Barry Streek
The processing of the arms deal report in Parliament this week highlighted the ruling African National Congress’s determination to get the report out of the way in the shortest possible time and to give it the best possible spin.
Six different parliamentary committees are examining the report, effectively diluting the role of the public accounts committee, which initiated the arms probe.
The public service committee took less than three hours to deal with the chapter on public servants.
In the public accounts committee (Scopa), ANC representatives sought to restrict the hearings to the recommendations in the 380-page report. They also called for the three investigating agencies the auditor general, the public protector and the national director of public prosecutions to give evidence next week, although Auditor General Shauket Fakie will be abroad.
They were forced to back down when the Office of the Auditor General said only Fakie could give evidence on its behalf. The two-day hearings involving the investigating team will now be held on December 5 and 6.
The ANC majority did succeed in preventing civil society organisations from giving verbal evidence to the committee. This prompted the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa) to make a direct protest to parliamentary Speaker Frene Ginwala.
“Given the importance of the arms procurement process, and the fiscal and other budgetary issues it raises of relevance to socio-economic delivery, we believe that the expertise and competence of a number of civil society organisations could meaningfully contribute to the oversight process,” Idasa’s executive director, Paul Graham, said in the letter.
The official line on the arms probe, reflected in a Cabinet statement after its meeting on Wednesday, is that the government and the ANC accepts the findings and recommendations of the investigation.
The Cabinet also said the Department of Defence, assisted by other departments, had been “instructed to make proposals on how the government should act on these recommendations”.
But the rush in Parliament, the last-minute release of the inquiry report to the media and the welter of announcements this week about industrial participation projects linked to the arms deal indicate a concerted strategy to market the deal and limit damage.
Freedom Front defence spokes-person Pieter Groenewald said the handling of the report by the joint standing committee on defence was “a farce, a rubber stamp”. The Democratic Alliance’s Mike Waters said the public service committee spent less than three hours on procedures dealing with civil servants and conflict of interests.
“The ANC has turned parliamentary scrutiny and oversight into a farce,” Water said.
In the Scopa meeting this week the ANC representatives, significantly boosted by the presence of John Jeffrey, parliamentary counsellor to Deputy President Jacob Zuma, and ANC whip Andries Nel, went on the attack.
Accusing the opposition parties of politicising the report, they were clearly antagonistic to committee chairperson Gavin Woods, a key figure in Parliament’s oversight of the arms deal.
Woods’s rulings and approach to the hearing were constantly called into question, in a continuation of an apparent ANC strategy to force his resignation from the chair.
Observers believe the ANC is reluctant to use its majority muscle to vote Woods out, as this will be read as a further move to politicise a formerly non-partisan watchdog committee.