To protect the country’s likely-to-be president in this way will be an unmitigated disaster for South Africa and our nascent democracy, for the ANC and for Zuma himself.

The National Prosecuting Authority, one of the most important institutions of our criminal justice system, will be perceived to have bowed to political pressure.

This will fuel the view that justice is not done in a country buffeted by excessive levels of crime and corruption.

It will, in a stroke, undermine the very foundation of our democracy: that all are equal before the law.

It will make a mockery of any attempts by an ANC-led government to combat corruption at all levels of the state.

And it will send a message to investors that our legal system is malleable to political whim, thereby increasing the risk premium of doing business in South Africa.

But, most important of all, it will jettison the moral fabric of our country and its ruling party, onto the stinking slagheap of the arms deal and its cover-up, Oilgate and its cover-up, Travelgate and its cover-up, the Chancellor House fiasco and the unconscionable release of Schabir Shaik.

And let us not forget the even greater moral failings of the years of Aids denialism.

The NPA’s reputation will be shot.

For this is the organisation that claimed a prime facie case against Zuma many years ago, when Shaik was first charged and has claimed to be building its already strong case with additional evidence ever since.

As someone closely linked with aspects of the case from my time investigating the arms deal in Parliament, I can say without equivocation that Jacob Zuma has a case to answer.

First, it is important to bear in mind that prosecutors wanted to charge Shaik and Zuma together, because their actions were inextricably linked.

In effect, Shaik was found guilty of soliciting money for Zuma in return for which Zuma used his office to benefit Shaik’s companies.

In the NPA’s rejection of Shaik’s appeal against having to forfeit R33-million of ill-gotten assets the Constitutional Court reaffirmed the relationship between his conviction and Zuma’s actions in the most explicit terms:

“Counsel for the appellants (Shaik and his companies) very properly conceded in argument that, given the criminal conviction of Mr Shaik, it must be accepted for the purpose of these proceedings that Mr Shaik did pay bribes to Mr Zuma. The payments were made by Mr Shaik in order to influence Mr Zuma to promote Mr Shaik’s business interests and, in attending the meeting (with Thomson-CSF) in London in July 1998, Mr Zuma did, as a matter of fact, promote Mr Shaik’s interests.”

• Complete article on IOL

I visited the Cape Town Book Fair for the first time and was taken not just by the size of the event but by the amazing diversity of what was on offer.

There were many great stands, but Jacana‘s was so wonderfully innovative in a uniquely South African way.

The three events I did were profoundly different. From a pure arms deal discussion with the courageous Terry Crawford-Browne to a conversation about not just post-Polokwane politics but also the differences between the biographer and the polemicist with Mark Gevisser and a broad-ranging discussion with the always thought-provoking Xolela Mangcu.

I then did my usual gamut of talks to a variety of different community groups, ranging from the Marais Road synagogue, the University of the Third Age in Hermanus and the launch of the Social Justice Coalition in Salt River.

The latter was a spirited meeting of hundreds of people from Claremont to Khayelitsha who wanted to make their voices heard against the recent xenophobic violence and the lack of accountability of our elected politicians and officials which was so graphically illustrated by their insipid response to the crisis. This, together with the undermining of the rule of law on everything from the despicable Malema/Vavi comments, through Travelgate, the Constitutional Court, the Zuma (non) trial, the Selebi situation and, of course, Zimbabwe, has left me more concerned about the state of the South African polity than at any time since the defeat of apartheid. The ululating crowd in Salt River gave a sense of hope amidst the gloom with their calls for both a global humanity and a more active, inclusive local community politics.

On Saturday I am off to Israel and the occupied territories as part of a South African human rights delegation to lend support to a coalition of Israeli/Palestinian organisations seeking a peaceful resolution to the occupation that has wrought so much suffering for so long. Our intention is also to try and initiate a more rational public discussion of these issues in SA.

Oh, and amidst all this I have agreed to do a book on the global arms industry and how it undermines accountable democracy for Hamish Hamilton/Penguin internationally and Jonathan Ball Publishers in SA. But before that I am working on the second edition of After the Party which will also be published in the UK and the US by Verso.

