Today’s body politic is in a sorry state because of arms deal corruption, says activist Zackie Achmat.
He was moderating a discussion Thursday night at the Institute for Security Studies, where a book on the arms deal, The Devil in the Detail: How the Arms Deal Changed Everything, was launched. It was written by Paul Holden and Hennie van Vuuren.
At the discussion, Holden and Van Vuuren said the arms deal was not a single event. Instead, it was – and still is – a series of scandals and outrages, all contributing towards a dubious momentum that took South Africa further away from democratic practice.
They said the book spoke of state secrets, telling tales of personal enrichment and the collusion of criminal networks in the old SADF and ANC security apparatus.
It also looked at the cumulative worth of various deals within the bigger package, the irrational economics of the deal, the rise of the spooks and shadow state and the politicisation of prosecutions.
“The arms deal has undermined oversight of government and corporate bureaucracy. It has taken away the power of the legislature,” Achmat said.
“Parliament used to be able to call in officials during Mandela’s presidency to call out expenditure, now it is not done. Scopa (the standing committee on public accounts), the NPA (National Prosecuting Authority) and Scorpions were all undermined. The arms deal, through opaque business, has corrupted our body politic.”
He said the book detailed the relationship between the current state and the old one and would make people understand what went wrong and what could be done to change it.
Holden said that when he and Van Vuuren started working on the book, there were faced with mountains of documents. “My archive, I think, is at about one million pages,” he said.
“The arms deal is a series of six scandals that have had a disastrous impact on our politics. Any purchase of arms in the 1990s was going to be deeply unpopular. Initially, Parliament and civil society pushed back but two years later things changed.
“There was a coming together of the elements of the old SADF (SA Defence Force) and some MK (Umkhonto we Sizwe) operatives who all had a distaste for democracy. If you look at how these groups operated in the past, the arms deal becomes less surprising.
“Every single contract was manipulated. There was violation of procedures, subterfuge, political interference in every investigation and heavy editing of evidence.”
Holden said the arms deal was sold to South Africa with a promise of 65 000 jobs and R110 million in investment by companies that were selling arms. It was meant to cost R29 billion, but was now estimated to have cost more than R70bn.
Van Vuuren said there were three cultures that had emerged from the arms deal and which now blighted our future:
l A culture of secrecy that was based in the intelligence community, involving hawkish elements of the SADF and MK.
l A culture of “shiny things” where South Africa bought fancy weapons, and created pet projects such as building nuclear stations and the Gautrain “to look important in Africa”.
l A culture of personality where only two people, Schabir Shaik and Tony Yengeni, had gone to prison for the deal, while many corrupt businessmen and politicians were still free and had not been prosecuted.
The book is available in book stores.
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