The new equipment purchased was by and large necessary, and they are by and large being utilised to their operational design. For all intents and purposes, the Arms Deal did not represent any new capability that didn’t previously exist. Fighter jets replaced fighter jets, frigates replaced frigates, submarines replaced submarines, and so on. Every aircraft and submarine bought replaced older systems that had experienced major decay just before the end of apartheid or soon after.
Between 1990 and 1999, the South African Air Force (SAAF) retired 469 aircraft, closing more than a dozen squadrons and two air bases. The Army and Navy went through similar downsizing exercises, to adjust to the reality of a low defence budget of about 5% of government spending. The intention of the arms deal, as defined in the 1997 Defence White Paper and the 1998 Defence Review, was to modernise the air force and navy at a cost of less than 0.5% of GDP a year and allow them to remain capable with a much smaller number of systems.
That the arms deal critics, particularly Terry Crawford-Browne, specifically chose to attack these two arguments during the commission was a poor strategy, and ultimately backfired badly in the end result. The questions of initial rationale and utilisation were where the government’s case was strongest, allowing it to bring out expert after expert to testify in highly technical detail to refute the claims. For Crawford-Browne, this resulted in an apparent reputational meltdown on the stand, and for the Arms Deal critics, an eventual contribution to the skewed findings released yesterday.
After all this time, you would be forgiven for not quite remembering just what was on the shopping list in 1999. So what are these systems, and what are they being used for? In the interests of making the distinction between the shroud of corruptions surrounding the deal itself and the actual items bought within (and their need), here is the current inventory update.
Gripen
The Gripen fighter jet (26 bought) represents the crown jewel in the defence procurement chain. A sleek and modern fighter aircraft capable of modern generational air warfare, the Gripen raises many questions. The first of which, were they necessary?
Critics of the Arms Deal insisted that the existing SAAF Cheetah jets were good enough to get “the job” done. However, those were upgrades of older Mirage and Kfir jets and so all but a handful were reaching the end of their services lives, meaning there was a limit to how long they could be kept flying.
The Gripens provided the SAAF and the SANDF with an array of military options that simply did not exist with older jets. This aspect of the deal was a pricey one, but with that price tag came an aircraft that has done a lot of heavy lifting in its relatively short life.
Gripen jets were responsible for providing general air interdiction and patrol responsibilities during the 2010 World Cup, flying on a near-constant basis before, during and after each game. At the end of the tournament, the jets had contributed to several mid-air interdictions that prevented planes from entering prohibited air space. In 2013, four Gripens were deployed at only a few days’ notice with smart bombs and reconnaissance pods to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to provide air support to SANDF troops in Bangui.
Beyond this, the Gripen maintains a constant force projection for the SANDF that cannot be matched with ageing French airframes. The ability to see real time radar coverage and, via their South African-developed data link, feed into the larger SANDF intelligence picture was a technological capability previously unavailable to the SAAF.
In a South African society that has not known full-scale war since the 1980s, it is a difficult task to explain why simply having a bigger stick than your neighbours’ is enough to ensure it never needs to be used. But conventional deterrence of external threats is a major component of the SANDF, and of any professional military. In this regard, the 4th generation fighter has thus far proved to be a far more sophisticated airframe over any regional power.
There is a pervading myth that the SAAF has no pilots to fly these expensive Arms Deal planes. However, as of 2016 the SAAF has at least 14 pilots, dispersed around the force, ready to jump into the cockpit and fly, with more ready to come through the conversion course if needed. When you consider that the defence force has been critically underfunded for nearly a dozen years in a row, the ability to even put planes in the air is a remarkable logistics feat.
BAE Hawk Mk120
The Hawk jets (24 bought) replaced the old SAAF Impala jet trainers. Although a major cloud of discontent persists over just which jet was chosen for procurement, the reality was that a new trainer jet capable of quickly being used in a combat role was a dire need. The Impalas were remnants of the Cold War, which entered service from 1966 and desperately needed replacement. Much the same as how one would retire an old car costing a fortune in annual repairs, so too was the need for something like the Hawk.
Operationally the Hawk is one of the most flexible aircraft in the SAAF fixed-wing inventory. Used in ground attack training, feed-in training for aspirant Gripen pilots, and as a general back line for the Gripen squadron where, thanks to some prescient work on the part of the SAAF’s requirements drafters, the Hawks connect to the Gripens via a sophisticated data link and can share the same radar picture for air-to-air combat.
Agusta Westland A109s
Replacing Alouette III helicopters (30 bought) that were delivered from 1962, the Italian-made A109s have seen extensive use throughout South Africa as a light utility helicopter. Aside from moving personnel, the use of the A109 in land or sea rescue, general reconnaissance and many other utility roles has been its mainstay.
Less costly, and way less “sexy” than the Gripen, the A109s have largely escaped the public eye. Nonetheless, as far as its role in the Arms Deal goes, these helicopters represent a critical need fulfilled.
Heroine-class Submarines
The running joke that the South African Navy submarines (3 bought) are either constantly crashing or experiencing issues should not confuse the strategic requirement to replace old Daphne class submarines that dated from 1970 and were becoming increasingly costly to operate.
Yes, one of the new Heroine-class subs has hit the bottom of the ocean. But this is normal of any navy and should not be a dark mark against the SANDF. There is not a single submarine-operating navy that hasn’t bumped the ocean floor during deep-level training. Mistakes and errors happen when people and systems are tested to their limits. And in a dark metal tube with no windows, the potential for things to go wrong is only increased.
Nonetheless, the submarines are in constant operational use, either in training, refit, or operational purposes. This is despite the commonly-held and mistaken belief that they’re all inactive and in dry dock.
Much like the projection power of the Gripen, holding a submarine fleet of any strength in Africa is something of a unique capability. And like fighter jets it’s a capability that takes decades to rebuild once lost; it has to be maintained even when there’s no direct threat so as to be available for when one arises. For South Africa, the submarines won’t find poachers, and they aren’t going to catch pirates, but they certainly patrol the country’s oceans for larger prey and provide a guarantee for the future.
Valour-class Frigates
The German-manufactured frigates were, if anything, bought in too small a quantity. With only four purchased, the patrolling of South Africa’s huge maritime domain is not performed as adequately as it should be. The lack of blue ocean vessels able to do the hard yards in ensuring illegal fishing, trafficking, and many other criminal activities are not carried out freely is a key indicator that the government simply did not buy enough vessels.
The frigates had been an active contributor to providing security at 2010 World Cup matches in coastal regions, using their powerful radars to detect and track aircraft, ships and boats, and now spend their time between patrolling South Africa’s waters and chasing imaginary pirates in the Mozambican Channel. Although the piracy lark appears idiotic, the political payoff of patrolling Mozambique’s waters is significant, as is the reduction of shipping costs through a now-secured region.
When it comes to the Arms Deal, it’s difficult to explain the difference between the need to purchase equipment and the process to procure said equipment. In the former, the case for procurement could not have been clearer. For the latter, Thursday’s whitewashing is significantly troubling.
Really?
One really needs facts to publish an article like this.
And the commission’s report is not a great place to start with facts.
The real critics were not so concerned with whether certain equipment systems was aged and needed replacement, but whether we bought the right stuff.
And also whether it was necessary or wise to purchase all at the same time.
Especially in essentially a new dispensation that had never really handled one major acquisition, let alone five simultaneously and nearly six.
Of course there are also very major questions about acquisition processes such as the now infamous (yet little known) Ministerial Directive MD 4/147 drafted and tentatively promulgated for foreign-initiated, international government-to-government defence equipment offers, but eventually withdrawn by the Minister of Defence on 8 August 1997. MD 4/147 was nevertheless used instead of VB1000 making the foundations of the SDPs tenuous at best, whatever the report states.
