news

Snippet
Johannesburg - A five-day tribunal focusing on South African's economic crimes has heard
how the sins of previous transgressors still haunt South Africa today.
The People’s Tribunal on Economic Crime is trying to join the dots between apartheid era
corruption involving sanctions busting selling of weapons, the 1999 arms deal and present
day corruption, commonly known as state capture.
The tribunal was formed in reaction to the sluggish response of the state to corruption over
the last decades, and is the first in the world to specifically address crimes of corruption and
theft.
The evidence is being heard by a panel of esteemed jurists chaired by former Constitional
Court Justice Zak Yacoob. The other panel members are Navi Pillay‚ Dinga Sikwebu‚
Mandisa Dyantyi‚ Yasmin Sooka and Allyson Maynard Gibson.
The tribunal was organised by civil society groups including the Centre For Applied Legal
Studies, Corruption Watch, Foundation for Human Rights, Open Secrets, Public Affairs
Research Instituter and the Right2Know Campaign. They are hoping to shine the light on
the reasons for South Africa's ongoing corruption scandals.
Moral authority
Yacoob began proceedings at the Women’s Prison in Constitution Hill on Saturday morning
by reminding the audience and witnesses that the People’s Tribunal is not a court of law,
and has no legal standing or authority. Instead, he said, that by its completion, the tribunal
hope to have established a degree of moral authority and they will make findings of fact and
recommendations.
Hennie van Vuuren Director, Open Secrets and author of ‘Apartheid Guns and Money’ told
Fin24 that the issues of the past are closely linked to the present.
“We’re in the midst of a debate in our country, a struggle for truth and justice around the
issue of state capture and corruption, but it’s imperative that we understand that the issue of
corruption and state capture didn’t begin with the Gupta phenomena”.
“The charges that our president [Jacob Zuma] is fighting today, its genesis is in the corrupt
arms companies who’d been busting sanctions with the apartheid state”.
Van Vuuren said the state arms company Denel is presently embroiled in controversy
related to state capture, an echo from the past. Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba in August
put pressure on Denel to end a planned joint venture with Gupta linked VR Laser.
Captured state institutions
Arms deal critic and author Paul Holden also locates the apartheid era arms trade and the
post-democratic arms deal in 1999 as a reason for why South Africa is currently grappling to
deal with corruption.
“All structures were tested by the arms deal, the public protector, parliament, the scorpions,
the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) but executive power overrode them”.
“The Hawks come from the fact that the Scorpions investigated Zuma, we live in a present,
defined by the reality of the arms deal,” said Holden.
Holden estimates between R61bn to R71bn was spent by the new democratic government
on weapons in 1999, for which only a tiny percentage of the jobs promised in exchange by
arms companies, were created.
Holden and others were critical of the Seriti Commission of Inquiry, into the arms deal,
calling it a whitewash.
TRC
Lawyer Charles Abrahams was the first witness to be called to take to the stand on day one
of the tribunal. He said that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) provided a loan of $400m
to apartheid South Africa in 1976, just after the Soweto uprising. Apartheid Security
spending increased by a similar amount that year.
Abrahams highlighted South Africa’s status as the number one gold producer in the world,
especially after the end of the gold standard in 1971 as a reason international banks and
institutions wanted to lend money to the apartheid government.
“Regrettably the [present day] South African government has been the biggest opposition to
litigation.”
Abrahams advised that many of the recommendations made by the Truth and Reclamation