ON Wednesday night the Mail & Guardian received a faxed letter from a firm of lawyers in Pretoria representing the arms manufacturer, Denel, which can only be described as impertinent. The letter demanded a “written undertaking” by 10am last Thursday that we would not publish the name of a country with which Denel is negotiating a major arms deal.
The threat stems from an article published by the Sunday Independent at the weekend disclosing that Denel was finalising the sale of a huge quantity of arms – including G-6 heavy artillery guns – to an unidentified Middle Eastern country. On Monday Denel laid criminal charges against that newspaper for their report.
Arms manufacturers tend to be lacking in finesse; after all, their raison d’tre is to kill people, rather than to persuade them to a point of view. Nevertheless Denel’s behaviour smacks of crassness even by their standards.
The rationalisation Denel offers for its attempts to censor the Sunday Independent (and now us) is purely commercial; no question of national security is involved. They argue that disclosure threatens jobs in the industry. This may be true. Countries purchasing weapons tend to have hostile neighbours and they are reluctant to see those neighbours informed about arms purchases that they are making.
But Denel has to recognise that is a handicap under which an arms manufacturer necessarily labours in a society committed to freedom of speech, transparency and public debate. In a phrase: if they cannot stand the heat, they should get out of the kitchen.
The criminal charges Denel has laid against the Sunday Independent arise from the 1968 Armaments Development and Production Act. We have no doubt that this piece of apartheid- era legislation would have been rendered obsolete by now if our government had delivered on its long-overdue Open Democracy Act, by which it was to give effect to the guarantees of freedom of information and of free speech contained in our Constitution.
In the absence of that protection we are forced into a familiar position – reminiscent of days which we had hoped were long gone – of having to take our chances in making a stand on principle in the face of a repressive law.
“Our client has a commercial obligation of non-disclosure,” say Denel’s lawyers in their letter.
We have a moral, as well as a commercial obligation of disclosure.