Do you think the arms-deal report by the African National Congress national executive committee (NEC) will get to the bottom of the matter?

No, I think that enquiry is purely for internal political purposes in relation to Jacob Zuma and Thabo Mbeki. But at least it is an acknowledgement by the new ANC leadership that the full story on the arms deal hasn’t yet been told, despite the President’s protestations to the contrary.

In your book you ask for a new independent inquiry into the arms deal. Government and President Mbeki will respond that two inquiries have found no corruption in the primary arms deal. Why have another inquiry?

There has only been one inquiry, which was severely compromised. As I argue in the book the investigation was neutered by ensuring the ANC in Parliament limited the scope of it as far as possible, and didn’t question the superficial nature of it when it was concluded; the one truly independent investigator (Judge Heath) was excluded from the inquiry; the remaining investigators were instructed as to what and whom they could and could not investigate; and their final report was significantly edited on instruction from the Executive to remove even mild criticism of the cabinet. In addition, they failed to investigate the main corruption allegations which had been outlined by the Public Accounts Committee. So the need for a full, unfettered inquiry is extremely important.

• Complete interview on News24.com

After the Party was launched in the UK at London’s famous Foyles Bookshop on Charing Cross Road, London last month.

There was a great crowd of friends, family, journalists, activists and writers. My wonderful agent, Isobel Dixon, acted as MC for the evening and the writer Rachel Holmes (who also is Head of Literature and the Spoken Word at the South Bank Centre) introduced the book.

I spoke about the book, British complicity in the arms deal and the state of South African and global politics. It was an exhilirating and exhausting evening, by the end of which Foyles had sold out of copies of After the Party.

This week I am once again in South Africa to speak at Wits University and an event hosted by the ISS and Book Lounge.

Hopefully I’ll see some of you there.

After Polokwane – Is the end of the arms deal saga in sight?

The allegation of corruption surrounding the multi-billion rand South African arms deal continues almost ten years after the contracts were concluded.

Investigations by State agencies and the media have fingered senior leaders in government and business. The fallout has proven divisive with the ruling party, leading to bruising battles between the institutions of state and fuelling public perceptions of political corruption. Following the ANC Polokwane conference power has shifted in Luthuli House with the ascendancy of Jacob Zuma as President, himself implicated in charges of corruption related to the arms deal.

The ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) has also appointed a committee of senior leaders to produce a detailed and ‘factual report of the arms deal’. Concurrently foreign investigations continue in Germany, Sweden and the UK.

Are South Africans any closer to full and final disclosure of all impropriety in the arms deal? If there is political will to investigate and prosecute aspects of the arms deal, will this be used to settle political scores? What can South Africa learn from the arms deal saga if we are to promote ethics in public life? What are the implications of the arms deal saga for efforts to deal with secrecy and corruption in the global arms trade?

These and other issues will be tackled in discussion and debate organised as part of the Institute for Security Studies‘ Corruption & Governance Programme.

Event Details

• Date: Thursday, 13 March 2008
• Time: 12:00 PM for 2:00 PM
• Venue: The Book Lounge, The Book Lounge, 71 Roeland St (cnr Buitenkant)
  Cape Town | Map
• RSVP: Natashia Emmett, Institute for Security Studies, nemmett@issafrica.org, (021) 461 7211
  www.issafrica.org

I’m pleased to invite Londoners to the UK launch of After the Party on 28 February at Foyles. (Full details below.)

For those wishing to know more about the book, these links should prove of interest:

• Book blurb
• Book excerpt
• Coverage of the Cape Town launch

I look forward to welcoming friends, colleagues and the inquisitive to the launch!

Event Details

• Date: Thursday, 28 February 2008
• Time: 6:00 PM for 6:30 PM
• Venue: The gallery, top floor, Foyles
  113-119 Charing Cross Road
  Westminster, London WC2H
  United Kingdom | Map
• RSVP: Andrew Feinstein, andrew@policyorg.com

Book Details

• After the Party by Andrew Feinstein
  EAN: 9781868422623
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Meanwhile, here’s a piece I wrote recently for Independent Newspapers on the ANC’s decision to open a new, internal investigation into the Arms Deal, years after the original report, described in my book, was neutered:

The ANC’s decision this week to appoint a committee to look into the arms deal reflects the extent to which the deal continues to haunt South African politics.

