The Devil In The Detail

How The Arms Deal Changed Everything

Paul Holden, Hennie van Vuuren

• Publisher: Jonathan Ball
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781868424689
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Process
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The South African 'Arms Deal' was never a single event. Rather it was, and still is, a series of scandals and outrages, all contributing towards a dubious momentum that takes South Africa further away from transparent democratic practice. The Devil in the Detail, written by two of South Africa's leading researchers on the subject, takes the reader on a journey of insight. Witness at close hand the breaking open of State secrets, with tales of outrageous personal enrichment. Explore how the Arms Deal emerged out of the criminal networks of both the old SADF and the ANC's security apparatus, raising questions as to whether South Africa's remarkable transition was not oiled, at key points, by criminal intent and collusion. Follow the trail of the various offset deals done after the Arms Deal - cumulatively worth just as much as - and discover that corruption continues to impact on defence spending in South Africa. Examine the economics and witness how the Arms Deal was not only economically irrational, but virtually suicidal, almost single-handedly derailing the post-apartheid economic project. Finally, read about the rise of the 'shadow state', the politicisation of prosecutions, and the rise of the 'spooks'. The remarkable conclusion of this landmark study is that years after the deal took place, the forces that drove its decisions have only grown in strength, further blighting South Africa's prospects for a future in which all may have a share.

CHAPTER ONE

A Questionable Legacy:
The SADF and MK in Exile, 1976–1990

The early 1990s were a heady time. The unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC), Mandela’s final leg on his long walk to freedom, a press with more freedom to probe, and the attention of the world focused on that problematic country on the far southern tip of Africa: all came together in a ferment of interactions and developments that many had once dreamed of, and for which some were ill-prepared. Sporting success was matched with the optimistic rewriting of racial attitudes, Tokyo Sexwale emerging as a truly national sex symbol only years after it was illegal to marry across the racial barrier. On the horizon was the utopian vision of a country that would be geared towards the upliftment of all, providing a platform of unity that would allow South Africa to emerge as a world-beater, Africa’s only First World country, redefining modernity with our own unique insights into the operation of world politics.

Sitting like a cancer in the middle of this vision was the humanitarian disaster bequeathed by the apartheid State. A modern infrastructure that served a privileged class and allowed for pockets of development admittedly provided a springboard for growth, but could do nothing to mitigate the grim reality that nearly half the population lived below the poverty line. Reconstruction of the country, eradication of poverty and upliftment of a population that had fought valiantly against oppression were first on the agenda to guide South Africa on the road to modernity, success and influence.

It was strange, inconceivable even, that the first major post-apartheid acquisition would not be products or services chosen to achieve this aim directly. Housing, jobs and education for all was the rallying cry of the ANC during its 1994 election campaign – at no stage was there a consistent public call from the political class for a re-arming of the military forces that had for so long been public enemy number one. And yet, only five years after South Africa’s first democratic election, the country embarked on a purchase of military equipment – the ‘Arms Deal’ – that dwarfed social spending on many fronts, as we will see in distressing detail further on in this book. For many, it was an unforeseen development, fitting uncomfortably into the post-transition honeymoon narrative. Unless you were a part of a small group of analysts focusing on the defence industry, or indeed a participant in the defence forces themselves, it may have seemed to have had little explanation beyond the bizarrely confident assertions of those involved that it would produce an economic miracle.

Analysts have scratched their collective heads since the announcement of the package, and unpacking why and how the Arms Deal took place is still a formidable task. Nevertheless, the following two chapters attempt to draw some conclusions, sifting through the historical record to bring together the strands that finally wove themselves into this web of scandals.