But richest of all in this article is on utilisation: precisely what time have and do the four frigates spend patrolling South Africa’s waters and chasing pirates in the Mozambican Channel, imaginary or otherwise?
I am not aware of any patrolling ever done in South African waters and also in the EEZ. There were some of short patrols in the Mozambique Channel, but these were very few and of short duration at least in respect of the entirety of Operation Copper. Most of the Operation Copper duties are performed by three 40-year old salvaged strike craft and even by the SAS Drakensberg until she had to retire from the field for a refit several years ago.
Four frigates could indeed perform all the Operation Copper duties, but the SA Navy would long since have been bankrupt.
Richard, thanks for your response. I think we’re in agreement on more points than might initially appear.
Unfortunately, much of the criticism has centred around why we bought arms at all, a view we believe to be misguided. The acquisitions were based on real requirements from the arms of service that were legitimate and necessary, something you’ve acknowledged before with respect to the underlying justification for Sitron.
Could and should the acquisitions have been spaced out separately? Yes. In hindsight, while a ‘big bang’ approach did bring some benefits, such as ‘Gripenising’ the Hawk avionics, specifying certain aspects of interoperability and finance, it’s preferable to rather structure acquisitions as discrete projects run independently. In fact, in my view one of the greatest failings of the Seriti Commission was that it did nothing to reform acquisitions and ensure that future procurements are more transparent and incorporate more stringent processes.
The question of utilisation is not relevant, because it would only be an issue if we found that the Arms Deal equipment was utilised less than the other systems in the SANDF or that they did not fit into the force design. But neither of these is true: All systems in the SANDF, including those not acquired in the SDPP, are severely underutilised, in many cases more so than the newer and easier-to-maintain SDPP equipment. Had the SANDF been funded to the levels anticipated in the 1998 Defence Review, there’d likely be no question of utilisation rates.
There has been a significant amount of patrolling, both in our EEZ and outside of it, though not as much as was initially planned for (with a higher budget in mind). The DAFF is also affected by this, with its three fast patrol ships and its single offshore patrol vessel not being allocated the necessary sea hours for effective fisheries patrols.
The frigates and SAS Drakensberg each deployed to Mozambique for four to six months at a time for Operation Copper, accumulating a lot of sea time. Once the three ex-Strike Craft had been refurbished and converted into OPVs and the piracy threat had diminished, they took over the role because they’re much cheaper to operate, there was no longer a need for onboard helicopter support and because being home-ported in Durban their transit distance is far shorter.
Two of the submarines are out at sea, with SAS Queen Modjadji I on a 40 day patrol (which is not uncommon) and SAS Manthatisi out for exercises with the Chinese Navy.
Should the plansfor patrols off Africa’s western coast come to fruition, they will likely be performed by the frigates and SAS Drakensberg, given the location of Simon’s Town and the ongoing commitment to Op Copper.
Of course, this is all being done on a shoestring budget and the ongoing delays in acquiring new OPVs and IPVs is a problem, but this affects the entire force equally. You can’t have a military capable of conducting large-scale peacekeeping, peace enforcement, international anti-piracy patrols and protection of our huge EEZ and mindbogglingly-massive search and rescue area of responsibility and still pay less than R50 billion for it. Either the scale of the SANDF’s commitments must decrease or the budget has to be increased to match those commitments.
Darren: Per my previous posting: the frigates, submarines and BAE Hawks and BAE/Saab Gripens were bought for the BRIBES, not for any rational defence requirements. The German subs came last in terms of military criteria, and the SAAF as early as July 1997 informed the government that BAE’s proposals were both unsuited to South Africa’s requirements and were too expensive. Modise, Erwin, Manuel and Mbeki “sold their souls,” but the real villains in the arms deal are the British, German and Swedish governments that used Mbeki, Zuma and others in the ANC hierarchy to do their dirty work and then walked away from the consequences of unleashing corruption in South Africa.
You’re mixing up your projects.
In 1997, the plan was still to replace the Cheetahs with a twin-engined Future Medium Fighter aircraft under Project Kambro, in the class of the Eurofighter Typhoon, Dassault Rafale or Boeing F-15, all at least twice as expensive as Gripens. The Impalas were to be replaced with an Advanced Fighter Trainer under Project Ukhozi, which was looking for a supersonic high-tech fighter trainer in the class of the FA-50 or similar.
The FMF and AFT were planned to be significantly more expensive than what was actually acquired in the Arms Deal, both on a per-unit basis and in terms of greater unit numbers. The Gripen was initially evaluated for the AFT requirement, for which it was deemed too expensive. The fact that the SAAF was even looking at Gripens as their secondary fighters should tell you something about the scale of ambition for the FMF and AFT.
The defence budget cuts of late 1997, which forced the SAAF to prematurely retire its Mirage F1AZ fleet, meant that the FMF and AFT acquisition was no longer affordable, so the SAAF downscaled its requirements to cheaper and smaller aircraft, the Advanced Light Fighter Aircraft and the Lead-In Fighter Trainer. To save costs, the Advanced Light Fighter Aircraft was foreseen as a modern single-engined swing-role fighter and the Lead-In Fighter Trainer as a transonic jet trainer without onboard fire control radars.
Whereas the Gripen, Mirage 2000, AT-2000 and others were too costly for the AFT requirement, they were well-suited to the ALFA requirement. Similarly, whereas the Mb.339, L-159 and Hawk Mk.120 would not have qualified for the AFT requirement as it specified costlier aircraft, the cheaper LIFT requirement meant they were now an option.
Believe me, BAE would have loved to sell South Africa 38 Eurofighters at $100 m apiece rather than 26 Gripens at a far lower cost.
With regards to the German submarines, all three of those shortlisted met all the technical requirements defined in the Project Wills Staff Target, meaning that all were considered suitable, while the technical differences were minor. The German submarines were R800 million cheaper than the next option on the list, so they scored highest on Military Value. Given that you have complained that the same principle of taking the cheapest qualifying option was not followed with the Hawk, I’m surprised you’ve raised this.
The German submarine project was rocketed into first place because of the inflated NIP offsets — R5.2 billion for three submarines against a R30 billion stainless steel plant at Coega that purportedly would create 16 251 jobs — ie one quarter of all the supposed 65 000 jobs. The last thing SA needed was yet another steel plant given massive overcapacity here, as well as internationally. Predictably, the Coega plant never happened. It was replaced by a condom factory which closed within three months, and then the takeover of the bankrupt apartheid-era Magwa tea estate in Transkei which also failed. As the Debevoise & Plimpton report on Ferrostaal confirmed, offsets were simply vehicles to pay bribes. The submarines were bought for the bribes, not for any rational naval purpose — even Admiral Cubby Howell’s childish motivation that submarines are the ultimate stealth weapon to protect fish, or another admiral’s even more stupid statement that submarines make small navies important and South Africa needs the ability to give the Americans a bloody nose.
The SAAF preferred the Aermacchi over the Hawk. I am not mixing up projects. The British thought they had proprietary rights to supply all of South Africa’s defence needs. They had Modise in their pocket who removed cost from consideration in his “visionary approach” and the Hawk/Gripen combination. 160 pages of affidavits from the British Serious Fraud Office and the Scorpions detail how and why BAE paid bribes of GBP 115 million, to whom the bribes were paid and which bank accounts in South Africa and overseas were credited.
“The submarines were bought for the bribes, not for any rational naval purpose” – you mean apart from the purpose of replacing the Daphné class submarines?
What rationale purpose were served by the Daphnes (or any other squandering of public resources on nuclear bombs or other paraphernalia)? Admirals childishly told the parliamentary defence review that SA needed submarines to be able to give the Americans a bloody nose and/or to protect fish! South Africa’s transition in 1990 was the consequence of the international banking sanctions campaign, which I launched in 1985 with Archbishop Tutu and other church leaders, as a last nonviolent initiative to avert a civil war. NY banking sanctions worked, as Mandela himself acknowledged, in overcoming apartheid. Or did you propose to drop a bomb on Chase Manhattan or other New York banks?