The creation of this committee to compile a report to better inform the ANC leadership about the deal lays to rest the notion that there was a comprehensive investigation into the deal, as the government and ANC have claimed for years.

For if there had been an unfettered investigation, the ANC could simply refer to the investigator’s report.

So implicitly the ANC has accepted that the investigation was neutered, that its report was edited to the point of mendacity and that the real story has yet to emerge.

• Complete article on IOL

Jacob Zuma is a barrel-chested man with a large, open face which often breaks into a brilliant smile. Down the right side of his face is a long scar which attests to a life of struggle and hardship. Arriving illiterate on Robben Island in his early twenties, Zuma revealed not only a great capacity for learning but a political shrewdness and toughness that after his release saw him rise to become head of ANC intelligence, in 1987.

With the advent of democracy in South Africa, Zuma became ANC leader in his Zulu-dominated home province of KwaZulu-Natal. He served as the province’s economics minister before being made the country’s deputy president by President Thabo Mbeki in 1999.

But in 2005, Zuma’s financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, was sentenced to 15 years in jail for corruption based on a relationship of “mutually beneficial symbiosis” with the deputy president. Mbeki fired his former ally, who soon faced his own corruption trial and was also charged with the rape of a young, HIV-positive family friend.

In May 2006, Zuma was acquitted of the rape charges, and a few months later his corruption trial was struck from the roll for procedural reasons, although prosecutors are about to re-charge him. Zuma and his supporters claim these legal difficulties were the work of Mbeki, attempting to prevent Zuma undermining the president’s quest for an unprecedented third term as ANC leader.

Mbeki, who is constitutionally prevented from serving a third term as South Africa’s president when his current mandate expires in early 2009, hoped to continue as party president. He would then have been able to handpick a successor and remain the power behind the presidential throne. But Zuma, despite his legal difficulties, appears, at the time of writing, likely to defeat the incumbent at the ANC electoral conference in mid-December.

This battle for the leadership of the party has torn the ANC apart, engendering factionalism, division and open hatred that has left this once-fêted liberation movement of Mandela, Tambo and Luthuli facing its gravest ever crisis.

The fact that Zuma is likely to emerge victorious is more a reflection of Mbeki’s failings than of Zuma’s qualities. Where Zuma is a populist “man of the people,” Mbeki has been a detached, autocratic technocrat during the almost ten years that he has led the ANC.

In modernising the ANC into a governing party, Mbeki has transformed it from a broad church of vibrant, internal debate to a closed shop in which a small clique of trusted allies makes decisions. A master of behind-the-scenes intrigue, Mbeki seldom listens to outside advice, takes criticism very personally and vilifies those he perceives as being against him.

This unfortunate leadership style has led an intelligent man into many major blunders. His continuing denial that HIV causes Aids has unnecessarily cost tens of thousands of South African lives. The “quiet diplomacy” approach to Robert Mugabe’s tyranny in Zimbabwe has made a joke of Mbeki’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad).

But the area Mbeki regards as his greatest success has been the seed of his political failure. Faced with the difficult act of balancing reacceptance into a conformist global economy with the need for social justice, Mbeki expended significant political capital in imposing an orthodox economic framework on the country. Despite bitter opposition from the ANC’s allies in the trade union movement and the South African Communist party, the framework undoubtedly restored stability and growth to the anaemic apartheid economy. However, it has failed to make big inroads into the country’s 30 per cent formal unemployment rate. Deracialisation of education, the building of low-cost housing and the provision of basic services have all improved the lives of most black South Africans, but very slowly.

At the same time, the policy of black economic empowerment has seen the emergence of a growing black middle class, but has also been distorted to enable the creation of a small elite of massively wealthy black oligarchs, most of whom are politically well connected.

