Calls+for+Hani,+Mbeki+probes+test+NPA,+Brown+and+Mde,+Weekender

Business Day Weekender, Johannesburg, 2006/07/15 12:00:00 AM
=Calls for Hani, Mbeki probes test NPA mettle=

Authority’s refusal is unlikely to make the headache go away, write **KARIMA BROWN and VUKANI MDE**

THE National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) this week came under fire from opposition political parties over its refusal to reopen two potentially explosive investigations — the killing of communist leader Chris Hani and SA’s scandal-ridden arms deal.

Despite standing official findings suggesting that there was nothing further to be probed in either instance, pressure has been growing steadily for both investigations to be reopened.

The two cases could arguably open a Pandora’s box for the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and sitting government leaders, and, in the case of the Hani killing, even unravel the intricate compromises that led to the 1994 founding democratic elections.

Last Tuesday the NPA said no “substantial new evidence” had come to light that would justify a new inquest into Hani’s murder.

The next day the South African Communist Party (SACP) greeted the NPA’s decision with “utter consternation”, saying the investigation into Hani’s 1993 murder was never complete.

“We disagree with the NPA when it emphasises the fact that there is no new information that warrants a reinvestigation. It is not so much a question of new information, but old information we believe was never adequately followed up,” said the SACP.

Polish immigrant Janus Walusz and former Conservative Party MP Clive Derby-Lewis were convicted and are currently serving life terms for Hani’s murder.

The SACP said the pair’s unsuccessful amnesty application left reason to believe the story of the Hani murder had not been told in full. The truth commission’s amnesty committee rejected a 1996 amnesty bid by Hani’s killers, saying that the men had failed to make full disclosure as required under the terms of amnesty.

While the NPA has since announced plans to prosecute apartheid operatives and some liberation fighters who were refused amnesty for political crimes, it has inexplicably refused to investigate allegations of a wider right-wing conspiracy in the Hani murder.

Many of Hani’s supporters believe the conspiracy to kill him reached into the highest echelons of the apartheid security apparatus. Walusz and Derby-Lewis could not have acted alone, they argue. Adding to these suspicions at the time of the trial was the acquittal of Derby-Lewis’s wife Gaye, accused by prosecutors of being a co-conspirator and possibly the mastermind of the killing.

However, the gathering storm around SA’s corruption bugbear, the multibillion-rand arms deal, may prove an even bigger headache for the NPA.

In a week in which the German press helped shift the spotlight back to the controversial corvette contracts and the involvement of senior South African politicians — seriously undermining repeated government claims that the primary arms contracts were clean — the NPA had to extricate itself from a public relations nightmare over its apparent inability to investigate the highest office in the land. For the NPA, an end to the entire arms deal fiasco probably cannot come soon enough.

The authority was one of three investigative agencies that cleared government and all senior government officials of any wrongdoing in 2001. Controversially, President Thabo Mbeki refused to involve the Special Investigative Unit — then known as the “Heath unit” — in the state-led probe.

However, the NPA is currently prosecuting former deputy president Jacob Zuma in relation to the arms deal — which makes nonsense of the 2001 finding by the NPA, the auditor-general and public protector.

The NPA has been at pains this week to clarify that it has not “cleared” Mbeki of wrongdoing in the arms deal, despite a report in the Sunday Times that they did. No investigation of Mbeki had ever been undertaken or warranted, the NPA said.

But Mbeki’s failure to recall, let alone account for, a 1998 meeting with French arms company Thales — which, on the face of it, raises conflict of interest issues — places the NPA in an invidious position. Thales built weapon guidance systems for the German-built corvettes. A probe of Mbeki’s role in the arms deal might well become unavoidable.

The upcoming Zuma corruption trial will only worsen the NPA’s political headache. It seems possible, and even likely, Zuma will call sitting cabinet members, including Mbeki, to testify about the wheeling and dealing that went into putting together SA’s first real scandal of the post-1994 era. Any reluctance to investigate Mbeki could well compromise the state’s case against Zuma.

The NPA has never operated in a political vacuum, but if the Zuma trial really does shift the arms deal focus to Mbeki, then the true test of its independence is yet to come.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/Articles/TarkArticle.aspx?ID=2142386**

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