The Congress of South African Trade Unions is outraged that the country faces another arms deal scandal which could cost South Africans a massive R47 billion.
The deal, negotiated by the Armscor parastatal in 2005, under Defence Minister Terror Lekota and Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin, was for eight A400M military transport aircraft from Airbus at the already exorbitant price of R17 billion.
It has now emerged that no tenders from other companies were sought, and that Armscor has failed to budget for maintenance costs over the life of the aircraft, which have now added R30bn to the bill.
Airbus have called these figures, which Armscor CEO Sipho Thomo reported to Parliament, "wildly exaggerated". But even if the cost is ‘exaggerated' it is still a vast amount.
Ndivhuwo Mabaya, Spokesperson for the Minister of Defence, cannot explain why such a huge deal was concluded without a tender process being carried out, as is the normal rule. Inevitably this raises suspicions of the same kind of corruption which has been alleged in relation to the earlier arms deal.
The new government finds itself sabotaged by decisions taken by its predecessor. One of the two ministers who presided over the relevant departments at the time is now President of Cope, and the other endorsed Cope in the April 2009 elections. Lekota hypocritically denounces corruption, yet he and Erwin did nothing in 2005 to investigate these transactions, which at best involved blatant irregularities and profligate misuse of public money and at worst were criminal acts of fraud and corruption.
There appears to have been a culture of impunity in government departments in which certain people were untouchable. COSATU demands a full Inquiry into every aspect of this A400M deal and all those responsible for it. The federation is more determined than ever to expose and get rid of corruption in our society. As the Declaration of the COSATU 10th National Congress said:
"We commit ourselves to an unceasing battle against corruption; the use of the state and our organisations for self-enrichment; crass materialism and politics of patronage. These practices constitute a cancer that is slowly eating away the historic values of our movement, such as selflessness and service to the people.
"The aim of this campaign is to reassert revolutionary morality and ethics. We call for public representatives and unionists to relinquish their business interests otherwise they must leave to pursue their private interests. In future the workers will vote only for those who are genuinely pursuing the interests of the working class and the poor. Those not actively pursuing the interests of the working class do not deserve its vote."
Issued by COSATU national spokesperson, Patrick Craven, October 16 2009
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