Minister of Defence and Military Veterans Lindiwe Sisulu has promised a "clean slate" for all future military contracts after the termination of the Airbus deal, and admitted that the country will have to put out another "big tender" for similar heavy lift planes.
Although no tender fraud was evident in the R40-billion plus Airbus deal, it hit the spotlight after the auditor-general raised questions about eight planes being ordered without the due tender processes.
"Project Continental" - the Airbus contract - threatened to blow up into another arms deal saga, with allegations of corruption still hanging over the 1999 strategic arms procurement package.
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In an interview with The Sunday Independent, Sisulu emphasised that South Africa's withdrawal from the deal was mainly because of production delays of more than four years, meaning cost escalations of about R30bn.
| 'We really need to have a clean slate' |
But South Africa will soon have to make up for the loss of airlift capability by putting out a "big tender" for similar planes. Sisulu was adamant that this and other future procurements would be "done by the rules".
"Any purchase in the defence force is normally huge and we need to take the South African people with us to understand why it is necessary," she said.
"Any resultant misunderstanding of how we proceed with these purchases covers us in a cloud forever more.
"Henceforth the processes will be correct and the public will be kept informed on all those details without undermining national security, and we will stick by that at all times."
Tender processes in general will be more rigorous, with at least one tender now being probed by Sisulu after allegations that a top defence force official is linked to a company that received a R108 million contract for specialised mine clearing for which it appears to be unqualified.
The Star exposed last month that Origin Exchange Consulting was awarded the contract while Ministry of Defence logistics expert Mthobisi Zondi was running a company with the same address as Origin.
"Very soon we will have a complete overhaul of those processes," Sisulu said of her tender clean-up. "We really need to have a clean slate."
While the decision to terminate the costly contract has been applauded across the political divide, some industry experts have criticised it because South Africa still does not have a viable transport capacity for its African peacekeeping missions, a cornerstone of its foreign policy. The minister blamed the delay for the loss of capability. She said the general needs of the army, with its dilapidated infrastructure and poor conditions of service, weighed heavily in the decision precipitated by the delay.
"It doesn't matter what our capability is when the general state of health and the morale of our soldiers is not of the same standard... then we are not going anywhere very quickly. I think we have been concentrating on equipment (in spending), at the expense of other facilities that are just as important as the equipment," she said.
Sisulu, now six months at the helm of the military, has had a baptism of fire, with violent strikes by soldiers and the Airbus saga. She admitted that the decision to terminate the Airbus contract had been "stressful".
- This article was originally published on page 5 of Sunday Independent on November 08, 2009
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