This week Open Secrets publishes the first of a number of profiles on the corporations and middlemen implicated in the multibillion-dollar Arms Deal of the late 1990s. None of these companies has been held to account.
The arms in the infamous Arms Deal were bought when South Africa faced a different viral health crisis for which we could ostensibly not afford medicine: HIV/Aids. While hundreds of thousands of people died unnecessarily, and even more lost their jobs, the country bought weapons we did not need and could not afford.
The evidence which exists in volumes shows that corruption was a primary driver for the Arms Deal. As The People’s Tribunal on Economic Crime has found – this was the bridge between the economic crimes of apartheid and the State Capture of recent years.
This week we start the focus on a nominally retired politician whose struggle to avoid accountability for his alleged complicity in these crimes is now legendary.
For more than a decade, former president Jacob Zuma seemed deeply conflicted in how to confront his alleged complicity in the Arms Deal. He has demanded his “day in court” while he and his lawyers infamously use every possible means to prevent that day from happening. As South Africa was preparing for a lockdown to try and stop the spread of Covid-19, he played what might be the last card in this “Stalingrad strategy” – an approach to the Constitutional Court to obtain a permanent stay of prosecution.
However, just last week, Zuma, aided by yet another new lawyer, changed strategy and dropped the appeal (while the French arms corporation continues a battle on this front). Is he finally ready to defend himself in open court or is he going for broke with his nagging threat to out others who benefitted from these corrupt deals?
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