WHAT DO YOU EXPECT FROM THE NATIVES?

THE SUBLIMINAL THESIS BEHIND THE

NOISE ON THE ARMS PROCUREMENT COMMISSION.
Thabo Mbeki.
April 25, 2015
A few days ago, on April 21, President Zuma released the Report of the Judicial Commission of
Inquiry into allegations of fraud, corruption, impropriety or irregularity in the Strategic Defence
Procurement Packages (SDPP).
The Commission was composed of Judge Willie Seriti, of the Supreme Court of Appeal as the
Chairperson and Judge Thekiso Musi, former Judge President of the Free State High Court.
The Commission has stated that no evidence was presented to it proving that any fraud,
corruption or impropriety had taken place during the Defence Procurement (SDPP) process and
neither had it found any such misdemeanour through its own investigations.
However some in our country have spoken out against the findings of the Commission, charging
that the Commission was nothing more than a whitewash, a cover-up for those who allegedly
carried out corrupt practices.
Almost fifteen years ago, in 2001, another investigation of the very same SDPP had come to
exactly the same conclusion that there had been no fraud, corruption or impropriety in the
Defence Procurement.
That investigation was carried out by a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) composed of the Auditor
General, the National Prosecuting Authority and the Public Protector.
Even then some in our country denounced the finding of the JIT as a cover-up in exactly the
same way as has now happened with regard to the Judicial Commission.
This confirms that there are some in our country who are determined to ensure that at all costs,
the perception is sustained among our people and the peoples of the world that the Government
President Nelson Mandela led was corrupt.
In this regard, these people seem to have made the firm commitment that they will never allow
the truth or anything else to defeat their strategic objective of successfully painting our then
Government as corrupt, basing themselves on the practice of repeating this allegation a million
times, while producing not even a single fact to substantiate their allegation.
Surely there must be some explanation for such determination and commitment to perpetuate
outright lies and fabrications concerning our conduct with regard to the SDPP!
In 2001 and 2003, the Bulletin, ANC Today, published Letters I had written to explain this
unashamed commitment to engage in unethical practice.

These Letters were respectively entitled The truth stands in the way of the arms accusers and
Our country needs facts, not groundless allegations.
We wil post these articles on this Facebook page and the TMF website because of their
continuing relevance to what appears to be new but is in fact the old practice of denouncing the
truth without presenting any facts to substantiate such denunciation, as is now happening with
regard to the findings of the Judicial Commission.
This continuing practice illustrates in a concrete manner the pernicious and persistent habit of the
resort to lies and fabrications in the conduct of public affairs in our country, which the articles we
have previously posted on this page have sought to demonstrate and discourage.
Let me now present some truths relating to the Seriti/Musi Judicial Commission. I will number
these to facilitate their understanding, given the unavoidable length of this article.
1. The Judicial Commission was appointed to investigate various matters relating to the Strategic
Defence Procurement Packages (SDPP) and nothing else.
2. Through the SDPP our Government signed contracts with a number of European companies
to procure corvettes, submarines and helicopters for the SA Navy, and fighter planes, fighter
trainers and helicopters for SA Air Force.
3. These have been identified as the Primary Contracts, being the only contracts our Government
signed with the SDPP supplier companies. These are the contracts which the Judicial
Commission had to examine.
4. There were also Secondary Contracts. These were contracts entered into by the Primary
Contracting companies with those companies they sub-contracted to provide elements of the
weapons systems they, the Primary Contractors, were obliged to supply to our Government. Our
Government was not involved in any way with these sub-contracts, these being exclusively a
matter for the companies concerned. Accordingly the Judicial Commission, as well, had neither
the task, the need and reason nor the legal possibility to investigate these sub-contracts, and
therefore did not investigate these.
5. The body which approved the weapons purchases, and therefore the Primary Contracts, was
the National Cabinet on the basis of recommendations it received from a Cabinet Sub-Committee
it had constituted, known as the Inter Ministerial Committee (IMC). I chaired the IMC from when I
was Deputy President. It also included the then Ministers of Defence, Trade and Industry,
Finance and Public Enterprises.
6. The IMC itself received and examined recommendations from the Sub-Committees of Officials
which processes the detailed matters relating to the SDPP. These Sub-Committees reported only
to the IMC and therefore never presented any report or proposal directly to the National Cabinet.
7. Commenting on the procedures that were followed with regard to the SDPP, and acting on
behalf of the IMC, I made the submission to the Judicial Commission that if any corruption had
occurred which informed the decisions on the SDPP, the blame would lie first and foremost with

