SA Today
A weekly letter from the Leader of the Democratic Alliance
[This week’s newsletter is written by Sandra Botha MP, the Parliamentary Leader of the Democratic Alliance. DA national leader Helen Zille is away.]
Lately, the proposal that a TRC-type process be set up to get to the bottom of arms deal corruption has been gaining ground.
The idea was first floated through a process known in Afrikaans as “die opstuur van vlieërs” (kite flying) – a behind-the-scenes process whereby ideas are forwarded to opinion-makers to see whether they will gain acceptance – and surfaced in the media towards the end of March. There is little doubt that this process was precipitated by the establishment of the ad-hoc committee to investigate the arms deal earlier this year by the ANC.
The nub of the argument is that a political solution whereby amnesty should be granted to offenders in exchange for full disclosure – exactly as took place as a result of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings during the late Nineties – is needed, since the alleged arms deal corruption is substantially a political problem.
I believe that this line of reasoning is fundamentally flawed and that there is simply no morally and legally credible justification for side-stepping a judicial solution to get to the bottom of the arms deal.
Allegations concerning arms deal corruption may have first come to light in Parliament, but it was not until the release of a report from the Auditor-General (AG) on Arms Deal irregularities in September 2000 that the allegations gained momentum.
The report itself was the result of the Auditor-General’s office - designed to protect ordinary South Africans from the unscrupulous and the powerful - doing its work, and was therefore no more than the outcome of a democratic process as mandated by the Constitution. The issue only really became politicised when the ANC began intervening politically to obstruct this process, in order to protect those suspected of wrongdoing within its ranks, as well as to protect the party as a whole.
These interventions are well documented, beginning with Tony Yengeni’s first steps to rein in the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) in October 2000, through to the now infamous intervention by the ANC’s “Governance Committee” a month later. This was followed by the debacle surrounding the composition of the Joint Investigation Task Team and its watered down final report that was released only once it had been signed off by the Executive and by Chippy Schaik. Cabinet members and the Speaker of Parliament have all at various junctures attempted to silence debate on this issue.
The argument can also not be made that the problem is political on the basis of the alleged involvement of ANC politicians.
As former President Bill Clinton stated during a recent appearance on a US talk show, in the final analysis, being an elected representative is a job like any other – if you’ve got it, you are obliged to do it like any other employee in any other organisation.
Therefore everybody - whether they be politicians, civil servants, or their associates – who has failed in the duties that they were obliged to carry out by law and in service of the people, should be prosecuted where this failure can be proved.
The manner in which the call for an amnesty-for-truth solution to the arms deal corruption saga has been gaining ground in the popular media points to the problematic manner in which, specifically under the Mbeki presidency, any debate about the state of our democracy is automatically defined by what is desirable for the ANC rather than what is in the interests of our country.
There is no doubt that it is the increased prevalence of this feature of national debate in South Africa today that has, disappointingly, led to a number of highly respected commentators and independent newspapers blindly endorsing the idea of a political rather than a judicial solution. It has resulted in a situation wherein the ANC surreptitiously advances its own interests in full view of the public, but without anybody being able to perceive the full context and implications of the ruling party’s actions.
Let us be quite clear about this: arms deal fraud equates to stealing from the taxpayer. This is nothing less than a criminal transgression that must be exposed and punished as such. Exchanging amnesty for the truth will only result in the perpetrators of arms deal fraud escaping culpability under the law, using political means.
Aside from this inescapable truth, there are several other pressing reasons for refusing amnesty. In the first place, several participants in the arms deal have already been sentenced and convicted of corruption (such as Shabir Shaik and Tony Yengeni) or are currently on trial (such as Jacob Zuma). To change the terms of reparation at this stage would have grave legal consequences.
Secondly, formal investigations are currently being conducted in Britain, Sweden and Germany into the corrupt activities of arms dealers implicated in the South African scandal. It would make practical as well as tactical sense for us to carry out a parallel inquiry in co-operation with these investigations, as this is in fact just one part of a procurement deal which had international ramifications.
More importantly, using the TRC as a template for an investigation in to the arms deal is erroneous. The TRC exchanged amnesty for truth in the interests of national reconciliation (hence its full title), as much as to uncover the truth about apartheid-era atrocities.
No such overarching nation-building project is at stake in the arms deal: to grant amnesty in this case would be simply to allow offending members of the governing party to escape prosecution. This sends out the wrong signal in a country battling to cement the idea that the law applies equally to all, whatever their political affiliation.
