I’m not sure it’s quite what Andy Warhol had in mind with his famous quip about how everyone would get their 15 minutes of fame, but according to Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota: ”The 15 minutes are over. It’s time to move on.”
In an article about the arms deal report in several
Sunday newspapers, Lekota gave expression to the all too obviously desperate hope of this government that it has succeeded in putting the controversy behind it.
This is an understandable instinct. As an issue, the arms deal has been a wearying and distracting one. It has tested the African National Congress and its political management to breaking point. But, as President Thabo Mbeki himself might have put it with one of his favourite phrases, ”the centre has held”.
It has been fascinating to observe how the government has moved from being almost totally out of control of the situation a year ago, to its crowing exaltation of last week’s absolution.
For a few months around the turn of the year, criticising the government over its handling of the arms deal was like shooting fish in a barrel. No pleasure could be drawn from it.
When governments find themselves in holes and continue to dig, it is an unedifying spectacle. Only those with a desire to see modern South Africa fail would have enjoyed the sight.
How has this reversal of fortune occurred? Is the report of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) the ”whitewash” as various opposition leaders claimed last week even before they had received the report, let alone read it?
Having now read all 400 pages, I have concluded that it is not. By definition, cover-ups hide wrongdoing and errors. This report does the opposite: it exposes a series of serious errors and failures in government. Am I saying that everything has been revealed? No, again. The report is not perfect.
For one, the report informs us that investigations into a number of serious matters involving very senior people continue. Second, arms dealing corruption is invariably concealed in deep and murky water. Rarely does it emerge. And, perhaps the JIT did not push hard enough in certain areas: I can find no reference, for example, to any investigation into the allegation, revealed in the Mail & Guardian, that British Aerospace paid, in effect, a substantial inducement to the ANC.
Lekota asks that those who described, as the Institute for Democracy in SouthAfrica (Idasa) did, the investigation as a ”litmus test”, should now ”proclaim with equal volume that the test has been passed with flying colours”. In spite of any defects, and because of the thorough professionalism of the report, the answer is yes. That is, yes in respect of the members of the JIT, who clearly saw this as a defining moment in their constitutional existence. They asked that their credibility and integrity be found not wanting, and I believe they passed their own test.
The report’s preface also speaks of a ”golden mid-way” between an over-zealous investigation and a cover-up. It might as well have been an articulation of the core strategy: to deliver, in the national interest, a strong but not too condemnatory report. National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka, in particular, was central, I believe, in ensuring that sufficient weight was attached to the duty to act independently.
But back to Lekota’s challenge, for this is only half of the matter. What was objectionable about the response of the ministers last week is the apparent belief that the matter is now closed just because they, as political leaders, have been cleared.
The report is sloppy, however, in its characterisation of what ”government” is and is not. The first line of the concluding ”Key Findings” chapter states that ”No evidence was found of any improper or unlawful conduct by the government.” Then, ”The irregularities and improprieties referred to in the findings as contained in the report, point to the conduct of certain officials of the government departments involved and cannot, in our view, be ascribed to the president or the ministers involved in their capacity as members of the ministers’ committee or Cabinet.”
And, finally, ”There are therefore no grounds to suggest that the government’s contracting position is flawed”. Long live the contracts! Viva! Relief and champagne all round.
The first two sentences stand in direct contradiction: if officials of government departments do not constitute ”government” then it is difficult to understand what does. If the report wanted to definitively clear the politicians in the executive, as it so clearly did, then it should have been more precise. This is not just semantics on my part. It goes to the heart of an important issue, namely the relationship between ministers and their officials.
Ministers cannot know about everything that goes on under their line of authority; to expect them to would be unreasonable. Thus, the question must always be: did they know what they should have known?
What Idasa said about the arms deal was that it was a test of democratic accountability. Thus, if a senior official, such as chief of acquisitions Chippy Shaik, breached — as the JIT report found he did — a series of procedural and other rules and allowed a serious conflict of interest to contaminate his role in the decision-making process, then the question becomes: did the minister responsible know and was he, in that sense, responsible?
Accountability is non-negotiable: whether they like it or not, ministers are accountable for the commissions or omissions of their public servants.
Regrettably, because of its inadequate conceptual starting point, the report fails to examine the question of ministerial accountability in this light and so its cause remains stagnant and undeveloped, and the litmus test can not yet be said to be fully passed.
The seven parliamentary committees that have been assigned to review the report have the opportunity and duty to now add weight and flesh to the bones of the JIT’s recommendations. In this sense, the whole process is only really halfway through.
The ministerial reaction fails to reflect this. A more sober response, noting the serious findings of the report, and encouraging Parliament to examine them and add to them, would have been more appropriate.
Whether the ANC in Parliament is prepared to honour its obligation remains to be seen. Vincent Smith, who leads the ANC on Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa), has been, as a part of his recent charm offensive, declaring that how Scopa deals with the report will be his ”political rubicon”.
Beyond the parliamentary consideration of the report there is the vital final stage: implementation and follow-up; the final piece of the litmus test jigsaw. Only if the recommendations of the JIT and Parliament are heeded can we say the test is passed. It is only if the government learns from the errors and defects of the arms deal — the single biggest piece of expenditure in South Africa’s history — that we will be able to say it is time to move on.
Which brings me to the last, but certainly not the least, important aspect of the matter: the cost of the deal.
The report finds that the affordability study ”sufficiently equipped the ministers concerned to make a properly informed decision, as far as issues of affordability are concerned.” This included being ”made fully aware of the risk” of a depreciating rand. In the end, the report says, ”affordability is ultimately a question of political choice”.
On this, the Cabinet remains accountable. Was it a wise decision, given that the cost has risen now to at least R67-billion? The quality of the decision and the budgetary opportunity costs underlying it deserve further scrutiny now, especially given that report _ although using guarded language — is obviously very concerned about the industrial offsets.
Most importantly, the report is worried about the offsets’ enforceability or lack of enforceability that was instrumental in persuading the rest of the Cabinet and the country that the arms deal was of benefit to South Africa.
The Cabinet pretty much committed to the deal in November 1998 when it decided to authorise the departments to pursue negotiations with the chosen prime contractors, even though the JIT finds that it had inadequate information about the real cost at that time. The affordability study remedied this in August 1999, but not before then minister of defence Joe Modise had initialled the contracts for the three submarines.
On this, as with Modise generally, the report is curious. It fails to explain adequately why the initialling ceremony took place and so one is led to conclude that this may be an example of the sort of strategic balancing act that Ngcuka and his two colleagues decided to undertake. Unless, that is, investigations into Modise continue.
Although there are only two references to Modise in the report, there is a specific recommendation in the final chapter that can only have arisen from the facts relating to him. It is recommended that a law be passed to ensure ministers are not allowed to be involved in contracts that are concluded with the state, for a reasonable period of time after they leave public office.
These are the sort of awkward issues that democracies around the world regularly confront, but often choose to ignore. They are not unique to South Africa.
What is remarkable is that South Africa’s response to the arms deal is that of a developed, mature democracy, not one that is just seven years old. Hence, the defects illuminated by the arms report, and the questions that remain unanswered, should be a source of encouragement, not dismay.
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