Mbeki’s refusal to allow open debate on these key policy areas within the ANC has been paralleled publicly by an aloof insensitivity to the impact of the violent crime battering the country. As his detachment and isolation have grown, so Mbeki’s paranoia has intensified. By stamping out dissenters and creating a mindset of “the leader knows best,” he has engendered an environment of fear and patronage in which loyalty is the only reliable currency.

Moreover, in an elision of government and party, Mbeki has been willing to use state organs to neutralise potential threats to his power. In 2001, before a previous ANC electoral conference, his minister of police announced to a shocked press briefing that three senior members of the ANC were plotting to overthrow and even physically harm the president. In fact, the three were simply organising a slate of anti-Mbeki candidates. Unsurprisingly, all oppositional mobilisation came to a rapid end.

Mbeki has continued to protect his incompetent chief of police, Jackie Selebi, who proudly admits to a friendship with the country’s most notorious mafia warlord. In fact, when Vusi Pikoli, the country’s director of public prosecutions (equivalent to Britain’s attorney-general), recently issued a warrant for the arrest of Selebi, he was removed from his post. Similarly, Mbeki has kept faith with his health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, a fellow Aids denialist, who recommends beetroot, garlic and the African potato as preferable to antiretrovirals in the treatment of Aids.

It is no coincidence that the health minister’s husband, Mendi Msimang, is the ANC’s treasurer. The man in charge of the party’s finances has overseen the receipt of funds from a controversial (and later assassinated) gold-mining magnate; from a state oil company, illegally; and, most damagingly, in kickbacks from a £5bn arms deal in 1999 (involving BAE Systems, among others), the investigation of which Mbeki ruthlessly undermined, subjugating parliament to his will.

The British Serious Fraud Office and German prosecutors are investigating more than $200m of bribes paid in the arms deal. Besides the ANC itself, alleged recipients include the then defence minister, Joe Modise—a close Mbeki confidante until his death in 2001—and Modise’s political adviser. The fact that only Zuma and Schabir Shaik have faced prosecution in relation to the deal reinforces the view that Mbeki uses the justice system selectively to address his political needs. Some in the South African media even suggest that a further reason for the suspension of Vusi Pikoli is his seeming unwillingness to re-charge Zuma before the ANC electoral conference.

Such an intervention would have been very useful to Mbeki in his quest to prolong his dominance. For Jacob Zuma has been very successful at styling himself as the victimised “man of the people,” in contrast to the technocratic president and his “briefcase carriers.” This appeal has mined the rich vein of anti-Mbeki feeling within the ANC, with the result that 60 per cent of party branches have nominated Zuma as ANC president in preference to Mbeki.

But if Zuma were to become ANC president, he would do so with more than just his legal travails hanging over him. His embarrassing comments at his rape trial—that he avoided contracting Aids by showering vigorously after unprotected sex—were followed a few days later by aggressive homophobic remarks. This created the image of a macho bigot rather than an enlightened leader of a progressive organisation.

Zuma’s trade union and Communist supporters have proclaimed him a “man of the left” who will change economic policy in favour of the poor. But nothing in his time as a provincial economics minister, nor in his few policy pronouncements to date, suggests this is the case. Nonetheless, he will very quickly come under sustained pressure from these allies to deliver a return on their support. His less-than-public financial backers are likely to have quite different expectations.

These contradictory choices might be delayed for a while, though, because even if Zuma has become ANC president, he is not assured of the country’s presidency come the general election in April 2009. In November, Zuma lost two high court appeals attempting to quash aspects of the evidence against him. The victories have expanded the state’s case and prosecutors are confident of success, given the damning judgement against his financial adviser. He is, therefore, likely to be re-charged in the new year.

So the ANC has been faced with an awful choice. If Mbeki has defied the odds and won again, the party will be damned to a further erosion of its historic values and traditions by an aloof, autocratic president. Or it could have a new party president on trial for corruption, with two competing centres of power—party and government—marshalled by men who are sworn enemies.

However, at the time of writing there is a small possibility that the two mighty elephants will give up their fight to the death and withdraw in favour of a compromise candidate unsullied by the recent years of moral decline. Cyril Ramaphosa and Tokyo Sexwale, two popular ANC leaders who have spent the Mbeki years away from politics amassing business fortunes, are often mentioned as possibilities.