Terry, as I’ve said before it does your credibility no good when you intentionally misrepresent the arguments of those you oppose. South Africa’s naval officers have presented many good strategic reasons for why submarines are useful tools, and the Staff Target and User Requirement Specification go into even more detail, yet you continue to use two cherry-picked examples stripped of context in an attempt to dismiss all of it.
The value of submarines derives from their ability to remain hidden and undetected for large periods of time, thus providing both a covert monitoring and Special Forces insertion capability and a level of strategic and tactical uncertainty for deterrence.
That set of capabilities enables a range of potential uses, such as the covert monitoring of military and state communications of coastal African countries or passing naval ships, the covert insertion and retrieval of Special Forces reconnaissance teams, deterrence against other countries and powers, etc. Even, yes, acquiring evidence usable in court on illegal fishing without the ships being aware of your presence.
And even though South Africa has no immediate need to deter anyone right now, that doesn’t mean that we won’t have that need in future, especially as the Indian Ocean increasingly becomes a great power playground and the ongoing rise of other nations increases the possibility that someday our vital sea lanes may come under threat from blockades associated with regional or even global conflicts. Nor can we agree to only acquire those capabilities once such a conflict arises, because it takes decades to establish a competent submarine capability, both in terms of ordering and receiving the boats and obtaining the knowledge and doctrine for operating secretly and effectively in our waters.
So all strategic capabilities, whether they’re submarines, fighter jets, or tanks, have to be balanced against a calculus of their day-to-day value, how long it takes to re-establish a lost capability, future conflict patterns, and future value, versus their direct and indirect costs. All require decades and much additional cost when being re-established, which means that when opting to abandon any of them you’re effectively stating that we’re not going to have a real need for that capability within the next 25-30 years, which is a bold claim to make given how unstable the global geopolitical picture is right now.
Thus the compromise of keeping the SANDF relatively small, buying only enough of each system to provide a core capability that provides the necessary day-to-day numbers while allowing for easy expansion in terms of major conflicts. That’s also why it was understood in 1998, when the first Defence Review was drafted, that the SANDF would never get more than 10% of the national budget, with the other 90% being reserved for welfare, policing, education, health, and housing. Today, the SANDF’s allocation hovers at around 4-4.5% of the national budget.
If you want to campaign against the need for submarines, fighters, transports, or even having a defence force at all (as I know you’ve argued in the past), then you need to engage the strategic rationales for all of those on their merits and not on caricatures that you dismiss without further thought. Any decision on reducing military capability has consequences, whether that means the inability to do certain tasks today or the inability to protect the country in a conflict tomorrow, so the intellectually honest way to go about things is to fairly acknowledge those consequences and explain why they’re still worth living with.
It’s difficult to take you seriously on your claims of what’s necessary or not while you continue to pretend that there’s never a strategic rationale for any weapons system, or a defence force, at all.
On the contrary, the credibility of the SANDF is now zero: There was no conceivable foreign military threat to SA in the 1990s to justify expenditures on warships and warplanes we did not need and could not afford, but the admirals and generals colluded with the European arms companies to unleash the bribes and culture of corruption that has now brought SA to its knees. Not satisfied, the same clowns now want to buy Russian nuclear power stations for the bribes, not for any justifiable power needs. The risks to South Africa’s security are internal, not in chasing pirates off Somalia. Wake up. We are now in the 21st century, not the 19th and the era of gunboat diplomacy. Just look at the consequences for the US of massive military spending since WWII. They have lost every war including Vietnam, and the Russians will again outmaneuver them in Syria, and the Chinese in the Pacific. Meanwhile, the US economy is about to implode in another financial crisis.
(Eskom is generating so much electricity, that it now wants to close down 4 power stations which could cost 6000 jobs [1]. The Department of Energy’s own research suggests that 43% of South Africans are energy poor, and low-income communities and rural areas face power cuts. So why is Eskom pursuing nuclear energy at a prospective cost of trillions?)
You’re attempting to divert the discussion to avoid answering questions. The nuclear deal, Eskom’s power supply issues, and the Syrian War are not relevant here.
You keep claiming there was no credible military threat, but you’re only speaking of an immediate threat, not one emerging within the next 20-30 years. A defence force is not something you can switch on and off at short notice. Nor has the equipment acquired in the Arms Deal been unused, as you were shown quite clearly during the Commission.
Blockades and sea route interdiction techniques of the 19th century only, if you read the navy doctrinal papers of Russia, China, the US, EU, and others.
And countering piracy off the coasts of Africa is indeed within South Africa’s national interest, because piracy in those areas threatens our trade routes and drives up the insurance and other costs for ships using those sea lanes, thus making our imports and exports cost more and damaging the South African economy, which hurts the poor most of all.
Finally, you keep referring to the Arms Deal as the origin of corruption in South Africa, as though it were possible to with a single action turn so many government officials from saints into sinners. That’s ludicrous, and it’s disproved by the evidence that has emerged which shows certain government officials intentionally altering and subverting the standard military procurement process to create more opportunities for political interference. It’s also disproved by the many, many instances of high-level corruption that occurred before the Arms Deal was signed, as well as those that continued after.
Some people were always looking to make a quick buck off of the transition and the ensuing government, and they were going to use any opportunity to make it happen. They did not start with the Arms Deal, nor did they end with it. I think your anti-military stance is blinding you to the way corruption really took root.
As a follow-on question, were there any aspects of the 1998 SDPP that you would have agreed with? Such as the purchase of the light utility helicopters? Would you have approved of it had it followed standard Armscor contracting guidelines? Or how about if that was done and other equipment was bought, like maritime patrol aircraft or more transport aircraft? Are you opposed to any military acquisitions at all, or just some?
On the contrary, the connections between the arms deal and the proposed Russian nuclear power stations are TOTALLY RELEVANT, and the same principles apply that government procurements must meet the obligations of section 217 (1) of the Constitution, namely: comply with “a system which is fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost-effective.” The arms deal dismally failed all those constitutional requirements. And at many times the cost there is now far less transparency with the nuclear power proposals. The further relevancy is that warships and warplanes are obsolete in the 21st century as are nuclear power stations. As evidence, Westinghouse has just filed for bankruptcy, and its financial disaster may even take with it its Japanese parent company Toshiba. You patronisingly say that you have great respect for my work in the 1980s and in exposing the NIP offsets. Well wake up! As confirmed by the Debevoise & Plimpton report and others, both the DIP offsets and NIP offsets were simply vehicles to pay bribes. Offsets are what drove the whole arms deal fiasco, with Joe Modise’s and Alec Erwin’s absurd lunacy and insistence that R30 billion spent on armaments would magically generate R110 billion in offsets to create 65 000 jobs. What business or shop do you go to where you spend R30 and receive back R110 in change? Again, the arms deal was about bribes to fund the ANC, and not for any rational defence needs. And should the Russian nuclear power deals go through, the bribes and corruption will be even bigger, and make the arms deal look like petty cash. As for your pathetic red herring about South African port costs because of Somali pirates — South African port costs are amongst the highest in the world, not because of Somali pirates but because of incompetence and corruption in harbour administration.
Merely repeating an assertion does not make it any more true. You haven’t addressed any of my questions.
Let’s simplify this: Are you in favour of an acquisition of light utility or transport helicopters, which would primarily be used for local security, border patrol, search and rescue, and disaster response?
If you need helicopters for border patrols, sea rescues etc, you buy them but do not fool yourself with garbage about offsets making them not only affordable but a bargain.
So you’re happy with Project Flange, the acquisition of light utility helicopters in the Arms Deal, but you just disagreed with the NIP offsets?
