President Thabo Mbeki should appoint a judicial commission to investigate the 1999 arms deal, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Sunday in the wake of new revelations on the affair.
Agence France-Presse reported on the weekend that Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) is investigating alleged ”substantial payments” from BAE Systems to a senior South African Defence Ministry official over the 1999 deal.
The Guardian said the SFO was liaising with South Africa’s organised crime unit to probe the accounts of Fana Hlongwane, a prominent businessman and former adviser to the country’s late former defence minister, Joe Modise.
Modise, who quit the post in 1999 and died in 2001, was named in a South African Parliamentary report that year as being involved in a company that stood to benefit from an overall $5,5-billion arms-procurement deal.
The DA’s Eddie Trent and Roy Jankielsohn said in a joint statement on Sunday that from the outset the DA had called for a judicial commission of inquiry, autonomous from the state, and with a comprehensive and overarching mandate, to investigate the arms deal in its entirety.
”Until this happens, new allegations of corruption and speculation about procedural irregularities will continue to haunt the African National Congress government.
”President Mbeki should appoint a judicial commission to investigate the arms deal; he needs to make sure that it has a mandate that means it is not accountable to the executive and can operate autonomously, and which has the power to subpoena.”
The numerous uncoordinated, ad hoc and diluted investigations in the various aspects of the arms deal to date have only served to show up those areas and individuals that desperately need to be fully investigated, the DA said.
According to Guardian newspaper, the SFO was investigating ”substantial payments to a senior SA Defence Ministry official”.
It is reported that Scorpions have received a mutual assistance request from the SFO that may result in the probing of South African bank accounts that have possible links to offshore accounts in Mauritius and the Seychelles.
The paper alleges Modise received a £500 000 bribe from BAE and $10-million from a German consortium.
BAE and Saab are together responsible for delivering 24 Hawk trainer and 28 Gripen fighter aircraft to the South African Air Force, whilst the German consortium will deliver hardware to the South African Navy.
Release crime statistics
Meanwhile, the minister of safety and security should release the latest crime statistics for the period up to January this year, DA safety and security spokesperson Dianne Kohler Barnard said on Sunday.
She said in a statement that six months ago Gauteng community safety provincial minister Firoz Cachalia said he would resign if the public was not satisfied with his crime-fighting efforts.
Cachalia was the first of the nine provincial ministers to announce specific plans to fight crime in their respective provinces as part of police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi’s and Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula’s latest strategy to fight crime, Kohler Barnard said.
At the time Gauteng’s crime rate included the following key statistics: in the province, every day, an average of 10 people were murdered, 19 hijacked, 33 raped, 153 robbed (with aggravating circumstances) and 205 homes were burgled.
”It is now six months since the [provincial minister] announced the details of his plan. In order to assess its effectiveness and to show the public that the [provincial minister] was serious about his undertaking, the minister of safety and security needs to release the respective figures for each of the major crime categories for each month up until January 2007,” said Kohler Barnard.
The comparative figures should also be made available for the other eight provinces.
”To often the South African public is subjected to empty rhetoric from those people responsible for the country’s safety and security.
”If the minister and each [provincial minister] wants to show they are responsible, effective and serious about their commitment to fighting crime, they need to be measured against key indicators, of which the crime figures are the most important.” — Sapa