The more likely scenario is that Zuma wins the election, is soon embroiled in a corruption trial and, if found guilty and given a prison sentence with no option of a fine, is constitutionally excluded from seeking the country’s presidency. With Mbeki discredited by defeat, this would provide the political space for a compromise candidate to emerge.

With the ANC embroiled in this unedifying spectacle, it will only be when both Mbeki and Zuma are removed from the fray that the organisation can hope to revitalise both itself and South African politics. For the country is in desperate need of focused, enlightened and efficient government to address the linked catastrophes of Aids, poverty and crime.

UPDATE 21ST DECEMBER 2007

As expected, Jacob Zuma resoundingly defeated Thabo Mbeki for the ANC presidency at the party’s Polokwane congress, only the second time an incumbent has been removed by the ANC in its almost 100-year history. Zuma’s supporters now occupy all six office-bearer positions in the organisation, and scores of Mbeki supporters, including a number of cabinet ministers, failed even to be re-elected to the ANC’s 80-strong national executive committee.

However, no sooner had celebrations begun among Jacob Zuma’s supporters, when the country’s chief prosecutor announced that there was sufficient evidence to re-charge the new president for fraud and corruption. While this came as no surprise, the prosecutors acted so precipitously in part in response to the ANC conference decision the previous day calling for the national prosecuting authority to be placed under the control of the justice department. This would reduce the prosecutors’ independence and open them to greater direct political pressure.

As I made clear in my article, Zuma definitely has a case to answer. The key is whether the new political powers in the ANC will attempt to prevent their new president being tried.

It is essential for South Africa’s democracy that Zuma has his day in court. If innocent, he will almost definitely become the country’s next president when Thabo Mbeki stands down in April 2009. However, if found guilty, he will have to suffer the consequences of his misdemeanours, which will include the end of his political ambitions. This will open the way, as I suggested, for a candidate to emerge who is likely to be far better for the country than either Zuma or Mbeki. After the ANC’s congress, the man in pole position is undoubtedly the party’s new deputy president, Kgalema Motlanthe.

However, if political machinations prevent Jacob Zuma being re-charged, a dark shadow of suspicion will hang over the new president and the party he leads.

This article originally appeared in Prospect magazine.

The on-going media coverage, in SA and abroad, has been great, with the unsurprising exception of ANC Today which attacked me, twice (see esp. “The Truth Will Prevail!”), by attacking journalists who wrote about the book. Bizarrely they denied me the right to respond by claiming I had abandoned the ANC, despite the fact that the President’s spokesperson had publicly reminded me a fortnight previously that as an ANC member I should express my views about the upcoming ANC election “in my branch” – !

ANC Today‘s statements on the arms deal were a litany of evasions, ignorance and downright deceit. I responded in the Sunday Times – a piece I’ve republished here; see below – but was saddened that I had been denied the right to respond directly to fellow ANC members.

The febrile state of South African politics since my last posting has only reconfirmed my feeling that both Mbeki and Zuma should depart the political stage for a new group of leaders untainted by the last few years. If Zuma wins the ANC’s December election and is, as expected, charged for corruption again, the space might be created for leaders of greater integrity to emerge before the national election in 2009. These might include Cyril Ramaphosa, Tokyo Sexwale, Kgalema Motlanthe and others.

In the meantime we scribes have a responsibility to continue to write about what has gone wrong in the ANC and what it will take to restore morality, integrity and accountability to our politics as was the case immediately after 1994.

* * *

“The Solidity of Pure Wind” – ANC Today deaf and blind to the realities of arms deal corruption

First published in the Sunday Times.

On November 16, ANC Today plumbed the depths of dishonest propaganda. President Thabo Mbeki’s mouthpiece claimed that Guardian journalist Chris McGreal, quoting my book After the Party, had written “deliberate lies” and “concocted shameless fabrications … to invent corrupt practices around the so-called arms deal”.

The online voice of the ANC suggested that if McGreal was in possession of facts that disproved the statements it had made, it would publish them in full.

