the statement by our Minister of Health that there is no money for AIDS because South Africa must buy submarines from Germany?"

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As you will be aware, earlier this month ECAAR-SA applied for an interdict to prevent the SAS Amatola from entering South African waters, and successfully achieved the objective of the scheduling of court dates on November 17 and February 17. We subsequently considered making a procedurally-correct application against the SAS Amatola, but decided to focus our energies on preparing for the two court dates.

Nonetheless, ECAAR-SA's attached paper Corvettes or Houses? draws attention to the housing crisis in the Western Cape. Three years after the Irene Grootboom decision by the Constitutional Court, the housing situation continues to deteriorate. An estimated 410 000 houses could be built for less than the cost of four corvettes, and could create up to 200 000 jobs.

Terry Crawford-Browne