Gustav Thiel
ARMS manufacturer Armscor sold bulletproof vests to the police, army and the prisons service – ignoring concerns that they were sub-standard.
The vests were produced for Armscor by a now-defunct firm.
Johannesburg-based Ballistic Body Armour, which supplies body armour, said this week that the vests “could endanger the lives of people who wear them”.
The company has handed independent international research to Armscor and the military showing that the vests failed the standard industry tests in Armscor’s specifications.
Armscor insiders said the organisation had also employed testing procedures to approve the vests far less stringent than industry norms .
Armscor’s chair, Ron Haywood, this week denied the allegations saying Ballistic Body Armour had lost out on a R2-million contract last year and was trying to discredit the winner, Tactical Systems International.
However, Tactical Systems International went into liquidation before it delivered, at which point the contract was put on ice for 12 months.
The collapse is the second such blow to Armscor. The firm’s predecessor, Tactical Systems CC, collapsed earlier last year after supplying an unknown quantity of vests which Armscor sold on to its police, prisons service and military clients.
“Maybe my men did too good a job of giving the contract to the lowest bidder that they put them out of business,” Haywood said.
Ballistic Body Armour’s chair Philip Cadman said he was not griping about losing the contract. His offshore clients, including the German and Portuguese police, are more valuable than Armscor.
“If Armscor ignores the problem, and I am sure that they were hoping that it had disappeared by now, it could still blow up in their faces and damage their credibility,” he said.
Cadman warned Armscor repeatedly about Tactical Systems, but was ignored. Eventually he complained to Major General Julius Kriel, head of the South African Defence Industries.
“We supplied Armscor with evidence that the vests purchased were suspect,” Cadman told Kriel. “This evidence was that both the yarn manufacturers recommended a significant increase in the number of layers employed to meet the specification required over that used in the correctional services vest.
“We also advised Armscor that we had conducted tests on two panels -both of which had failed. We pointed out that the ballistic panels were not encased in sealed waterproof covers and that if immersed in water, would fail catastrophically.”
The tests were performed by the two biggest suppliers of yarn for body armour – Du Pont in the United States and Akzo-Nobel Aramid Products in Germany. Cadman said the tests found the vests could not withstand the force of a bullet fired from a .357 Magnum pistol – the standard maximum requirement and an Armscor specification.
Cadman said one in every 2 000 of the vests had been tested, against the industry norm of one in every 50 vests. It had since reverted to the industry norm in testing.
Haywood declined to comment on the international tests, but confirmed he had received them. He said Armscor was now following a policy of total transparency in awarding contracts, so even if what Cadman alleged was true, it could not occur again.