Fresh Arms Deal Investigation

Former ANC MP Andrew Feinstein questioned the role of President Thabo Mbeki in the controversial arms deal, while calling for a fresh investigation into the controversy at a talk in Johannesburg on Friday.

"There were questions raised in the NEC (ANC national executive committee) as to whether President Thabo Mbeki benefited from the deal.

Mbeki had initially denied meeting an arms company in Europe, then said he could not remember the date, but SA ambassador Barbara Masekela has since confirmed the meeting, saying she helped set it up, he said. The arms deal was the moment "we in the ANC lost our moral compass", and it continued to cast a "heavy and dark shadow. "I think it will continue to do so until we have the full truth of what really happened." He called for an "independent, unfettered" investigation into the deal so that the country could move on and deal with other issues like HIV/Aids and violent crime. "The ANC and the country would be able to move forward with us really knowing what happened in the arms deal."

Feinstein said the ANC had an over R1 billion surplus and this needed to be examined for the possibility that some of the money could have come from arms companies. "The ANC has a surplus of R1.6, R1.7 billion, which is a large surplus for a political party. Did some of the money come from the arms deal?" In response, ANC spokesman Steyn Speed later told Sapa: "The ANC is on record as saying that it never received any money arising from the arms deal." The ANC recently formed a committee to collect information on the arms deal. According to the treasurer general's report presented at the party's Polokwane conference in December, the market value of all the party's investments stood at "no less than R1,75 billion" and that it had a surplus of R66 million at the end of its term of office in 2007. Feinstein, a former African National Congress study group leader in the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, resigned in August 2001. He cited disappointment over the government and his party's handling of the arms deal. He has written a book on the subject called "After the Party". He accepted that the SA National Defence Force had to modernise.

However the deal had started off costing R8 billion, with current estimates ranging between R55 and R65 billion leaving the sellers "laughing all the way to the bank". With an election due (in 2009) it would be a devastating blow if ANC president Jacob Zuma took office facing corruption charges. Zuma was due to go on trial on charges that emanate from the fraud and corruption conviction of his financial adviser Schabir Shaik, who, Durban Judge Hilary Squires found, had facilitated a payment of R500,000 a year to Zuma from French arms company Thint. Shaik had secured a partnership in the local agent, allegedly after intervention by Zuma. Feinstein said the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions could drop charges against Zuma, or legislation could be passed granting immunity to a sitting president, but this would be a blow to the rule of law and to South Africa's international standing.

He did not believe the only people suffering for "what went down" should be Shaik, Zuma and Tony Yengeni, the ANC's former chief whip. Yengeni was sentenced to four years behind bars for defrauding Parliament by receiving a large discount on a vehicle from Daimler-Benz Aerospace AG's Pretoria representative Michael Woerfel. Charges against Woerfel were withdrawn.