the IMC and secondly with the National Cabinet, and only these two bodies. This is for the simple
reason that it was only at these two levels that the effective decisions concerning the SDPP were
taken, with the proposals emanating from the Sub-Committees of Officials serving merely as
recommendations to the IMC.
8. Accordingly, the allegation that has been made that the findings of the Judicial Commission
constitute a cover-up means that it would be the then Members of the IMC and the National
Cabinet who are thus being protected, including those who are unfortunately no longer with us,
these being the late President Mandela and Ministers Joe Modise and Stella Sigcau.
9. It was in this regard, concerning the IMC, the National Cabinet and the Primary Contracts, that
the Judicial Commission has said that absolutely nobody presented any evidence of corruption to
it and that its own investigations have not unearthed any such corruption. (Indeed no other
evidence of corruption, even outside these parameters, was presented to the Commission.)
10. The Judicial Commission invited many people to make presentations to it consistent with its
mandate, including those called whistle-blowers, who had made strenuous efforts over many
years to sustain the accusation which enjoyed pride of place in our media, that serious and
extensive corruption had attended the conclusion of the SDPP.
11. Some of these whistle-blowers did indeed make written and oral presentations to the
Judicial Commission. They were also subjected to cross examination. These included Ms Patricia
de Lille, Mr Richard Young, Ms Raenette Taljaard, Mr Gavin Woods, Mr Terry Crawford-Browne
and Mr David Maynier.
12. Similarly the Members of the IMC who are still alive, myself included, with the exception of
Minister Jeff Radebe who was not called, also made written and oral presentations to the
Commission and were subjected to sustained cross examination.
13. The relevant Government Departments, including Defence, Trade and Industry and Finance,
also made written and oral submissions, and were similarly subjected to cross examination.
14. The Police Officers who had investigated the allegations of fraud and corruption concerning
the SDPP, as part of both the Scorpions and the Hawks, also made their written and oral
presentations and were also subjected to cross examination.
15. One of the consultants of one of the Primary Contracting Companies also made a written and
oral submission and was also subjected to cross examination.
16. And so did the Companies which it was alleged were tainted with corruption, except one,
make their own written and oral submissions and subjected themselves to cross examination.
17. Unfortunately three of the whistle-blowers refused to appear before the Commission to
submit whatever information they had which could have assisted the Commission. These were
Messrs Andrew Feinstein, Paul Holden and Hennie van Vuuren.

18. Fortunately the Commission honoured its commitment to keep its hearings public, thus to
ensure the greatest possible transparency. Accordingly the public was free to attend these
hearings.
19. In addition the Commission transcribed the oral submissions and cross examinations and
posted these on its website. These can be accessed at the website www.armscomm.org.za
20. I urge our readers to take the trouble to read these transcripts. Among others, they convey
the necessary information concerning the corruption accusations of the whistle-blowers as well
as the detail of how these were discussed at the Commission. In this regard we would like to
draw the attention of our readers to the article we posted earlier this year, written by Mukoni
Ratshitanga, concerning the remarks that were made about the Judicial Commission Report by
one of the whistle-blowers, Mr David Maynier of the DA.
21. The transcripts will show that the corruption allegations which the whistle-blowers
propagated for more than a decade were discussed in detail, exactly to establish the truth or
otherwise of these allegations. The readers will establish this for themselves, based on the very
words of the whistle-blowers themselves, that none of them provided any concrete facts of any
kind to substantiate the allegations of corruption they had made!
22. In this context you, our readers, will also learn about the work done by the Scorpions and the
Hawks to investigate the alleged corruption concerning the SDPP, and their findings in this
regard.
23. The whistle-blowers and others who have denounced the Judicial Commission and its
findings have made a strident song and dance about the fact that Messrs Tony Yengeni and
Shabir Shaik were found guilty by our courts on charges which the whistle-blowers and their
friends allege concerned the SDPP, or what they call the arms deal.
24. What is the truth about these two matters?
25. Mr Yengeni had absolutely nothing to do with the SDPP and played no role of any kind in this
matter. He was convicted by our courts in connection with problems which arose between him
and the National Assembly concerning the reporting of assets. Mr Yengeni had received a
discount for a new vehicle he had purchased. He tried to hide this fact from Parliament and thus
violated the Code of Ethics which binds Members of Parliament. None of this had anything to do
with the SDPP. The whistle-blowers try desperately to bring in the SDPP in this context because
they allege that the company which sold Mr Yengeni the vehicle had something to do with one or
another of the Primary Contracting Companies. The IMC and the Officials never dealt with this
company and had no knowledge of its involvement in any of the Primary Contracts. Indeed,
throughout the Yengeni court case, no reference whatsoever was made to the SDPP since his
case had no relationship with the SDPP.
26. Mr Shaik was convicted on the basis of evidence presented about actions in which he had
been engaged concerning the French company, Thales, which was a sub-contractor to the
German Frigate Consortium, the entity with which our Government entered into an agreement as

