Evidence wa ka Ngobeni
The African National Congress’s biggest alliance partner, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), has vowed to intensify its criticism of the government’s controversial arms procurement.
Two week ago the government was given the green light to forge ahead with its multibillion-rand arms procurement after a multi-agency probe by the Scorpions, the auditor general and the public protector cleared it of corruption relating to the arms deal.
This week Cosatu said it believed the arms deal is unnecessary in light of the country’s social deficit and the two million-strong federation will continue to engage the government on the issue until their concerns are addressed.
The first Cosatu critique of the arms deal came in February this year in an input to parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Trade and Industry. In a fundamental rejection of the matter, Cosatu said by going ahead with the deal the government had contradicted its spending priorities mainly social services and that the decision to procure arms did not “adequately look at the broader economic, social and employment costs”. Cosatu recommended that Parliament review the arms contracts and assess whether they were justified.
In this week’s Cosatu Weekly, Cosatu heavyweights said debates around the arms deal should be “refocused away from sensationalised and unfounded allegations of widespread corruption into whether the arms package is really desirable in the face if the social deficit we face”.
Cosatu said the purchasing of arms was ill-advised as the country does not have an outside military threat. The only real threat to the country’s stability “is the deepening crisis of unemployment, poverty, inequality and hopelessness”. Moreover, “so far we have seen no evidence of the promises of jobs that have been made”.
Cosatu also raised concerns about the escalation of costs of the arms deal. Initially the arms deal was set to cost the government about R30-billion. The costs have escalated to over R60-billion. According to the arms deal report tabled in Parliament this month, consultants appointed by the multi-agency probe into the arms deal found holes in the government’s affordability study on the deal, which stressed how the final cost would be affected by currency fluctuations.
Cosatu is furious: “The escalation of the package to R60-billion means that we shall spend twice as much money on arms as on education, which has been our biggest expenditure item for years …
“In response to the budget speech of 2001/2002, Cosatu rejects the decision that in this financial year, we are going to spend R5-billion on arms against R1, 5-billion on poverty alleviation.”