Andrew Feinstein on how Arms Deals finance political parties (ANC included)

One could probably dub Andrew Feinstein – the feisty former African National Congress MP – as the Mr World-Fighter-Against-Arms-Deal-Corruption. He is full of hope that South Africans will see a lot of top executives of big business, arms peddlers and the banks in jail alongside the deeply corrupt in the political elite. But he admits he harbours concerns that President Cyril Ramaphosa may not have the gumption to put former President Jacob Zuma behind bars.

By Donwald Pressly*

Andrew Feinstein, who has for a decade been based in London at Corruption Watch UK, makes no bones about it that the world's key arms peddlers were seen en masse at Codesa – the body that negotiated the settlement for the New South Africa. The arms deal, which had been planned by the apartheid government but was disrupted by apartheid reforms and the political non-racial settlement, was to prove the trough from which to dispense political patronage in the new ruling party, the African National Congress. "We spent R70bn on weapons we did not need… many of which we have massively under-utilised to this day. This (the arms deal) was the first instance of state capture (in the democratic era)." Feinstein says he was shocked how far the then President, Thabo Mbeki, was prepared to go to "stop a meaningful investigation of the deal" and to "effectively neuter the Standing Committee on Public Accounts". He shut down the Heath special investigation unit into the deal. Of course the reason was that a substantial slice of the arms deal companies' profits were channelled to the ruling party. "The bribes on the deals (to provide ships to the navy and aircraft to the SAAF) would be a great way to dispense personal patronage within the ANC but also arms deals are an extremely good way to finance a (political) party."

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