THE African National Congress (ANC) MP sacked from a key post for demanding a probe into the government?s multi-billion rand arms deal says the way his party is handling the probe is “very stupid.”
Andrew Feinstein, who played a leading role in getting parliament to back the probe, told the Afrikaans-language Sunday newspaper Rapport: “We are behaving as though we have a lot to hide. If we have nothing to hide, then our reaction has been very stupid.”
Feinstein led the ANC team in a parliamentary committee which demanded a probe into alleged corruption in the R43bn arms procurement programme, but the ANC demoted him to the bankbenches last week.
The programme will see government buy fighter jets, submarines, corvettes and helicopters from German, French, Swedish, Italian and British arms manufacturers but it has been plagued by charges of high-level corruption among ANC politicians in awarding the contracts.
Parliament’s call for a probe met with resistance from President Thabo Mbeki, who last month said the legislature’s watchdog public accounts committee had been “wrong” in assuming there was cause for an investigation.
Mbeki refused to heed the committee’s call to appoint the highly-regarded Heath Special Investigations Unit to take part in the probe and allowed Deputy President Jacob Zuma to tell the body it had “misdirected” itself.
The committee’s ANC members then backtracked on the call to put the Heath unit on the case but Feinstein insisted the corruption allegations should still be thoroughly probed.
On Monday last week he was fired as leader of the ANC working group on the committee and replaced by a party loyalist.
The weekly Mail and Guardian reported that the party’s chief whip, Tony Yengeni, said at the meeting where Feinstein was sacked that there was a need for the ANC to take control of the committee, which is chaired by an opposition MP.
Yengeni was also quoted as telling the Johannesburg-based Sunday Independent: “In our system no ANC member has a free vote.”
Opposition parties claim that the ANC is trying to control the investigation, which is now in the hands of the auditor general, the public protector and the director for serious economic offenses, and have described the affair as South Africa’s Watergate.
Political analysts have said that Mbeki’s defensive stance is inviting accusations of a cover-up. They have also warned that, by interfering with parliament’s oversight role over the executive, his party could set back democracy. – AFP
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