Lekota: Where is the evidence?

2008-08-21 16:21

Cape Town - Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota on Thursday rejected renewed allegations of corruption in the arms deal, saying they undermine South Africa's international stature.

The matter had been thoroughly investigated and government, including President Thabo Mbeki, had been exonerated of any wrongdoing, he told Parliament.

Lekota was responding to Eddie Trent of the Democratic Alliance, who said despite such assurances, "we continue on a weekly basis to be confronted with allegations of extensive corruption, most recently by the revelation that President Mbeki received R30m on behalf of the ANC from a German arms company.

"This allegation was predictably and unconvincingly denied; tellingly no defamation action has yet been launched by the President - this only serves to reinforce the perception that the President and the government are worried that any independent scrutiny of this rotten deal will reveal extensive wrongdoing."

Trent challenged National Assembly Speaker and ANC chairperson Baleka Mbete to "stop stonewalling my efforts to gain access to a number of Department of Defence documents currently being kept by the Sergeant at Arms".

Irregularities and corruption

"I have every reason to believe that these documents may point to large-scale irregularities and corruption associated with the deal," Trent said.

Lekota said when the issue was first raised some time ago, government placed the matter in the hands of democracy-supporting institutions to investigate "the question of so-called corruption in the arms deal".

That exercise had produced a report which ultimately was filed with the Speaker's office.

"Now, that report found that government, as government, in the primary contracts, had not committed anything that was outside of the law.

"There was an indication that there were areas in the secondary contracts that needed further investigation," Lekota said.

However, the suggestions made by Trent seemed to imply that that report was fallacious.

'Where is the evidence?'

"But, this government, this Parliament, is not presented with evidence other than what's available to this government upon which the House can decide... that the findings were wrong.

"Where is the evidence that can actually be tested in our courts?" he asked.

"I think that to continue to make allegations against the President of our country, when we cannot take him to court and place evidence there, undermines the standing of this country internationally, and actually makes a clown of this whole sitting here, that we can actually bring those stories here when there's no evidence of any kind."

The documents to which Trent had referred had been made available.

"We made those documents public, we opened defence, the investigators could come in and look at the documents, save that they couldn't take them away, but they could examine any document.

"We must not make a joke of the governance of this country and this Parliament in this way," Lekota said.

- SAPA