/ 16 September 2011

Arms and the man

“The Scorpions are actively investigating Deputy President Jacob Zuma for an alleged attempt to secure a bribe of R500 000 a year from French defence giant Thomson-CSF.”

Those were the opening words of an explosive Mail & Guardian report in November 2002. It went on: “The alleged bribe was to be paid in return for Zuma’s ‘protection of Thomson-CSF’ during investigations into South Africa’s scandal-plagued multibillion-rand arms deal. The bribe was also allegedly to secure the ‘permanent support of JZ for future projects’.”

Three years later, Zuma was sacked as deputy president by Thabo Mbeki after the Durban High Court convicted Schabir Shaik of fraud and corruption for his part in the process. The succession battle between the two men then went into overdrive, consuming much of the ANC and the law-enforcement and intelligence agencies, and bringing South Africa to the brink of constitutional crisis.

Meanwhile, our reporting increasingly suggested that people within Mbeki’s ambit, including wealthy arms brokers Tony Georgiadis and Fana Hlongwane, had stood foursquare in the stream of illicit commissions that flowed from the deal. And it became clear that buried in subcontracts and bent offset deals were rich benefits for well-connected figures from across the ruling party’s warring factions.

So why has Zuma, who has as much to lose as anyone, suddenly decided that, after all, we do need the “closure” that a commission of inquiry into the deal would bring? The cynical answer is that he may want to pre-empt a Constitutional Court decision in favour of arms-deal campaigner Terry Crawford-Browne compelling such an investigation. He may also want block the plans of the ANC Youth League to revive the allegations against him ahead of the party’s 2012 elective conference.

This way, he gets to choose the terms of reference and the commissioner.

Nothing we’ve seen since November 2002 encourages optimism, but we’re not beyond hoping that at last we will see a thorough investigation of the whole deal, in all its messy complexity. Nothing less will stand scrutiny.

Read the first half of the editorial “A cowed child reflects on us all ” here

For more news on the arms deal visit our special report.