Besides, the TRC process was itself flawed, in that the prosecutions that should have followed against those who refused to come forward to the Commission were ineptly handled. Many who should have been arraigned were able to escape scot-free. It would be unacceptable for a similar amnesty to allow possible arms-deal offenders to escape prosecution in the same way.
Even if the alleged arms-deal profiteers - many of whom are high-ranking ANC politicians in government and their allies - are obliged as a result of their disclosures to “exit from “public life” (as suggested by The Sunday Times), this would not necessarily mean that they will lose their political influence or their ability to use such influence for corrupt ends.
The inclusion of convicted arms-deal fraudster Tony Yengeni in the ANC’s National Working Committee demonstrates that the ANC simply does not have the moral impulse left to censure party insiders found guilty of criminal acts. Yengeni’s return to public life sets a precedent: high-ranking party members involved in the arms scandal who do submit to a TRC-type process and who do forego any future claim to public office can merely take up senior positions in the party.
In effect, a TRC-type process would only foster continuing collusion between members of the unholy triangle - business, the ANC and the State - which resulted in arms deal bribery in the first place. It is therefore critical for the future of good governance and democracy in South Africa that we set the appropriate precedent for dealing with corruption now.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) maintains that nothing less than a judicial commission of enquiry, with full powers of subpoena, headed by a judge of impeccable reputation, is required as a matter of urgency to investigate the arms deal.
Such a commission must be appointed by the President to examine all aspects of the deal, and to identify individuals who may have benefited illegally from the deal. After its findings have been made public and accepted by government, prosecutions must follow against alleged wrongdoers in the normal fashion.
We cannot afford to accept anything less than a full and formal judicial enquiry, followed by the prosecution of offenders. South Africans must therefore unite to reject the proposal for a TRC-type process, and instead advocate for the establishment of a judicial commission of inquiry. To allow those implicated in the bribery and corruption surrounding the arms scandal to escape justice, and to undermine the principle of equal dispensation of the law, is a poor price to pay for getting at the facts.
Best Wishes
SANDRA BOTHA MP
DA Parliamentary Leader
A weekly letter from the Leader of the Democratic Alliance
[This week’s newsletter is written by Sandra Botha MP, the Parliamentary Leader of the Democratic Alliance. DA national leader Helen Zille is away.]
Lately, the proposal that a TRC-type process be set up to get to the bottom of arms deal corruption has been gaining ground.
The idea was first floated through a process known in Afrikaans as “die opstuur van vlieërs” (kite flying) – a behind-the-scenes process whereby ideas are forwarded to opinion-makers to see whether they will gain acceptance – and surfaced in the media towards the end of March. There is little doubt that this process was precipitated by the establishment of the ad-hoc committee to investigate the arms deal earlier this year by the ANC.
The nub of the argument is that a political solution whereby amnesty should be granted to offenders in exchange for full disclosure – exactly as took place as a result of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings during the late Nineties – is needed, since the alleged arms deal corruption is substantially a political problem.
I believe that this line of reasoning is fundamentally flawed and that there is simply no morally and legally credible justification for side-stepping a judicial solution to get to the bottom of the arms deal.
Allegations concerning arms deal corruption may have first come to light in Parliament, but it was not until the release of a report from the Auditor-General (AG) on Arms Deal irregularities in September 2000 that the allegations gained momentum.
The report itself was the result of the Auditor-General’s office - designed to protect ordinary South Africans from the unscrupulous and the powerful - doing its work, and was therefore no more than the outcome of a democratic process as mandated by the Constitution. The issue only really became politicised when the ANC began intervening politically to obstruct this process, in order to protect those suspected of wrongdoing within its ranks, as well as to protect the party as a whole.
These interventions are well documented, beginning with Tony Yengeni’s first steps to rein in the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) in October 2000, through to the now infamous intervention by the ANC’s “Governance Committee” a month later. This was followed by the debacle surrounding the composition of the Joint Investigation Task Team and its watered down final report that was released only once it had been signed off by the Executive and by Chippy Schaik. Cabinet members and the Speaker of Parliament have all at various junctures attempted to silence debate on this issue.
The argument can also not be made that the problem is political on the basis of the alleged involvement of ANC politicians.