a Primary Contracting Company. Whatever Mr Shaik and Thales did had absolutely no
relationship with and had no impact of any kind on the processing, the negotiation and conclusion
of the SDPP, the matter which the Judicial Commission had to investigate.
27. Accordingly it is merely to clutch at straws, and an act of great desperation, to suggest that
the charges preferred severally against Messrs Yengeni and Shaik and their convictions in this
regard had anything whatsoever to do with the processing, negotiation and conclusion of the
SDPP and were therefore manifestations of corrupt practice with regard to the SDPP. They were
therefore completely outside the scope of the mandate of the Judicial Commission as they had
absolutely nothing to do with the alleged corruption of the SDPP process and therefore such
corruption as would attach to the IMC and the National Cabinet as indicated under Paragraphs 7
and 8 above.
28. The whistle-blowers and their supporters have also made a similar song and dance about a
Confidential but leaked Debevoise & Plimpton Report (D&P Report) which was commissioned
by MAN Ferrostaal, the lead company in the German Submarine Consortium, the Primary
Contractor which signed an agreement with our Government to supply the required submarines.
This Report suggested that Ferrostaal might have paid bribes to secure the contract to supply the
submarines. The Judicial Commission prohibited the submission of this Report arguing that
established law in our country prohibited such submission unless the owner of this Confidential
Report, Ferrostaal, specifically agreed to lift the Confidential restriction of access to the Report.
The whistle-blowers have used the ruling of the Commission in this regard as argument that the
Commission took this decision to cover-up for the unnamed people who might have been bribed
as suggested by the Debevoise & Plimpton Report. Thus, contrary to the established legal
principle that all institutions in our country, including Judicial Commissions, have to respect the
rule of law, the whistle-blowers insisted then, as they continue to do, that the Judicial
Commission should have allowed the D&P Report to be presented despite the fact that this would
have been illegal. The Commission flatly refused to break the law in this regard, after having
failed to persuade Ferrostaal to agree to lift the Confidential restriction, as the law prescribed.
29. Contrary to the wrong view of the whistle-blowers that all this meant that the Commission
would not consider the leaked D&P Report, which the Commission had in its possession, the
Commission did indeed study the Report and found no evidence in it pointing to anybody having
engaged in corrupt practice relating to the acquisition of the submarines.
30. In addition to this, the Judicial Commission established that the German Prosecuting
Authorities had investigated the corruption allegations relating to Ferrostaal, which investigations
were started by the Dsseldorf Prosecutors Office. This Office then referred further
investigations to the Bochum Prosecutors Office (Staatsanwaltschaft Bochum). Having carried
out these investigations, the Bochum Prosecutors Office communicated to the Dsseldorf
Prosecutors Office and said:
31. As regards the background assumed by the (Dsseldorf) author of the memo (filed as) folio
7 et seq. of the files (bribery of foreign officials) it is to be noted that no specific or substantial
evidence whatsoever exists that would corroborate that assumption.