The first chapter starts long before the Arms Deal took place – nearly 20 years – and examines how the forces that coalesced behind the Arms Deal in the early 1990s grew together and in parallel. Both the South African government and the ANC’s government in exile became increasingly militarised, and this process occurred in a manner that gave both the SA Defence Force (SADF) and Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) considerable power to shut down democratic spaces. This facilitated the emergence of a criminal undertow amongst the elites of both forces. The South African government’s creation of a massive defence industry with strong ties to the private sector allowed for both the buttressing of apartheid and considerable personal enrichment, often under the cloak of secrecy afforded by operating in the interests of ‘national security’. Similarly, the ANC’s security structure, with its overweening power of detention and other coercive sanctions, allowed some amongst its elite to tap into and perpetuate criminal networks that served to line the pockets of individuals, rather than the ANC at large. Thus, it will be argued, when the apartheid State fragmented and crumbled, there existed, at an elite level at least, a considerable similarity in organisational culture between the SADF and MK, both of which were comfortable with the idea of large militaries with political clout, run in secrecy and with personal enrichment as an inducement.

It is here, at the meeting of military minds in the early 1990s, that the second chapter commences. In particular, the second chapter explores the interaction of a multitude of forces, each with its own agenda, and how these forces pushed either for an increase or decrease in military expenditure, depending on what side of the militarist-peacenik spectrum they were located. This chapter will explore in depth the manner in which the open and democratic processes of the Defence White Paper and Defence Review were undercut and rendered somewhat irrelevant by more subtle and insidious forces, and how key individuals such as Joe Modise were positioned to benefit commercially from the Arms Deal at the same time as a raft of lobbyists and political figures from Western countries started cosying up to officials, making ‘charitable’ donations and extolling the virtues of large military acquisitions. The endpoint, unfortunately, was the creation of an elite that would push for an Arms Deal regardless of the cost, setting in motion a series of cascading political scandals that would define South African politics for the following decade.

The apartheid military machine

From 1948 onwards, resistance to the State, led most notably by the ANC, was increasingly met with police action. The watershed was the Sharpeville Massacre in March 1960,1 which began a process of hardening the internal environment in South Africa, with a slew of repressive legislation matching an increase in police powers. The Unlawful Organisations Act of 1960, passed only days after Sharpeville, banned both the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and the ANC. By 1967, the police had unrivalled powers. Under the terms of the Terrorism Act of the same year, they were allowed to detain suspects without trial for an indefinite period, with only fortnightly visits by a magistrate or judge permitted.2

The rise of the police (especially the ‘Special Forces’ type) as a weighty political influence in South Africa was assured by the accession of Balthazar Johannes Vorster to the position of Prime Minister of the Republic after Hendrik Verwoerd’s assassination in September 1966. Vorster, previously the Minister of Justice, had overseen the building of the legal machinery of ‘high apartheid’, such as detention without trial, and would continue to construct the police-based edifice of repression for the duration of his leadership of the country. Three years after his appointment, he established the Bureau of State Security (BOSS), headed by the fearsome Col Hendrik van den Bergh.3 Vorster and Van den Bergh formed a team of some ill repute. Their relationship was first forged when they were jointly incarcerated at Koffiefontein during World War II for opposing South Africa’s support of the Allied Forces. Vorster was jailed for articulating his particularly brutal strand of right-wing fundamentalism through his sympathetic statements in support of the Nazis.4

As a State Department, BOSS began to control considerable resources, both material and political. The ascent to power of BOSS and of the Special Branch police officers who often worked in tandem with BOSS’s spymasters was symbolised and cemented with the building of John Vorster Square – at the time, the largest police building ever constructed in Africa. This edifice’s top two floors were kept aside for Special Branch agents, ferried to the top by means of a top-secret elevator in the basement, and acted as the technocratic hub through which resistance to apartheid would be crushed.5

Much as one might expect of an organisation that emerged from the murky world of spooks and spies, BOSS was given a wide mandate under the terms of its enabling legislation. BOSS was empowered to gather and act on all intelligence that threatened the apartheid regime;6 a mandate so large that its operatives were reportedly present in Angola during South Africa’s initial military involvement in the country.7 With its control over intelligence, BOSS could play the dirtiest of political games, sidelining opponents of Vorster if need be; so much so that it soon became a considerable point of irritation for other State operatives, especially those in the security sector, such as the SADF, who envied its resources and power.8 In a time of crisis, therefore, BOSS would have had few friends in the civilian and military bureaucracy willing to step in to save it.