Would you be in favour of the SANDF acquiring new patrol aircraft now if NIP offsets were excluded?
The whole arms deal was motivated and driven by the offsets, both DIPs and NIPs, to try to cover the reality that SA could not afford the acquisitions. In violation of 217 (1), offsets remain mandatory for all government foreign procurements over US$10 million, not just the arms deal. Offsets of either variety are simply vehicles for bribes, and when the Auditor General and Parliamentarians demanded sight of the offset contracts, they were blocked — per instruction of BAE and the British government — and told that the offsets were “commercially confidential.”
You have not answered the questions.
Would you have been ok with the Project Flange acquisition had offsets not been part of it?
And would you be in favour of future acquisitions like Project Flange if offsets are not a part of the process?
Helicopters are an essential part of sea rescues off our coast, fire fighting and other disasters. How much would future acquisitions cost, and would we have the pilots to fly them given that most SAAF pilots have departed for commercial flying?
So that’s a yes, then? You’d have totally fine with that part of the arms deal if it hadn’t included offsets?
Cost would be dependent on numbers acquired and their relative sophistication and capability, which would be determined by a needs analysis in the form of the Staff Target and User Requirement Specification.
What would be your cost ceiling?
Pilot numbers are not as big a problem as it sometimes seems from the outside, and it’s untrue that ‘most’ have left. Vacancy rates for aircrew are around 30% on average, varying by system type.
As you well know, the focus of the objections on the arms deal was on the GFC frigates, GSC submarines and the BAE and BAE/Saab contracts. The Agusta helicopters were a small part of the arms deal, and evidently would have some utility value unlike the other acquisitions. What costs/needs might be for future acquisitions is an entirely different matter, but especially since the SANDF bleats non-stop that it is under funded because it blew its budget on the arms deal fiasco. Tough, because there are numerous other public finance priorities in South Africa before any more “toys-for-boys” in the SANDF or a new presidential jet!
You’re still not answering two direct questions:
Would the Agusta A109 acquisition in the Arms Deal have been fine, in your eyes, as long as it did not include offsets?
And,
Would you support a future SANDF acquisition along similar lines, such as for transport aircraft, patrol aircraft, or trucks, if those too included offsets and came at a reasonable cost justified by needs?
That you refer to any new SANDF acquisitions as being ‘toys-for-boys’ indicates that you do not believe there should be any in future at all, which is why I’m trying to figure out what your stance on this is.
Offsets are a SCAM, period — whether they are NIPs or DIPs — and are a vehicle for bribes and other procurement irregularities. Do you need it spelled out any clearer? I said no such thing about the Agusta helicopters at the Seriti Commission. To my recollection, they didn’t even come up for discussion. I was talking about the BAE/Saab Gripens which replaced the Cheetahs, and about which the arms deal affordability study recommended to the Cabinet in 1999 that the proposal should be scrapped, or at least deferred. The cabinet however, decided that BAE would deliver offsets, and that overrode any logic whether economic or strategic. DTI finally admitted in Parliament in 2012 that BAE had delivered only 2.8% percent of its US$7.2 billion in NIP obligations, ie only US$203 million. In short, offsets were a fraud and South Africans were fleeced by BAE/Saab with collusion of the British and Swedish governments. Adding further insult, the Minister of Defence has confirmed in Parliament that the planes are in storage because SA lacks the pilots to fly them. BAE paid bribes of at least GBP115 million to secure those contracts, and has already been fined US$479 million in the US for laundering bribes through the American banking system.
I have already stated my dislike for offsets, and in my questions I specifically asked about acquisitions without offsets. Stop trying to divert from a simple question. Why won’t you answer it?
As for your claim about them never coming up for discussion:
‘Pretoria – Arms deal critic Terry Crawford-Browne on Thursday refused to retract his claims to the Seriti Commission of Inquiry that the aircraft the government bought in 1999 were not being used.
“The evidence of General Burger, who is the director of helicopter systems, is that they are frequently used for casualty evacuations. They are also used to train pilots,” Jennifer Caine, for the defence department, said while cross-examining Crawford-Browne at the inquiry’s public hearings in Pretoria.
“They have conducted operations in the DRC, Sudan and the Central African Republic. They have flown in excess of 18 000 hours. They have been used in numerous other rescue operations.”
They were also being used in anti-rhino-poaching missions.
Crawford-Browne said Caine’s details were not relevant to the inquiry’s terms of reference.
Caine asked Crawford-Browne whether he was prepared to withdraw a section of his sworn statement which reads: “With regards to the 30 Augusta helicopters purchased from Italy, I am informed that many of them are in storage and unused and/or rotting at Ysterplaat Air Force Base in Cape Town.”
Crawford-Browne said he would not retract and urged the commission to inspect the aircraft.
“I have not been to the base to verify it myself. It is one point that the commission may take an interest in. I am not prepared to withdraw it.”‘
Well since you repeatedly state your dislike of offsets, it is time to start to realise that the whole scam of the arms deal was driven by the absurdity of spending R30 billion to get back R110 billion. As for this report wherever it came from: I told Advocate Caine that when her questions were relevant to the Commission’s terms of reference, she would get relevant answers. She admitted right from the start that she did not understand offsets. She and the SANDF witnesses repeatedly tried to duck the reality that the whole rationale for the arms deal — its first term of reference — was the offsets, not whether helicopters being used for anti-poaching operations. As I testified, offsets are not only a scam and fraudulent, they are also unconstitutional in terms of section 217 (1) and Treasury regulations. In short the whole acquisition programme was illegal from the start no matter what lipstick you put on the pig. Everything else including the bribes is mere commentary. The Commission’s head evidence leader, Advocate Tayob Aboobaker himself declared that the benchmark by which the Commission had to do its work was whether South Africa did or did not get the R110 billion in offsets. Plainly we did not — South Africa was fleeced, so stop trying to avoid that reality. Aboobaker and Judge Legodi and several others subsequently resigned because they refused to prostitute themselves with the farce of the Seriti Commission, or its totally discredited report. So if you are in fact opposed to offsets, stop prostituting yourself by putting lipstick on the pig.
Again, you attempt to divert the discussion with circular arguments to avoid answering simple questions.
You’re also wrong about the terms of reference, as offsets and job opportunities were number 3 and 4 respectively. The first term of reference was the rationale, the second was utilisation.
So can you please give me answers to my two very straightforward questions? They are:
Would the Agusta A109 acquisition in the Arms Deal have been fine, in your eyes, as long as it did not include offsets?
And,
Would you support a future SANDF acquisition along similar lines, such as for transport aircraft, patrol aircraft, or trucks, if those too excluded all offsets and came at a reasonable cost justified by needs?
It is you, not me, who is wrong. Yes, the Seriti Commission’s first term of reference was the “rationale” for the acquisitions. As spelled out by Joe Modise in Parliament in March 1999 and repeated by senior evidence leader Advocate Tayob Aboobaker in February 2014, the rationale for the arms deal was the offsets of R110 billion — not per the garbage and red herrings spewed by SANDF sycophants or yourself that warships are useful against Somali pirates or helicopters against rhino poachers. Since you claim to be opposed to offsets, why do you keep trying to divert the issue away from offsets, and that offsets were the rationale for the arms deal? We should not even be arguing. Until you address the reality of offsets as a scam and vehicle to pay bribes and unconstitutional, the issue of buying helicopters, trucks or anything else is irrelevant.
You, yesterday:
“I told Advocate Caine that when her questions were relevant to the Commission’s terms of reference, she would get relevant answers.
…
She and the SANDF witnesses repeatedly tried to duck the reality that the whole rationale for the arms deal — its first term of reference — was the offsets, not whether helicopters being used for anti-poaching operations.”
