Comrades in Arms: how the ANC lost the moral high ground.

After the Party

Corruption, the ANC and South Africa's Uncertain Future

By Andrew Feinstein

[pounds sterling]14.99 Verso

ISBN: 978-1-84467-356-8

First published in South Africa in October 2007, this is an explosive account of one man's relentless pursuit of the truth behind allegations of corruption surrounding an international massive arms deal. Now updated and published in the UK by Verso, this book lifts the lid on some of the internal workings of the African National Congress (ANC) and the individuals involved in the biggest political scandal in post-apartheid South Africa.

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The book begins with an explanation of Feinstein's own political awakening. He had a polyglot upbringing, born to an Austrian Jewish mother and a South African father of Lithuanian descent who, while studying at the University of Cape Town in the 1960s, worked as a student among the impoverished communities in the townships on the outskirts of the city.

Facing conscription in South Africa's military service, he left the country to study at the University of California at Berkeley in the US. There he made contact with the liberation movement in exile. Following his fathers death, he returned to South Africa for a short period before, in 1989, going to study at Cambridge where he became involved with the ANC in exile.

It was while Feinstein was in the UK that the ANC was unbanned and Nelson Mandela released from jail. Feinstein returned to help build the new South Africa, working for Codesa, (the constitutional negotiating process to usher in the post-apartheid elections) and meeting a number of political personalities. These included Murphy Morobe, a leader of the 1976 Soweto uprising; Mo Shaik, who headed ANC security; Essop Pahad, the ANC and South African Communist Party leader; and Janet Love, who had spent a dozen years working underground in South Africa for the ANC. Through Love, he met Mac Maharaj. He also worked as an informal assistant to then Commonwealth secretary-general Emeka Anyaoku and then as an economics advisor for Tokyo Sexwale, at the time the Gauteng premier.

Feinstein successfully stood for election as an ANC candidate in Cape Town and was sworn into the national parliament in 1997. As a trained economist, he was seconded to the Finance and Public Accounts Committees. He makes the observation that in the first decade of South Africa's democratic dispensation, economic policy could be seen as a constant tug of war between "the need for social and material justice on the one hand and gaining the acceptance of the global economic power brokers on the other".

Much of the book to this point is interesting rather than particularly riveting, especially for a reader who may not have a particular knowledge of South Africa's parliamentary committees and processes. However, during his first term in parliament Feinstein dealt with a couple of serious financial misappropriation matters and says he was impressed by how the Standing Committee on Public Accounts' hearings were conducted. But this period was to be the calm before the storm.

A scandal breaks

The first indication Feinstein had of an impending tempest was a radio news item on an imminent report to parliament by the country's auditor-general, dealing with corruption allegations first raised by Pan-Africanist Congress MP Patricia de Lille concerning a massive arms deal. When, in September 2000, he finally got a copy of the Special Review by the Auditor-General of the Selection Process of Strategic Defence Packages for the Acquisition of Armaments at the Department of Defence, to give it its full title, it did not take that long for him to realise just how monumental were the allegations being levelled.

The report found that there had been a litany of irregularities in the procurement of the armaments and weapons. These included conflicts of interest among key decision makers, the contentious awarding of a contract to BAe and SAAB to provide fighter and trainer jets, the controversial decision to grant the German Frigate Consortium the right to build four ships, the allocation of a naval sub-contract to a French company at a substantial increase in cost over a local company tender, inadequate offset guarantees and a disregard for the staff requirements to operate the systems purchased.

Feinstein writes: "The report identified 'material deviations' from generally accepted procurement practices and stated that it would be necessary to also investigate the allegations of irregularities in contracts awarded to subcontractors. Its most remarkable findings were to do with the inadequacy of efforts to address conflicts of interest of key role players, and the practice followed in awarding the largest contract. The former allegation referred to the Director of Procurement in the Defence Force at the time, Chippy Shaik, and Defence Minister Joe Modise. On further enquiry, the Committee was told by the Auditor-General that it was alleged that Shaik had favoured his brother Schabir while Modise may have benefited materially from the deal."

