The firing of Deputy President Jacob Zuma was only a bid to divert attention from the government’s multi-billion rand arms deal, activist Terry Crawford-Browne charged on Wednesday.
Browne said that instead of acknowledging that the government succumbed to massive European pressures to buy armaments, President Thabo Mbeki was making Zuma a ”sacrificial lamb”.
In a statement issued in the name of Economists Allied for Arms Reduction, Browne said Mbeki’s announcement of Zuma’s firing in Parliament on Tuesday emphasised that the joint team that investigated the deal had exonerated the government of improper conduct.
”This paragraph is contradicted by virtually every other paragraph in the 380-page report which found that every primary contract in the arms deal tendering process was riddled with irregularities,” Crawford-Browne said.
”President Mbeki must still reveal why he and his cabinet colleagues succumbed to European pressures to subvert South Africa’s hard-won democracy.”
Set up arms deal enquiry DA urges Mbeki
Mbeki must follow up the decision to sack Zuma with the appointment of a judicial commission of inquiry into allegations of corruption in the arms deal, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Wednesday.
”It is the next logical step to take. The full story of the arms deal has yet to come out,” DA public accounts spokesman Eddie Trent said in a statement.
South Africa would remain haunted by the ghost of the arms deal if the president did not appoint such a commission.
”A judicial commission of inquiry will have the necessary powers to subpoena witnesses that will help expose the full extent of the corruption,” Trent said. – Sapa