Revisiting the South African Arms Deal whitewash

On 21 April 2016 an innovative commercial product was launched in South Africa — the new, improved Seriti washing powder which washes whiter than white. It was packed with nano-detergents with supernatural powers which ensures that even the whiff of evil and corruption simply vanishes, and never, ever returns.

Inevitably, South African politicians, especially those from the ruling party who feed from the trough, were falling over themselves to acquire this miracle product that could cleanse and purify body, mind and soul. The Guptas may most probably argue that this is the equivalent to bathing in the Ganges (which would wash away all sins and turn malefactors into saints).

It is well known that arms deals are murky and dirty, involving shady middlemen (and women), and their political equivalents, peddling weapons of war, death and destruction, for huge kickbacks from the public purse. The Bofors case in India is a good example, with remarkable parallels with the South African Arms Deal scandal.

In 1986 India contracted Sweden arms manufacturer AB Bofors to supply arms worth $1.4-billion. However, in 1987 a Swedish radio report “claimed that Bofors paid kickbacks, amounting to Rs640-million, to top Indian politicians and key defence officials to secure the deal”. It was alleged that Ottavio Quattrocchi, an Italian businessman with close links with then Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi’s family, was the middleman in the scandal.

During Gandhi’s stint as prime minister, Quattrocchi exerted “enormous powers over ministers and top bureaucrats. Quattrocchi even secured unprecedented access to confidential information sent to the prime minister’s office, and to the eternal consternation of bureaucrats, could recount to top bureaucrats the confidential notings that they had made on files they sent to their ministers”. (And in South Africa we have the Guptas).

Notwithstanding the evidence piling up, there was a reluctance across the political and ideological spectrum to enthusiastically and vigorously investigate the Bofors scandal.

As in South Africa, in India courageous investigations and reporting by a young, fearless journalist, Chitra Subramaniam, working for The Hindu newspaper, played a critical role in exposing the Bofors arms deal scandal. (A free press, independent judiciary and robust civil society are the main reasons India remains the world’s largest democracy, and South Africa the youngest).

As in the South African case, the putrid stench lingered for decades and evidence emerged of a “massive cover-up and deception”.

The website welcomenri.com makes the important point that the Bofors scandal “will — and ought to — remain as a permanent reminder of just how deep the rot runs in our polity, and of the enormous levers that people in power have to scuttle the investigation. It shows up how from the Prime Minister downward, politicians were given to openly lying — despite clinching evidence to the contrary — because they had their own interests to protect. It also shows up an entire ecosystem of corruption, facilitated by politicians, bureaucrats and arms manufacturers and their agents, which compromised every institution of our democracy — from parliament to the executive to the bureaucracy to the investigative agencies to even the judiciary”.

Uncannily, this last paragraph could well succinctly describe the South African arms deal scandal.

It is interesting that whenever former president Jacob Zuma and the ANC government have done the “right thing” they have been instructed by the highest courts in the land to do so, prompting the inevitable carping about “judicial overreach”. The independent judicial investigation into allegations of corruption linked to the Arms Deal, for example, was established in September 2011 in order to pre-empt an instruction from the Constitutional Court (which was scheduled to hear the matter on 17 November 2011) to do so.

When he was Justice Minister, Jeff Radebe stated that the Seriti Commission marked “a watershed moment in the history of democratic South Africa, in a quest to rid our nation of what has become an albatross that must now cease to blemish the reputation of our government and the image of our country”.

The Seriti Commission sat between 19 August 2012 to June 2015, and heard evidence from 54 witnesses, including former president Thabo Mbeki, who had chaired an inter-ministerial committee which approved the deal. The purpose of the Seriti Commission was to “investigate allegations of fraud, corruption, impropriety and irregularity in the arms deal package”.

On 21 April 2016, President Zuma announced that the Seriti commission had concluded that there was no evidence to “suggest that undue or improper influence played any role in the selection of the preferred bidders, which ultimately entered into contracts with the government”.

Furthermore, there was no evidence of irregular payments to any “officials involved in the strategic defence procurement package, let alone any of the members of the inter-ministerial committee that oversaw the process, or any member of the Cabinet that took the final decisions”.

According to President Zuma the Seriti Commission’s findings “bring to finality the allegations and claims of wrongdoing” in the Arms Deal procurement, and the “ANC reaffirms its confidence in the credibility of the process”.

However, since its establishment in 2011 and subsequent modus operandi, the Seriti Commission can best be described as a most reluctant commission, keen on covering rather than unravelling the truth, and the actions of Judge Seriti hardly inspired confidence.

There were persistent allegations from insiders that the commission “was not being transparent and concealing an alternative or ‘second agenda’ ”.

Senior commission investigator Norman Moabi quit because “Seriti ruled the commission with an iron fist and facts were manipulated or withheld from commissioners. Contributions from commissioners who did not pursue the ‘second agenda’ were frequently ignored”. Others who resigned included legal researcher Kate Painting, commissioner Judge Francis Legodi and chief evidence leader Tayob Aboobaker.

Two evidence leaders, advocates Barry Skinner and Carol Sibiya, resigned because “Judge Willie Seriti denied them the right to re-examine witnesses, even though it was a crucial part of their job. They claimed that vital evidence was withheld from them and that they were aware of duplicity at the commission. They also criticised Seriti’s decision not to permit as evidence a damning report that showed that German arms dealer Ferrostaal allegedly paid R300-million to influence senior politicians to secure the sale of submarines to South Africa”. This “nullifies the very purpose for which the commission was set up”.

Lawyers for Human Rights argued that: “The commission should be leading the struggle for openness and transparency to ensure it fulfils its mandate and get to the bottom of the controversial arms deal, something it has so far failed to do, undermining the public’s right to know the truth.”

The Right2Know Campaign contended that the Seriti Commission had not acted fairly and justly: “We have seen huge amounts of evidence being kept away from the public and hostility towards whistle-blowers and critics of the deal.”

Both organisations applied to the High Court in Pretoria to review and set aside the findings of the Seriti Commission, which will be heard on 11-12 June 2019, and their key contention is that “the Seriti Commission failed miserably to conduct the most routine of investigations, arriving at the implausible conclusion that there was no evidence of corruption in the arms deal”. DM

Brij Maharaj is a geography professor at UKZN. He writes in his personal capacity.