The author goes on to note that as soon as he had read the document, he realised this was a huge political issue - "but I did not realise quite how it would change my life". He was drafted in to chair the ANC Study Group, meeting on two occasions to discuss the Attorney-General's explosive report.

He arranged to see Jacob Zuma, at the time the country's deputy president. His meeting was amiable enough. Thanking Feinstein for briefing him on the contents of the report, Zuma insisted that due process along constitutional lines should be followed. Later, a Zuma colleague asked Feinstein if he had been made aware of Zuma's relationship with Schabir Shaik - Chippy Shaik's brother. Feinstein admitted he had never heard the name before.

That was all about to change. Within a month of the Auditor-General's damning report, Feinstein and Laloo Chiba were designated by the ANC Study Group to lead questioning at a public hearing. The pressure to backtrack was almost immediate, with the ANC's chief whip, Tony Yengeni (later jailed for accepting a hugely discounted luxury car from a company closely associated with the arms deal) suggesting the matter was "should be dealt with internally", i.e. behind closed doors. Both men resisted this attempt to put a lid on the proceedings.

One of first revelations of the public hearing was the likely final cost of the entire arms deal package, already massively up from the R29.8bn the government originally claimed, to R43.8bn. In a later chapter, Feinstein quotes a figure of "in excess of R130bn" (including interest and other costs) from the Department of Defence Annual Report of 2007-2008. Feinstein also suggests that the nation's defence budget is set to double by 2011, noting bitterly "this from a party that promised to slash defence spending in favour of social spending".

Weaving a tangled web

The book's examination of the role of South Africa's former president, Thabo Mbeki, is hugely critical of his overall record as head of state - most notably, his 'denialist' stance in dealing with the HIV/Aids crisis, as well as the policy direction he took with President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe as that country nosedived into a social and economic disaster.

Indeed, Feinstein argues that Mbeki effectively lost for the ANC the moral high ground it had won during the anti-apartheid liberation struggle. Clearly disillusioned with the leadership of the party he loved, Feinstein resigned as an MP in August 2001 telling the press "it is not a matter of being sidelined ... I have been unhappy with the way the government and ANC in parliament have handled the situation".

On the issue of the arms deal enquiry, Feinstein recalls how three days before Mbeki announced his decision in January 2002 not to appointment the Heath Unit to investigate the arms deal (and appeared to mislead the nation in a TV address over legal opinion he had sought) Mbeki had met with the Auditor-General, the Public Protector and Director of Public Prosecutions.

As Feinstein points out, as deputy president, Mbeki had chaired the Cabinet subcommittee that had given the green light for the arms deal. It was therefore, in his words, "improper for Mbeki to be setting the terms of the investigations into his own conduct".

Of course, Mbeki's errors of judgment did not end there. Following the trial, conviction and jailing in June 2005 of Schabir Shaik on various corruption and fraud charges, the question of why Jacob Zuma had not been charged with Shaik loomed larger than ever - after all, at Shaik's trial, Judge Hilary Squires and his two assessors had found that there was "overwhelming evidence" of a "corrupt relationship" between the two men.

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Six days after a 15-year jail sentence was handed down on Shaik, the National Director of Prosecutions announced that Zuma would be charged with corruption. Mbeki fired his deputy president. As has been well documented elsewhere, this was to eventually lead to Mbeki's humiliation and replacement as the ANC party president by Zuma at the December 2007 Polokwane ANC conference. Mbeki was then obliged to resign as South Africa's president following the September 2008 court ruling by Judge Chris Nicholson that there had been political interference in the decision to charge Zuma with corruption.

On 6th April, 16 days before South Africans went to the polls to vote to elect their new president, the country's National Prosecuting Authority ruled that the charges against Zuma would be dropped. Feinstein writes: "If Jacob Zuma does not have his day in court, there will always be questions asked about what was hidden and why. I hope that in the event of another trial, he will be given the opportunity to prove his innocence or suffer the consequence of his guilt. It would also provide the country with an opportunity to get to the bottom of one of the less exalted chapters in our recent history."

It would also offer the ANC an opportunity to regain the moral high ground that Feinstein considers was so disastrously squandered in the course of Mbeki's presidency.