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.