By the beginning of the 1970s it seemed as if the security structures were firmly in control of the country, riding high on the prolonged economic boom that typified 1960s South Africa. Internally, mass arrests had followed Sharpeville, followed by the infamous incarceration of Nelson Mandela, Raymond Mhlaba and Govan Mbeki, amongst other ANC luminaries, on Robben Island. For much of the 1960s and early 1970s, internal resistance to apartheid was seen as firmly controlled, beaten down by the repressive apparatus of the State.9 It was, for many political analysts, a ‘dead’ period for resistance to apartheid, although some recent historians, such as Raymond Suttner, have argued that the period was used to silently reconstruct and rebuild resistance structures that had been blown apart in the initial wave of 1960s’ violence.10 Certainly, the ANC in exile, set up soon after the wave of arrests that hobbled the ANC leadership, was still operational, although limited in the success of its internal operations: for example, Joe Slovo was famously to lament that by 1969 MK ‘had not fired a single shot on South African soil’.11

From the mid-1970s, the apparent calm was exposed as the chimera it was. Student protests in June 1976 in Soweto rapidly spread to virtually every township in South Africa, largely driven by a new generation of young South Africans who had absorbed the values of Black Consciousness. Although the police response was drastic, the protests gained a momentum of their own, lasting deep into the following year, where they halted for only a brief intake of breath. Indeed, such was their explosive nature that their shockwaves spread throughout South African society, and galvanised a pitched battle of resistance to apartheid that was to disrupt the rest of the life of this ill-fated and cruel political system. From 1976 onwards, therefore, no member of the security apparatus could claim control over the internal situation in South Africa.

South Africa’s position in the world, too, was becoming increasingly difficult. In the early days of apartheid, it was surrounded by largely friendly neighbours. Portugal’s rule in Angola and Mozambique largely chimed with the strategic objectives of apartheid, while Rhodesia, later renamed Zimbabwe, was run on much the same principles of racial exclusion and minority democracy. In 1974, however, Portugal’s ‘Carnation Revolution’ swept aside the 40-year-old dictatorship in favour of democratic rule. This marked the beginning of the end for its minority regimes: Portuguese residents fled Africa in their thousands, and a year later, in 1975, Mozambique declared its independence, as did Angola.12

Both countries were to become embroiled in deeply destructive civil wars, in which South Africa’s apartheid regime was to play a key part in destabilising pro-democratic and independence forces. Much of this was based on the real fear that both countries would become bases from which the ANC would operate. Of concern, too, was the prospect that Angola and Mozambique’s civil wars would become proxy conflicts in the broader Cold War (Angola’s MPLA would receive military assistance from Russia and Cuba, while UNITA, led by Jonas Savimbi, would receive much support from South Africa and other western countries).13 Meanwhile, the Lancaster House agreement, signed in 1979, saw Rhodesia officially proclaim independence, and belatedly usher in the rule of Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF during the first non-racial elections in 1985.14 In South West Africa, later renamed Namibia, and which South Africa had run for decades as a virtual ‘fifth province’, resistance to South African rule led by the South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo) had grown increasingly intense, and was underscored by repeated attempts by the United Nations to declare South Africa’s occupation illegal.15

Thus, by 1979, South Africa’s cordon sanitaire of supportive frontline states had largely evaporated, while internal resistance proved remarkably resilient. Intensifying international opprobrium threatened to further isolate the apartheid State (although, as we will discuss below, such isolation could be exaggerated, considering South Africa’s continuing dependence on foreign sources of military matériel for much of the apartheid period). In November 1977, the United Nations, after years of procrastination, took a firm stand and applied a mandatory arms embargo, thus making it illegal for any country to supply arms to South Africa.16 Such was the cost of Black Consciousness leader Stev...