You, today:
“It is you, not me, who is wrong. Yes, the Seriti Commission’s first term of reference was the “rationale” for the acquisitions.”
Note that Advocate Caine was questioning a statement that you had put in your own submission, regarding utilisation and military rationale. So if neither of those were relevant, why did you include them in your sworn submission?
As for offsets, I have told you on many occasions going back years that I dislike offsets and believe defence acquisition should be reformed to exclude them. I have also explained, again more than once, that offsets were a problem in the Arms Deal and that I agreed that they should be more closely questioned.
However, regardless of how corrupt, non-performing, or whatever the offsets might have been, they do not take away from the original military rationale for the weapons systems. The SANDF had established requirements and needs analyses for new fighters, light utility helicopters, trainers, frigates, and submarines long before there was even a discussion about NIP offset strategies.
Yet you are absolutely unwilling to admit that there was any valid military rationale, even after you admitted that the A109s, at least, had real utility value. So which is it?
I have specifically asked you whether you would support a future acquisition of helicopters, trucks, transports, or patrol aircraft in a hypothetical situation where offsets were excluded. Given that you are vehemently against offsets, calling them a scam and the entire problem with the Arms Deal, I would think this would be an easy question to answer.
There was no military rationale for the acquisitions: they were bought for the bribes — in the case of BAE of at least GBP 115 million (R2 billion) that were laundered via Red Diamond Trading Company and others, and which funded the ANC’s 1999 election campaign. The 1996 Defence White Paper confirmed that SA was already overarmed relative to neighbouring countries, and that there was no conceivable foreign military threat to the country. Likewise, the Treasury in June 1998 in a memo jointly signed by Trevor Manuel and Maria Ramos confirmed that the financial circumstances inherited from the apartheid era were such that SA could not afford to spend more than R500 million pa on arms acquisitions. Given a lack of parliamentary or other authority, Modise and Erwin concocted the fraudulent absurdity that R30 billion spent on armaments would magically generate R110 billion in offsets to create 65 000 jobs. Within months the R30 billion became R45 billion, and the R110 billion offset obligations evaporated. The arms deal was payback from Mbeki to Modise for political support against Hani and Ramaphosa. Yesterday we have Mbeki gratuitously telling ANC MPs to vote their consciences on the 18th against the corruption that he and Modise unleashed on the country. Advocate Caine admitted that she did not understand offsets. She then proceeded to try to put all kinds of words in my mouth and irrelevant questions until I finally told her in exasperation that when she asked relevant questions germane to the commission’s terms of reference she would get relevant answers. That finally shut her up! Just a pity I was too polite and did not tell her immediately. The SANDF has blown its budget on the arms deal, so any question of more acquisitions or more funding is likewise irrelevant — whether with or without offsets. The country could not and cannot afford the rubbish we bought, let alone any more. So stop, like Caine, trying to divert that reality with idiotic issues and red herrings such as rhino poaching or Somali pirates to justify the arms deal scam. Unlike Pravin Gordhan, who refused to approve Zuma’s Russian nuclear power stations, Manuel lacked the guts to defy Mbeki and to refuse to approve the arms deal. He prostituted himself for the sake of political power and status. The 20 year Barclays Bank loan agreements in my possession and signed by him for the BAE contracts, and still outstanding, are a textbook example of third world debt entrapment. They have been verified by Manuel’s own legal counsel as authentic, and rightly described as “potentially catastrophic for South Africa.” Meanwhile, Mrs Manuel (Maria Ramos) is now CEO of both ABSA and Barclays Africa. The conflicts-of-interest are glaring. So enjoy the uproar in the country that the arms deal corruption has unleashed, including junk status. End of story — I have other things to do.
How many of the light utility helicopters acquired in the Arms Deal under Project Flange, are actually being used today?
All of them? None are in storage if that’s what you’re asking, they’re all assigned out to the relevant squadrons and are flown to the extent that crewing and funding allow, same as the Oryxes.
Personally speaking I’ve seen them flying on many occasions in the past year.
Why do you constantly do this? This constant goal-post shifting? The question at hand is as to whether or not the submarines were purchased for a rational naval purpose. Instead of answering it, you again pivot to discuss (in overly simplistic terms) an unrelated matter.
The submarines were purchased as a deterrent (against anyone, lest you intend to stick to your literalist interpretation) and as a patrol asset. Are these not rational purposes for the use of submarines? As for the specific military rational, I believe Darren has covered that aspect of the discussion far better than I ever could.
If you wish to discuss how we protect ourselves from Economic warfare, then that is a separate discussion – unrelated to submarines, fighter jets and italian helicopters.
I know that your assertion is that the lack of threats is what makes the purchase irrational. But, as I have pointed out many times before, this is fallacious logic as we cannot see the future and thus cannot predict what threats will arise over the next 30-40 years.
Or do you argue that we shall remain eternally fixed in time, that change is the exception and not a constant? Can you personally guarantee peace and stability ad infinitum?
Lets be honest here, you launched your crusade not because of corruption. You launched it because we spent money on defense.
Obviously I have to spell it out to you in words of one or two syllables. IF YOU CAN’T AFFORD IT, YOU CAN’T AFFORD IT. It was predictable 20 years ago that the arms deal would end in disaster. We now have that disaster with the downgrading to junk status because of the corruption that the arms deal unleashed.
So you propose that there is an identifiable causal link between the Arms Deal and Junk Status?
Were our recent Cape Storms also a result of the Arms Deal?
It’s time you learned that military spending by the apartheid government bankrupted South Africa in 1985, yet thankfully resulted in our liberation. As the editor of Business Day, Ken Owen wrote in 1995: quote “The evils of apartheid belonged to the civilian leaders: its insanities were entirely the property of the military officer class. It is an irony of our liberation that Afrikaner hegemony might have lasted another half century had the military theorists not diverted the national treasure into strategic undertakings like Mossgas and Sasol, and Armscor and Nufcor that, in the end achieved nothing for us but bankruptcy and shame.” unquote.
The international banking sanctions campaign followed PW Botha’s Rubicon speech in August 1985 as a last nonviolent initiative to avert a civil war and racial bloodbath. That banking sanctions were the most successful campaign against apartheid is acknowledged even by former apartheid supporters, plus also Nelson Mandela who declared: quote ” The most effective boycott of apartheid came from American bankers. They had previously helped to finance South Africa’s highly militarised state, but now abruptly withdrew their loans and investments.” unquote.
Given that 1985 experience, it was utterly reckless in 1999 for the ANC government to buy warships and warplanes that South Africa could not afford. In particular, the arms deal affordability study urged the Cabinet to cancel or at least defer the purchase of 28 BAE/Saab Gripen fighter aircraft. BAE/Saab paid bribes of GBP 115 million to secure that contract, and was obligated to deliver US$8.7 billion in offsets. The affordability study also warned the Cabinet that such reckless spending could lead the government and country into mounting fiscal, financial and economic difficulties — ie, exactly what South Africa now faces with downgrading to junk status because those warnings were ignored. Predictably, the offsets never materialized, and South Africans became the victims of yet another arms deal fraud. As even the Minister of Defence has had to acknowledge, most of those Gripens are now in storage because SAAF no longer has the pilots to fly them, the mechanics to maintain them or even the money to fuel them. As the 1996 Defence White Paper stipulated, there was no conceivable foreign military threat to South Africa — a situation which still pertains. The threat to South Africa’s security, then and now, is poverty. Given our financial circumstances, the arms deal warships and warships were not bought for any rational defence purposes but, instead, for the bribes. And per the 1985 apartheid securocrat experiences, the arms deal has achieved nothing for us but bankruptcy and shame!
How are they replacing the Daphné-class submarines?
The Daphné-class submarines used to go to sea every other week for twenty years and deposit saboteurs and demolition experts on the shores of anti-colonialisation neighbours.