I sent half a dozen e-mails to ANC Today informing it that I have the facts and, as a member of the ANC, would like them published as promised. I received no reply.

So here are the facts (in brief) that counter the extraordinary ignorance or deceit of ANC Today.

• The first set of ANC Today statements claim it is a lie that Mbeki quashed the investigation into the arms deal or that former ANC Chief Whip Tony Yengeni led the campaign to shut down the investigation. They insist, instead, that Scopa “conducted its own investigation without any let or hindrance by the ANC or government”.

FACT: On the morning of October 11 2000, Robben Islander Laloo Chiba and I were called into Yengeni’s office and instructed not to proceed with the public investigation. He so intimidated ANC members of Scopa that ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma had to order him to have no contact with committee members. Within weeks, after Zuma changed his tune on our investigation, Yengeni was again intimidating us.

FACT: At a meeting of the ANC’s governance committee in Parliament on November 8 2000, Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad — acting, according to him, on the President’s behalf — demanded in my presence that we rescind the resolution establishing the investigation forthwith. When told it was not legally possible, Pahad, Zuma and others told us to neuter the investigation by excluding the country’s premier anti-corruption unit, the Special Investigating Unit .

FACT: The Speaker of Parliament and the chair of the National Council of Provinces insisted on coming to a meeting of the ANC component of Scopa, where they instructed us to release a press statement, which the chair of the NCOP helped draft, stating that the Executive had done no wrong and that the Special Investigating Unit was not required in the investigation.

FACT: At least five senior ANC leaders tried directly to persuade me to end the investigation as it “was not in the country’s interests”. At the behest of the Presidency, according to the statement issued by the ANC, I was removed from Scopa — because I would not agree to neuter the investigation as instructed.

FACT: The “loyal” new members of the committee were made to vote to weaken the investigation. These same members were instructed, in my presence, by the Cabinet ministers being investigated as to what questions to ask them when they appeared before Scopa. The same ministers edited the contents of a subsequent Scopa report .

FACT: The President, unconstitutionally, engaged with the key investigation heads and told them what they could and could not investigate. Specifically, investigators were told they could not look into the role of a shady financier who had helped fund the ANC. When some of the investigators refused to abide by these instructions, they were removed from the investigation.

FACT: Mbeki shamelessly misrepresented the legal opinion he received from advocate Frank Khan in order to justify excluding Judge Willem Heath’s investigating team. Judge Heath was seen as unsympathetic to the ANC.

FACT: The investigators found significant evidence of corruption against ANC National Executive Committee member Joe Modise. They also recommended that ANC corruption in the deal be further investigated. These findings were not included in the investigators’ report, which was significantly edited after it had been shown to the Executive. Damaging paragraphs were excised from the original report and replaced with a blanket exoneration of the Executive.

• ANC Today claims the BAE Hawk jet trainer satisfied technical requirements and was a logical choice. It claims that it is not true that the air force was strongly opposed to the Hawk’s purchase, that Secretary of Defence Lieutenant-General Pierre Steyn said the requirements were tailored to suit the needs of politicians, that the procurement process was distorted to favour the Hawk, or that the decision was taken at an informal meeting attended by Mbeki, Modise and an official implicated in corruption.

FACT: The Hawk never even made the initial short list because of its technical unsuitability and exorbitant cost. The investigators’ report itself states that it was unfortunate that the procurement process and criteria were amended for this contract, to wit that cost was excluded as a criteria in the middle of the process, a dereliction that in itself should lead to a refusal to authorise expenditure.

FACT: Steyn said in at least two recorded interviews that the air force would accept the Hawk only “if forced to do so by the politicians”. This was publicly reiterated by the head of acquisition projects in the air force. Both these gentlemen were present at an informal meeting in Durban attended by Mbeki, Modise and Chippy Shaik — the government’s head of arms purchases at the time — among others. Shaik contacted them after the meeting to draw up retrospective minutes to formalise the decision made on the Hawk. The two defence force officials have stated publicly that the Hawk and its competition were never properly assessed or considered by the Cabinet.