32. On February 5, 2008 the Bochum Prosecutors Office sent a communication to Dr Alfred
Dierlamm, attorney for MAN Ferrostaal, and said: I have withdrawn the prosecution of your client
in accordance with Section 170 paragraph 2 of the StPO, German Code of Criminal Procedure,
(Strafprozessordnung).
33. Consistent with their determination to hide the truth and therefore give themselves the
possibility to continue propagating fabrications, the whistle-blowers and their supporters make
no reference whatsoever to these defining positions taken by the German Prosecuting
Authorities!
34. The whistle-blowers also argue that it was wrong for the Commission to insist that all
witnesses who allege corruption should speak only about matters of which they had personal
knowledge, insisting that this amounted to a determined attempt to suppress the truth, and thus
protect those who had engaged in corrupt practice.
35. This is a very strange argument. I say this because, quite correctly, the Commission insisted
that all witnesses should speak about matters of which they had personal knowledge concerning
corruption. This was because the Commission did not want anybody to appear before it merely to
communicate rumours, gossip and unsubstantiated allegations thus saying, no to the rumourmongers!
36. It is very instructive that the whistle-blowers, especially the no-show trio of Messrs
Feinstein, Holden and van Vuuren, continue to insist that, among others, they would have
considered the Commission as legitimate if it had given them the space to appear before it to
communicate rumours, gossip and unsubstantiated allegations. Obviously no serious Judicial
Commission could ever derive its legitimacy from serving as a repository of rumours, gossip and
unsubstantiated allegations!
37. In this regard I have taken note of the fact that the no-show trio has publicly stated that it is
seeking legal advice as to the legality of the Commissions conduct and the viability of a legal
review to have the Commission Report set aside.
38. This trio will do a great service to the Nation if it does indeed approach our courts to apply
for the legal review it has threatened. Thus would the Nation and all of us have the possibility to
hear the supposedly explosive information the trio has, which, for whatever reason, it declined to
present to the Judicial Commission. Thus it may very well be that the information the trio would
present in court would result in the prosecution of those who were involved in the SDPP process
who have for more than a decade escaped criminal prosecution for their alleged involvement in
corrupt practice.
39. When the controversy about the Defence Procurement erupted in our country, a decade-anda-half ago, with a cacophony of very loud voices alleging that extensive corruption had attended
the SDPP process, it was natural that the countries of domicile of the Primary Contracting
Companies would carry out their own investigations to establish the truth about the serious
allegations which emanated from our country. In this context, many in our country claimed that
the foreign jurisdictions concerned had indeed established that the alleged corruption had

occurred. It was therefore absolutely necessary that the Judicial Commission should contact
these foreign jurisdictions to access the information the Commission sought to enable it properly
to discharge its mandate.
40. In this regard the Commission Report states that accordingly the Commission paid the
required visits to the US, the UK, Sweden, Germany, France, Switzerland and Lichtenstein. The
whistle-blowers had argued that it was exactly the authorities in these jurisdictions which would
tell us the truth about the corruption which allegedly attended the SDPP.
41. The end result of the extensive work of the Commission at the international level was that not
even one of these foreign jurisdictions provided the Commission with any information which
confirmed that any of the Primary Contracting Companies and the South Africans involved in the
SDPP, including the IMC and the National Cabinet, had been involved in any corrupt practice.
42. In this context, I must also mention that not even one of the losing bidders with regard to the
Primary Contracts, which, as we have said, are the contracts in which our Government was
involved, approached any court, both here at home and anywhere else in the world, to challenge
the decisions our Government took when it chose the Preferred Bidders who were awarded the
contracts contained in the SDPP.
43. For many years while I served as President of the Republic, some in our country made the
call with great insistence that I should appoint a Judicial Commission of Inquiry to investigate
what was and has been called, using insulting and pejorative language, the arms deal.
44. Consistently I refused to accede to this demand. At all times I argued that there had been no
deal concerning the SDPP. Further, I insisted that I would appoint such a Commission even if
one single new fact about corrupt practice was provided by anybody, beyond the facts which had
been considered by the JIT made up of the Auditor General, the NPA and the Public Protector as
mentioned above. No such facts were presented to me, even as these might have been only
prima facie evidence of what might have gone wrong. Accordingly I refused to appoint a Judicial
Commission, given that I knew of no objective basis to justify the appointment of such a costly
Commission, taking into account the thoroughgoing investigation which had been conducted by
the JIT.
45. However, as was his right, President Jacob Zuma decided to accede to this public demand,
and the attendant judicial process in this regard, and therefore appointed the Judicial
Commission whose Report is now in the public domain. Happily, the Judicial Commission has
now provided the Nation with valuable information which might otherwise not have been
available. Its detailed three-volume Report and the transcripts posted on its website provide a
firm basis for everybody concerned properly to understand the many matters relating to the
SDPP, and to engage in an informed discussion by any of those who want to pursue the objective
to bring to book whoever they believe was involved in corrupt practice relating to the SDPP.
As I have said, and is generally known, I served as Chairperson of the Inter Ministerial
Committee (IMC) which oversaw the process leading to the conclusion of the SDPP.