When last did any of the Heroine-class submarines go to sea?
Are any of the Heroine-class submarines ready to go to sea?
Are any of the Heroine-class submarines ready to go to sea and fight?
What variables has changed between then and now?
Bump defence spending back up to 4.5% of GDP and they will do just that.
Between February 2006 and June 2013 the submarines spent 807 days at sea, not including readiness and safety check runs. This equates to being at sea one third of the time. That included over 16 separate operational patrols up and down the East and West coast (incl two Op Copper stints in the Mozambican Channel) and out to Marion Island.
When last did any of the Heroine-class submarines go to sea?
Two of the boats last went to sea simultaneously in February, I don’t have updated figures beyond that.
Are any of the Heroine-class submarines ready to go to sea?
Yes, both S101 and S103 are in the water and ready to go to sea, though I believe S101 is the ‘active’ boat and S103 the training boat at the moment. S102 is on the hard for a refit. This is in line with the standard SAN submarine rotation.
Are any of the Heroine-class submarines ready to go to sea and fight?
Yes, in line with rotation planning, one submarine is fully operational.
Beyond that, I can only concur with what @disqus_7mAktZAhby:disqus has said: For the SANDF to have the same readiness and operational tempo that the SADF had it would need to be getting a similar allocation of money. In the 1980s South Africa was spending the equivalent of R100 billion a year on the SADF.
Okay, it seems that you may know more than I do.
But that is certainly different to what I have heard.
Of course, there are facts and there is a new thing called trump facts.
All of what I stated is either sworn testimony under oath or verifiable by other means. Also, there are more than a few people watching the comings and goings in that harbour.
Most of the information about the submarines is outdated and relates to the period when S101 was on the hard, but she’s been back in the water for some time now. I also noticed that quite a few people thought S99, on the hard for the Navy Festival, was one of the new subs.
The only sworn testimony of which I am aware was that during the APC during 2014.
The statistical facts tendered were all up to August 2013.
I would like to get sworn testimony later than that.
I have a security clearance.
I also have all the sworn testimony prior to 2015.
But the new information I have is only 10 days old.
And other than sworn testimony, it’s about the best a man can get.
As for what anon said, I cannot see his reply on this page.
Normally I do not waste my time responding to posts coming from those who prefer to go nameless.
But in any case that is a fallacy.
In the modern era there was never going to be a 4,5% of GDP allocation.
So it is a non-sequitur.
If one does not speak Latin that means it does not follow.
Not only that, but how does that answer my question of how are they replacing the Daphné-class submarines?
Defence acquisition is founded in intelligence analyses and syntheses of foreign threats.
It is equally founded by allocation of funds.
The SDPs equipment had not even been delivered when the budget realities had to become stark reality for the SA Navy.
Of course, when the RFIs were issued in 1997 or the RFOs in 1998 or the contracts in 1999, operational budgets and lifecycle cost of ownership were the last things on the acquirers’ minds.
This is a case of fiscal reality coming home to roost.
And a case of acquisition for other imperatives.
Reality has proven that.
I’m sorry, but I cannot put it more politely than that.
Nobody was expecting 4.5% of GDP or 20% of the national budget, as during the 1980s, but there’s a significant middle ground between that and the paltry 1% of GDP and 4% of the national budget that exists now.
So I think you’re being a bit unfair to the policy and defence planners at the time, who as far as I can tell were acutely aware of budget realities and limitations. That’s why Kambro evolved into Ukhozi, as it became clear that the future budget would not support twin-engined medium fighters. It’s also why in most of the internal documents surrounding the procurements there was a clear emphasis on balancing the number of systems vs the available budget.
The 1998 Defence Review and the SDPP were based on a set of assumptions and plans that made a fair bit of sense at the time and would’ve resulted in a much better defence force had they been followed.
First, after much discussion about what exactly the ‘guns vs butter’ ratio should be, the general compromise was that a defence budget of around 1.5% of GDP and at or under 10% of the national budget would not only be affordable, but sustainable. It would keep the defence force at a core level of expandable capability while at the same time reserving 90%+ of government spending for social and other needs.
Without that level of assurance on a budget’s stability, no long-term planning could ever take place with any degree of success. Nor was there any indication at the time that the government would permit the defence budget to reduce even further in real terms.
Second, the Review directed that the personnel component of the SANDF be ‘rightsized’ over the next decade, and thus bring down the already-enormous proportion of the budget that it was already taking up back then, thanks to integration. The integration of the SADF with the former liberation armies created an imbalanced force with too many senior officers and far more soldiers than the force design required. That force design was in turn based on government’s plan to put the SAPS in charge of border patrol, to conduct only one limited peacekeeping mission at a time, and to slowly withdraw the SANDF from providing internal support to the police.
The plan was that by 2003 the SANDF’s budget ratio between personnel, operations, and would return to a healthy 40:30:30, with the personnel budget going from R5.3 billion (in 1996 Rands) to R3.8 billion.
An entire range of measures were stipulated for how this was to be achieved, including retrenchments, external retraining programmes, the mobility exit mechanism, etc.
Third, the recommendation was that a new defence review be held regularly, to update the plans and policy for new realities.
The root cause of all the problems in the SANDF since the 1998 Defence Review stem from the breaking of four government promises:
1) The defence budget was not kept at 1.5% of GDP, but decreased almost every year in real terms until it was at under 1% of GDP.
2) Rather than sticking to one peacekeeping mission of limited size, the government went wild in the 2000s and at one time had over 3000 troops deployed, nearly half of whom were on non-compensated AU missions.
3) None of the plans for downsizing the personnel component were properly executed, largely for political reasons, so the cost of the personnel element grew to dwarf both operational and acquisition spending. It’s what, 60-70% of the budget now?
4) No attempt was made to convene a new Defence Review committee until 2010, twelve years later.
Had even one of those four promises been kept, the SANDF would be in a much better state today. It all had been met, it’s almost certain that the force would not be experiencing a funding crisis. Personnel costs would be 40% of the budget, leaving plenty of space for operations and acquisitions, and the force design would’ve been updated regularly to adjust for changing circumstances.
It’s too easy to claim that the SANDF and external policy and defence planners were naive or blind, but unlike us they did not have the benefit of hindsight and they made decent decisions based on reasonable commitments. We can’t lay all the blame for the following decades of political mismanagement at their feet.
Alright, you can type faster than I can think.
But we are agreed that anon’s fallacious premise is just that: fallacious.
I think that all, or at least most, of the balance of what you have said is true, or at least relevant.
And I will apply my mind to that as far as scarce cerebral muscle allows.
But let it not be doubted, I seldom challenge the intention and bone fides of the defence planners (as you refer to them).
However, I do question the wisdom of the acquirers.
And as far as I can remember that none of the acquirers were professionals.
That includes, inter alia, Joe Modise and Chippy Shaik and Fana Hlongwane.
They were political acquirers whose primary motivations were acquisition for other imperatives.
While these luminaries were busy with what they did best, they created a certain amount of space for another SDPs phenomenon: ego-based acquisition.
Sadly, the resultant of acquisition for other imperatives and ego-based acquisition is arms of services which cannot afford to operate nor support not repair nor upgrade the fruits of acquisition which are entrusted to them.
This has been an interesting discussion, thanks.
I think what anon was pointing out was that the only way to get the same operational tempo and usage frequency out of the Heroine-class subs that we got out of the Daphnés we’d need to have an equivalently-sized defence budget. I’m in agreement with that, I think too often it’s forgotten just how much less money we allocate to defence now than we used to.
In terms of the acquirers, I always make a distinction between those on the military requirements side of the equation and politicians. In all countries you’ll find a disconnect between the purely military requirements advanced by defence planners and the motivations of political leadership. In well-run countries, those political motivations tend to centre around things like industrial policy, budget control, and so forth, but as we know all-too-well they can also be based on less noble objectives.
