The DA has requested that the National Prosecuting Authority investigate whether the government has contravened the National Conventional Arms Control Act by shipping arms to Haiti using a South African Air Force (SAAF) aircraft.
In a statement released on Wednesday, Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said he had asked National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka to investigate the matter.
Leon dismissed a response from the presidency on the matter as ”evasive”.
Lindiwe Vilakazi, head of legal and executive services in the Presidency, had responded to the DA’s concerns on behalf of the President in a letter.
In the letter Vilakazi said: ”It was not the intention of the legislature that each time (an) aircraft belonging to the defence force leaves the country or, for that matter, transports persons or goods, it should be on the president’s authority and with the consequential reporting responsibility of the president to Parliament”.
”Advocate Vilakazi’s defence of the president’s actions is evasive on all counts,” Leon said.
”That is simply an attempt to avoid the question. The issue is that the president has not told us or the nation, and perhaps cannot tell us, who ordered the shipment of arms to Haiti, and the employment of the SAAF aircraft, and under what legal authority.”
The issue first arose on March 15 when the DA accused President Thabo Mbeki of violating the Constitution when he sent a defence force aircraft to the Caribbean without informing Parliament.
Presidential spokesperson Bheki Khumalo has denied the president broke any laws or the Constitution.
”We have acted to according to the letter and spirit of the country’s Constitution. And that is what we will continue to do and we have done in the past,” said Khumalo.
Leon said that, in terms of the Defence Act, the president also has to inform Parliament of the cost of an operation.
”President Mbeki is therefore, prima facie, in violation of the Constitution that he has sworn to uphold.”
The National Conventional Arms Control Committee (NCACC) also earlier rejected the DA’s claims, saying in a statement that it had approved the sale of ”a modest amount of material”, as well as bulletproof vests, for the police force of the Haitian government to assist in maintaining safety and security.
”Accusations of impropriety by the DA’s [federal council chairperson] Mr James Selfe, as reported in the press, are simply untrue. First, Selfe claims that the NCACC did not apply the criteria of the [National Conventional Arms Control] Act. This claim is false.
”When we reviewed the request from the Caribbean Community [Caricom], a legitimate regional body representing 15 nations, we applied the relevant criteria of the Act,” the statement said.
”Reviewing arms sales on a case-by-case basis, as the Act requires, we found that this case met the standards of contributing to regional security, which was the basis of the request from Caricom, and the protection of the national sovereignty of a member country of the United Nations with a democratically elected government.”
The NCACC is chaired by Education Minister Kader Asmal. – Sapa