Former South African president Thabo Mbeki was grilled Thursday over a multi-billion-dollar arms deal tainted by charges of corruption and kickbacks which have dogged the government for a decade. Testifying before a commission of inquiry, Mbeki defended the decision in 1999 to spend $5 billion on arms including military aircraft and submarines despite widespread poverty in a country emerging from apartheid.
The government wanted to reclaim the defence force from the white-minority apartheid regime ousted by former president Nelson Mandela's African National Congress in 1994, he said. People needed to see "we have a new entity consistent with the new South Africa," an apparently tense Mbeki told the commission headed by appeals court judge Willie Seriti.
He said the government followed the law in the deal, in which equipment was purchased from countries including Britain and Sweden, and denied any decisions were made by individual ministers. "Over the years you've seen a lot of comments which seem to attribute particular actions, government actions, to individuals, which is not how our government functions," Mbeki said. "They have to report to cabinet." Current President Jacob Zuma is among senior government officials alleged to have accepted bribes from international arms manufacturers to influence the choice of weaponry.