That’s why I’ve been trying to make the distinction in my discussions with Terry and others between the military rationale, which was valid, and the objectives of many of the politicians involved.
It’s also why I’ve been pushing for defence acquisition reform that makes the process more transparent and puts most of the major decisions in the hands of career professionals in the SANDF, DoD, and Armscor. As we’ve seen from other countries that have eliminated, or at least greatly reduced, corruption in their government acquisitions that’s the only approach that really works.
That applies not only to defence acquisitions, but to any big state purchases whether they be locomotives or airliners. The more open and transparent the process, and the less it allows interference and interception by political appointees, the harder it is for corruption to exist.
“Exhausting someone in argument is not the same as convincing him”
One cannot compare the SANDF with the SADF as both have different levels of funding. It is extremely simple logic, indeed simple enough for someone with a STEM background to comprehend.
“It is easy to be wise, after the event”.
As for the use or usefulness of what was acquired. Are they not being used in the manner that was outlined when they were acquired? That is, is their use inline with the Navy’s “business plan”. The answer is a resounding yes.
Your overall assertion is that what has been acquired was foolishly acquired as “we cant afford it”. But, when the planning was done, were the planners informed that their budgets would be effectively halved? Were they informed that there would be an almost decade long global down turn? That the Rand would bottom out? No, they were not. Further, were these things predictable? Foreseeable? Again, no they were not.
To asses the quality of their decisions one must place oneself in the position of the decision maker and review the information that they had access to at that specific point in time.
Indeed, the fact that they have managed to operate the majority of the equipment within their initial “business plan” despite losing 1/3 of their budgets underlines the fact that the decision made was a reasonable one. That the equipment is largely affordable.
Alright, anon.
You prefer to be anon.
Clearly why.
One reason is that you are not convinced.
Clearly why.
But you argument is easy to defeat.
Far from my “reputational meltdown,” it is John Stupart’s journalistic reputation which is shredded. The “rationale” for the acquisitions was not to replace equipment needed by the SANDF. Generals and admirals were paraded before the Seriti Commission as a red herring to divert attention from the “rationale” that the arms deal would purportedly deliver R110 billion in offsets and create 65 000 jobs. This was the benchmark established by Joe Modise in Parliament in March 1999 in collusion with European arms companies and their governments, and Thabo Mbeki. As confirmed by the Debevoise & Plimpton report and other documentation suppressed by Judge Seriti, offsets were simply vehicles to pay bribes. The Minister of Trade and Industry finally conceded in Parliament in 2012 that offsets were a monstrous fraud. Instead of delivering Euros 2.85 billion in offsets, the German Submarines Consortium “delivered” only Euros 62 million or 2.2 percent, mainly in the form of “non-repayable loans”– ie BRIBES. Likewise BAE delivered only 2.8 pecent of BAE’s NIP obligations. In turn, that US$203 million out of BAE NIP obligations of US$7.2 billion tallies closely with the British Serious Fraud Office and Scorpions 160 pages of affidavits that detail how and why BAE paid bribes of GBP 115 million, to whom the bribes were paid and which bank accounts were credited. The Seriti Commission gushingly reported that the offset obligations were largely achieved! Likewise, the Seriti Commission reported that the equipment is well utilised. Yet even the Minister of Defence has publicly confirmed that the BAE/SAAB Gripens have been placed in long-term storage because South Africa lacks the pilots to fly them, the mechanics to maintain them or even the money to fuel them.. Wake up Stupart before you choke whilst swallowing that red herring! Where do you shop where you get back R110 in change for a R30 purchase?
Terry, you cannot claim the hardware was not required and then use the failed offsets programme as substantiation for this. At any rate, the entire point of this article is to make the distinction between the whitewash of the Seriti Report, which we do not dispute at all, and the need for new hardware in the first place.
Many of your comments of the equipment and systems were soundly refuted in the commission, ironically one of the strongest aspects of the state’s case. As such there isn’t much point in engaging them again. If anything, the distinction in thematic content is important here, since I suspect we do not fundamentally disagree on the commission.
John: As the Treasury memorandum of 30 June 1998 signed jointly by Trevor Manuel and Maria Ramos confirms, there was NO MONEY for new weapons. Just five months later the red herring and eyewash of “offsets” was created by Joe Modise and Alec Erwin and approved by the Cabinet in an effort to divert attention from that reality. Manuel buckled under pressure from Mbeki, who owed the presidency to Modise. Spend R30 billion to get back R110 billion in offset benefits — just how gullible are you? My issues in written and verbal testimony of offsets being both unconstitutional and fraudulent were NEVER addressed by the Seriti Commission, let alone refuted. I objected to offsets as fraudulent back in 1996-1998 during the Defence Review. So don’t suggest that I am only raising it now. Advocate Jennifer Cain opened her cross-examination of me by admitting she knew nothing about offsets. I put up with her irrelevant questions and Judge Seriti’s barracking of me until finally I told her “when you ask relevant questions, you’ll get relevant answers.” Illustrating my point: the GSC tender for the submarines came last on military specifications, but won the tender because of the generosity of the offsets. Spend R5 billion on three subs and get back R30 billion to create 16251 jobs — ie a quarter of the offset jobs — on a stainless steel plant at Coega. Wake up! The stainless steel plant was cancelled within six months. And, as the D&P report confirms, offset promises were simply vehicles to pay bribes. Likewise the BAE Hawk and BAE/Saab Gripen fighter aircraft. As the Minister of Defence has confirmed 12 of the 26 Gripens are in long-term storage. SA has only five qualified pilots to fly them, and no money even to fuel them. So if the planes are now in storage, what was “the need for the new hardware in the first place?” Face it, the warships and warplanes were bought for the bribes, not for any rational defence needs. And if you read pages 25 and 26 of the Seriti report, you will discover that the IONT and Financial Working Group papers which I demanded to examine in terms of my subpoena, and which warned the Cabinet in August 1999 that the arms deal was a reckless proposition, suddenly became “privileged” and not to be inspected by me or disclosed to the South African public. Similarly, the vast amount of documentation against BAE, the GFC and GSC, which was the very cause of the Commission’s creation, was left unexamined in two shipping containers at the Hawks premises in Pretoria. To save R250 000 on scanning and indexing costs, the Seriti Commission squandered R237 million and wasted four years on a farcical whitewash. As Norman Moabi revealed in his resignation letter, “Judge Seriti was pursuing a second agenda to silence the Terry Crawford-Brownes of this world.” Quite obviously, I have no intention of remaining silent. The arms deal predictably unleashed the culture of corruption which now brings the prospect of downgrading to junk status and threatens the very survival of South Africa’s constitutional democracy. And I said so repeatedly in Parliament during the Defence Review back in 1996-1998, if you want to check the record.
Terry, the memorandum to which you refer reportedly set out a range of scenarios, from the best case with a decent growth rate, stable exchange rate and amenable international credit market, through to a worst case where the Rand collapsed, growth slowed and credit terms worsened. The Arms Deal would’ve been unaffordable in the worst case, with affordability increasing all the way through to the best case, with it becoming viable somewhere in between. In the end, South Africa saw neither the best case nor the worst case.
In addition, Arms Deal payments came out of the existing defence budget, via the Special Defence Account, without a proportional increase in the defence budget. Thus Arms Deal spending remained less than R6 billion a year, within a defence budget that itself was on average at just 5% of government spending, resulting in even less impact to the fiscus than if the Arms Deal had been funded completely outside of the defence budget.