In this context, given my personal knowledge about how this process worked, I was very
confident that the decisions the IMC conveyed to the National Cabinet were not taken on the
basis of any corrupt intervention. For this to have happened would have required the
establishment of a conspiratorial network involving very many people, including many Officials
and all the Members of the National Cabinet who served on the IMC.
Indeed as soon as various companies responded to the initial Request for Offers which started
the bidding process, I took the decision that I should not meet and did not meet any of these
companies, even if they sought to engage our Government on matters about their possible
investment in our economy, not related to the Defence Procurement.
As the IMC we were therefore truly surprised to learn of the very first indication that the
recommendations we had forwarded to the National Cabinet, which Cabinet adopted as its own
decisions, were being questioned by some in our country on the basis of allegations about
corruption.
That first indication was the information that a document making this allegation of corruption had
been placed overnight in the mail boxes of Members of Parliament by unknown persons.
With the authorisation of Cabinet, we readily agreed that an investigation team should be
established to investigate the allegations that had been made. We therefore met the Auditor
General, the NDPP and the Public Protector at the Union Buildings in Pretoria to inform them
accordingly, which included our assurance that all the Government Ministries and Departments
concerned had been instructed fully to cooperate with them, with them working as the Joint
Investigation Team (JIT).
We were indeed very concerned when some in our country challenged the correctness of the
subsequent JIT Report without presenting any contrary facts. Rather, this repudiation of the JIT
Report focused on questioning the personal integrity of the Auditor General, which upset us.
In this regard our Cabinet firmly communicated its conviction about the integrity, honesty and
competence of the State Institutions which constituted the JIT, rejecting the insinuation which was
made at that time that it was only foreign institutions which could produce an honest report about
the whole process relating to the SDPP.
We were very concerned that despite the fact that nobody whatsoever presented any material
evidence which challenged the facts and conclusions of the JIT, nevertheless the public
campaign seemed to grow in strength that extensive corruption had attended the SDPP process,
with its outcome being freely characterised pejoratively as the arms deal.
In this regard we were particularly disturbed at the enthusiastic willingness of many in our media
to propagate and confirm the notion that there had been an arms deal characterised by corrupt
practice on the part of those of us who had been intimately involved in all the processes which
resulted in the SDPP.

This media response clearly demonstrated a determination to persuade our people as a whole,
and incidentally the international community, that our Governments repudiation of the allegations
of corruption was self-serving and had no substance or legitimacy.
Most unfortunately, again many in our media seem to have maintained their stance in this regard
and have joined the babel of tongues which now seek to discredit and delegitimise both the
Judicial Commission of Inquiry and its Findings and Conclusions, thus to confirm the resort to
lies and deliberate fabrications as a legitimate instrument in our public discourse.
One of the non-governmental organisations in our country which wants the Nation to accept it as
a principled fighter against corruption has said, responding to the Report of the Judicial
Commission that:
There has hardly ever been an arms deal of this scale that is free of corruption to have found
no evidence of corruption in this instance is therefore highly unlikely.
This constitutes a simple statement that whatever the concrete facts about the SDPP anybody
might produce, including the JIT and the Judicial Commission, our Nation must accept the
rumours, the gossip and the unsubstantiated allegations that the SDPP contracts were corruptly
awarded as being correct!
What remained unsaid, but is an essential component part of the argument about the allegedly
ineluctable corruption in arms deals, is what else would you expect of an African
Government?