FACT: A ministers’ committee, chaired by Mbeki, distorted the criteria to ensure that South Africa bought the Hawk — which the air force didn’t want — for two and a half times the price of the jet trainer the air force wanted.

• ANC Today suggests that the fraud and corruption convictions of Schabir Shaik — Zuma’s one- time financial adviser — had nothing to do with primary contracts in the deal and that there was no evidence that BAE, German and French firms paid bribes to the ANC which helped fund the party’s election campaign.

FACT: As Scopa argued, the primary contracts were corrupted by being dependent on deals done for the sub-contracts . Government officials participated inappropriately in the securing of such arrangements.

FACT: Schabir Shaik’s brother Chippy ensured a primary contract went to a firm that had promised Schabir a sub-contract — which he received .

FACT: Minutes of a meeting exist that show Chippy Shaik solicited a 3-million bribe from the said company. Records exist that trace the payment of 3- million to a company that Chippy identified in the minutes.

FACT: The Shaik court accepted that dividends from the arms deal went to Floryn Investments, a company established to benefit the ANC. A senior member of the ANC NEC informed me that winning contractors had funded the ANC election campaign in 1999. Cabinet ministers Trevor Manuel and Alec Erwin both suggested that “there was shit in the deal, but we wouldn’t find it”.

FACT: The UK’s Serious Fraud Office and German prosecutors are investigating over 200-million of alleged bribes paid in relation to the South African deals, including to Chippy Shaik and Fana Hlongwane, political adviser to Modise. In addition, investigations into other aspects of the arms deal undertaken in South Africa lie dormant in lead investigators’ offices. It is hoped they will still be utilised in future court cases.

ANC Today suggests that if there was any corruption in the deal, it would have come to view by now. I remind them that investigations into international arms deals — which, according to Transparency International, account for 49% of all corruption in all global trade — take, on average, more than a decade to reach prosecution. In the case of the Bofors deal in India, it was 14 years before the truth emerged, leading to convictions and dire political consequences for the Congress movement.

ANC Today attempts, in the tired fashion of the President, to suggest that those of us pursuing the truth in the arms deal are guilty of creating a common “anti-African stereotype”. If they had bothered to check their facts by reading my book, they would have found countless statements to the effect that corruption relating to the arms trade is not unique to South Africa or Africa, but occurs throughout the world. I suggest that the greatest blame for corruption in the trade should be laid at the door of the UK and other “developed” nations.

I apologise for not having the space to go into the full details of my response, which runs to 82 pages, but will happily do so when ANC Today affords me the space as promised. This will include details of Mbeki’s direct intervention in the German Frigate Consortium deal, which ANC Today surprisingly omits to mention.

If anyone in the ANC or beyond contests any of the above, or anything written in my book, they should immediately take legal action so that the court, and the South African public, will for the first time have access to all the relevant documents and witnesses concerning the deal. Given that each fact in the book is either based on something I experienced myself or has been validated by at least two reliable sources, this remains unlikely.

If the deal was squeaky clean, not only was there no need to neuter the investigation, but the South African government should immediately appoint an independent judicial inquiry, completely unfettered by political influence, to examine all the evidence and pronounce on the realities of the deal to the South African public who, after all, are still paying for it to the tune of some R50-billion.

Failure to do so will only reinforce the fact that ANC Today has reconfirmed George Orwell’s contention that “political language is designed to make lies sound truthful … and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”.

Thank you all for being here. It is great to see so many TAC comrades here, the true heroes of SA democracy. It is wonderful to see so many old and new friends, including a number of former colleagues, Mark Philips and Roddy Payne; Murphy Morobe, Laloo Chiba and Ahmed Kathrada – heroes of the struggle and early years of democracy, who characterise what is best about the ANC.

There are also many of the journalists, such as Sam Sole and Peta Thorneycroft, who have kept the arms deal and the crucial issues it evoked, alive. They represent one of the most crucial elements of our democracy in these strange but interesting times.