As former President Bill Clinton stated during a recent appearance on a US talk show, in the final analysis, being an elected representative is a job like any other – if you’ve got it, you are obliged to do it like any other employee in any other organisation.
Therefore everybody - whether they be politicians, civil servants, or their associates – who has failed in the duties that they were obliged to carry out by law and in service of the people, should be prosecuted where this failure can be proved.
The manner in which the call for an amnesty-for-truth solution to the arms deal corruption saga has been gaining ground in the popular media points to the problematic manner in which, specifically under the Mbeki presidency, any debate about the state of our democracy is automatically defined by what is desirable for the ANC rather than what is in the interests of our country.
There is no doubt that it is the increased prevalence of this feature of national debate in South Africa today that has, disappointingly, led to a number of highly respected commentators and independent newspapers blindly endorsing the idea of a political rather than a judicial solution. It has resulted in a situation wherein the ANC surreptitiously advances its own interests in full view of the public, but without anybody being able to perceive the full context and implications of the ruling party’s actions.
Let us be quite clear about this: arms deal fraud equates to stealing from the taxpayer. This is nothing less than a criminal transgression that must be exposed and punished as such. Exchanging amnesty for the truth will only result in the perpetrators of arms deal fraud escaping culpability under the law, using political means.
Aside from this inescapable truth, there are several other pressing reasons for refusing amnesty. In the first place, several participants in the arms deal have already been sentenced and convicted of corruption (such as Shabir Shaik and Tony Yengeni) or are currently on trial (such as Jacob Zuma). To change the terms of reparation at this stage would have grave legal consequences.
Secondly, formal investigations are currently being conducted in Britain, Sweden and Germany into the corrupt activities of arms dealers implicated in the South African scandal. It would make practical as well as tactical sense for us to carry out a parallel inquiry in co-operation with these investigations, as this is in fact just one part of a procurement deal which had international ramifications.
More importantly, using the TRC as a template for an investigation in to the arms deal is erroneous. The TRC exchanged amnesty for truth in the interests of national reconciliation (hence its full title), as much as to uncover the truth about apartheid-era atrocities.
No such overarching nation-building project is at stake in the arms deal: to grant amnesty in this case would be simply to allow offending members of the governing party to escape prosecution. This sends out the wrong signal in a country battling to cement the idea that the law applies equally to all, whatever their political affiliation.
Besides, the TRC process was itself flawed, in that the prosecutions that should have followed against those who refused to come forward to the Commission were ineptly handled. Many who should have been arraigned were able to escape scot-free. It would be unacceptable for a similar amnesty to allow possible arms-deal offenders to escape prosecution in the same way.
Even if the alleged arms-deal profiteers - many of whom are high-ranking ANC politicians in government and their allies - are obliged as a result of their disclosures to “exit from “public life” (as suggested by The Sunday Times), this would not necessarily mean that they will lose their political influence or their ability to use such influence for corrupt ends.
The inclusion of convicted arms-deal fraudster Tony Yengeni in the ANC’s National Working Committee demonstrates that the ANC simply does not have the moral impulse left to censure party insiders found guilty of criminal acts. Yengeni’s return to public life sets a precedent: high-ranking party members involved in the arms scandal who do submit to a TRC-type process and who do forego any future claim to public office can merely take up senior positions in the party.
In effect, a TRC-type process would only foster continuing collusion between members of the unholy triangle - business, the ANC and the State - which resulted in arms deal bribery in the first place. It is therefore critical for the future of good governance and democracy in South Africa that we set the appropriate precedent for dealing with corruption now.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) maintains that nothing less than a judicial commission of enquiry, with full powers of subpoena, headed by a judge of impeccable reputation, is required as a matter of urgency to investigate the arms deal.
Such a commission must be appointed by the President to examine all aspects of the deal, and to identify individuals who may have benefited illegally from the deal. After its findings have been made public and accepted by government, prosecutions must follow against alleged wrongdoers in the normal fashion.
We cannot afford to accept anything less than a full and formal judicial enquiry, followed by the prosecution of offenders. South Africans must therefore unite to reject the proposal for a TRC-type process, and instead advocate for the establishment of a judicial commission of inquiry. To allow those implicated in the bribery and corruption surrounding the arms scandal to escape justice, and to undermine the principle of equal dispensation of the law, is a poor price to pay for getting at the facts.
Best Wishes
SANDRA BOTHA MP
DA Parliamentary Leader
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