With regards to offsets, John has already stated that we are not in favour of industrial offsets, nor do we regard them as a positive aspect of the deal. The only offsets we believe are acceptable in certain circumstances are defence offsets, and even then only when formulated in terms of local content requirements. The argument John put forth was that while we can, and should, criticise the way that industrial offsets were handled and how the Seriti Commission whitewashed their failure, that does not take away from the fact that the weapons purchased were both necessary and based on long-standing SANDF requirements. I fail to see how you can read John’s article as a wholehearted defence of the Commission, which is how you appear to have perceived it.
There are no Gripens in long-term storage. What is happening is that as a result of the austerity measures the SANDF has been placed under, as a result of being underfunded, twelve aircraft at a time are placed into Rotational Preventative Maintenance. They are flown every sixty days, kept up to date with servicing, maintenance and upgrades, take just a day or two to return to flight and are rotated out with the aircraft on the flight line periodically to keep flight hour usage even. This is very different to long-term storage, where aircraft require weeks or months to return to flight.
There are also at least 14 Gripen pilots in the SAAF, but again as part of those same austerity measures not all are kept at the squadron on any given day, but posted around the SAAF as instructors and in other roles while remaining current. This was all in Brigadier General Bayne’s testimony at the Commission, by the way.
The Staff Requirements for all the systems acquired in the SDPP dated from the early 1990s, in some cases even further back, as the existing equipment in the military had become obsolete and could not be operated effectively for much longer. The requirement that led to the Gripen acquisition in particular existed in its earliest form in 1987, before going through various transformations as the political situation changed and budgets were reduced. Whatever else happened in the Arms Deal, the one thing that’s quite clear is that the Staff Requirements both predated it by a number of years and were exhaustive in their analysis of the type of systems needed by each arm of service.
Darren: The Manuel/Ramos document dated 30 June 1998 was a three page memorandum entitled “Availability of Funding For Procurement of Defence Equipment” declared: “the Department of Finance strongly recommends that the total sum of any contracts signed should not exceed the amount that has been estimated as affordable, as indicated in Table 1.” Table 1 projects affordable defence procurements in the year 2001/2002 as R1.4 billion, rising to R4.5 billion by the year 2018/2019. Contrary to your statement, it had nothing to do with a set of scenarios. In short, there is NO MONEY to buy toys!
Yet less than five months later, the Cabinet including Manuel approved the arms deal at a cost of R29.8 billion. The acquisitions, it announced, would generate R110.8 billion in offset benefits and create 64 165 jobs.
The Secretary for Defence Pierre Steyn had resigned in 1998 because he refused to take accounting responsibility for Joe Modise’s non-costed “visionary approach.” When Modise was warned there was no budgetary provision funding authority for a non-costed option, he replied: “we must not be in a hurry to let Parliament know that we are pursuing something that is not funded.”
How convenient that you now plead that you are not in favour of offsets! Offsets were the WHOLE purpose and rationale of the arms deal given there was no money for frigates, submarines or the BAE Hawks and BAE/Saab Gripens. When the affordability team in March 1999 recommended scrapping or at least deferring the Gripens, the Cabinet response was to proceed because of the massive NIP offsets that would flow from BAE because of the arms deal. As the Minister of Trade and Industry admitted in 2012, BAE’s NIP obligations were US$7.2 billion but BAE delivered only 2.8% or US$203 million, of which at least GBP115 million were in bribes. That offsets were the WHOLE motivation for the arms deal is well documented, hence the Seriti Commission paraded admirals and generals, including General Bayne to testify how their toys were so desperately needed, and fully utilised. Contradicting Bayne, check out Defenceweb of 13 March 2013 “A Dozen SAAF Gripens in Long Term Storage” and on 29 March 2016 “Possible Permanent Grounding For Either Gripen or Hawk Coming.”
Terry, do you have a unique identifier for that document, or a copy?
Something you are not taking into account is that, despite the initial plans to the contrary, the Arms Deal was not funded as an addition to the defence budget, but was placed within a defence budget that wasn’t changed to suit. Over and above that, the defence budget itself was not increased to the level planned for in 1998, but was effectively decreased in real terms from then onwards. That’s why all defence spending, including the Arms Deal, has amounted to only around 5% of total government spending each year.
In other words, that document’s relevancy depends entirely on what figures it based its forecasts on and how closely those forecasts matched reality. What did it predict the defence budget would be each year until 2019, and did it include the payments within that amount? If it predicted much higher figures for the defence budget and/or lower GDP and government budget growth figures than actually occurred, then it has far less relevance than you attach to it.
Given that the acquisitions were funded out of the defence budget, which remained at just 5% of government spending and around 1.1-1.3% of GDP, it’s clear that they were affordable with some sacrifices made within the SANDF. One of those sacrifices was the retiring of certain SANDF capabilities considered non-core, another was that other acquisitions were halted until the bulk of the Arms Deal payments had been completed and the Special Defence Account allocation once more had spare capacity.
Offsets could not have been the ‘WHOLE motivation’ of the Arms Deal if all of the requirements existed as Staff Targets, Staff Requirements and registered projects before the first mention of offsets occurred. The simple point we are making is that these were real requirements that arose from actual needs identified by the SANDF. Why are you unable to acknowledge that there were legitimate military requirements for these systems, even as you (quite rightly) campaign against the process?
Neither of those reports contradict Brigadier General Bayne, who was the then-Director of Combat Systems in charge of the Gripen and Hawk fleets and knew the situation better than almost anyone. The DefenceWeb report from 13 March 2013 was based on a comment by the Minister made at a time when the SAAF was investigating multiple options to cope with the austerity measures under which it had been placed. Long term storage was considered, but Saab proposed the cheaper and less harmful Rotational Preventative Maintenance programme, as Brigadier General Bayne testified. I have subsequently confirmed this independently with my own sources.
The 29 March 2016 report is based on a speculative comment by a private defence correspondent who states that should the SAAF remain underfunded for its current missions, it may at some point have to consider retiring either the Gripens or Hawks from service and experiencing a huge loss in capability. At no point did the SAAF make the statement, in fact they have quite explicitly denied any intention to retire either type.
And again, that does not indicate that the Gripens or Hawks are not needed, only that the SAAF is stretched too thin. After all, the same austerity measures are affecting the force’s nine C-130BZ transport planes, which are in huge demand and yet have only a 40% fleet availability owing to a lack of funds and qualified flight crew. I should not need to tell you that the C-130BZs were not acquired in the Arms Deal, nor were any of the other aircraft types in the SAAF also experiencing low availability rates and crew vacancies.
You are confusing a lack of operational funding with a lack of need, which is not helping your argument.
Darren: That document is on the APC website. Table 1 of the memo further projects that overall “affordable” Defence spending would rise from R9.9 billion in 1998/1999 to R21.7 billion in 2013/2014, and to R27.7 billion by 2018/2019. Consequently, not only was the arms deal way out-of-line with what the Treasury deemed “affordable,” but the overall Defence budget is now more than double what Treasury in 1998 deemed to be affordable.
This contradicts your statement ” the defence budget itself was not increased to the level planned for in 1998, but was effectively decreased in real terms from then onwards.” DoD blew the budget on the arms deal, but continues to whinge nonstop that it is underfunded.
Nor am I confusing a lack of operational funding with lack of need. As the Defence White Paper and Defence Review found, alleviation of poverty is South Africa’s overriding security priority — not inventing nonexistent foreign military threats. Our security threat and need is poverty in the townships and rural areas where people don’t even have flush toilets, but you want Gripen fighter aircraft and submarines.
And having blown the budget on the arms deal, as the affordability study predicted, the country is now facing investment downgrading to junk status.
You link the down grade’s to the Arms deal? Surely you jest!
If it was evident 20 years ago, SA now has the reality of junk status and economic meltdown. The proposed Russian nuclear power stations would make the arms deal look like petty cash, but the same madness applies.
By pivoting, you concede that the statement conflating the arms deal and the down grade is purely hyperbolic. Lets not waste anymore time on that.