When I arrived in the country ten days ago I was asked “why this book, why now?” I answer that question with a quote from one of Africa’s foremost, and bravest novelists, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who writes in his novel Devil on the Cross:

Certain people told me that this story was too disgraceful, too shameful, that it should be concealed … There were others who claimed that it was a matter for tears and sorrow, that it should be suppressed so that we should not shed tears a second time. I asked them: How can we cover up pits in our courtyard with leaves or grass, saying to ourselves that because our eyes cannot now see the holes, our children can prance about the yard as they like? Happy is the man who is able to discern pitfalls in his path, for he can avoid them.

I argue in the book that the arms deal was the moment when our new democracy’s moral compass went awry, when people in senior positions were prepared to sacrifice Parliament and other institutions of our hard-won democracy to protect themselves, their allies and the party. A litany of events since then has only confirmed the unfortunate impact of this action.

As we stand here today British and German investigators are investigating over $200 million of bribes that were paid by just three of the successful companies in the SA deal. The cases against Chippy Shaik – of soliciting and receiving $3 million – and Fana Hlongwane who received £3 million – are clear cut, and there is so much more, involving Joe Modise and the ANC itself.

But don’t for a moment assume this is just a South African phenomenon. According to Transparency International, the arms trade accounts for 49% of corruption in all world trade. In the biggest ever arms deal, the so-called Al Yamamah deal between the UK and Saudi Arabia, Mark Thatcher received £12 million as an agent in the deal his mother signed. After a seven year investigation, the UK’s Serious Fraud Office was on the verge of charging the chairman and CEO of British Aerospace, when Tony Blair intervened to close down the investigation. The BBC revealed that BAe paid one man, Prince Bandar Ul Sultan, £1 billion in bribes. And, as if that wasn’t enough, customised an Airbus to give to him as a gift. On receipt of the plane Prince Bandar thanked them but informed them that the jet was very expensive to run and maintain. So to this day BAe pays Bandar £150 000 per month for the maintenance and running of his gift!

The corrupters are as guilty as the corrupted , which is why my next book is on the global arms trade and how it undermines democracy where it is based and everywhere it operates.

But the greatest tragedy of the loss of accountability engendered by the arms deal is not the billions of rand wasted on arms we didn’t need and continue to underutilise, but the years we prevaricated on dealing with HIV and AIDS due to the President and Health Minister’s denialism. Tens of thousands of lives were lost unnecessarily in the almost 5 years during which ARV’s were not made available through the public health system, and that is unforgivable. I recount in the book how Thabo came to the ANC caucus, just days after withdrawing from the public debate about HIV and AIDS and restated his denialism wrapped up in a conspiracy theory that was an insult to his considerable intellect.

Those were our darkest days since apartheid and we must never allow a return to a denialism that encompassed not just the science of HIV/AIDS but also the notion that a leader is always right, can do no wrong. For political leaders are human beings and like all human beings, make mistakes. When humility is lost, and omnipotence assumed, failure and tragedy inevitably follow.

With this in mind, a further purpose in writing the book was to posit a return to the politics of hope that characterised our nation from 1994 until 1999, a period during which we put to shame the desultory and tawdry politics of so much of the world and created, on the ashes of racism, oppression and economic subjugation, a politics based on morality.

We achieved, for a time, what Vaclav Havel had exhorted the Czechs to do on assuming the Presidency: to “teach ourselves and others that politics can be not only the art of the possible, especially if the possible includes calculation, intrigue, secret deals and manoeuvring, but that it can also be the art of the impossible, namely the art of improving ourselves and the world.” This should be our objective.

We still have the ability to recapture a politics of the impossible in South Africa because we still retain some individuals of great integrity and courage in public life, people like Cyril Ramaphosa, Tokyo Sexwale, Kgalema Motlanthe and Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge. Both Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, who lack the moral integrity to lead the ANC and the country, should stand aside and enable these leaders to emerge.

This was not an easy book to write: I retain enormous admiration for the ANC as an organisation. I believe South Africa is so much better than it ever was prior to 1994 and so much is going right that it is not easy to publicise some of the negatives, which I believe have to be voiced in the interests of our democracy.

Thank you to my courageous publishers, Jonathan Ball and to Exclusive Books. And again, thanks to all of you for being here. It makes the trials of producing the book seem well, well worth the effort.