JOHANNESBURG, 19 January (IRIN) - Anti-arms campaigners in South Africa have renewed calls for a "speedy investigation" into a controversial multibillion-dollar defence package that has already claimed a deputy president.

The deals date back to 1999, and a contract worth over US$4 billion involving the British arms manufacturer BAE is the latest to come under scrutiny. The company was in the news this week after senior BAE executives were named as suspects in a government corruption probe in the United Kingdom.

Jacob Zuma, then South Africa's deputy president, was dismissed in 2005 after an investigation into the defence package fingered him. Two senior figures in the ruling African National Congress (ANC) have been convicted of corruption and jailed.

The UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has asked its South African counterpart, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), to help it track down more than $139 million in "commissions", allegedly paid by BAE to eight South African businesses and a political adviser since 1992. The NPA has also been probing the deal and confirmed that a request had been received, "which was being processed".

"It is a tragedy that so much time and energy has gone into this deal when we have real problems like housing shortages, illiteracy and high unemployment. Instead, we had people lining their nests," said Terry Crawford-Browne of the South African chapter of Economists Allied for Arms Reduction, a New York-based research and policy organisation.

He has campaigned against the arms deal since its inception, and had written to the British government calling for a probe into the transactions.

An estimated 34 percent of South Africa's 47.4 million people live on less than US$2 a day, and 5.2 million are HIV positive. Economists put unemployment at around 40 percent. The government has spent almost $4 billion on providing housing to the poor since 1994, but has been unable to keep up with the growing number of people caught in the poverty trap; it now has a backlog of 2.4 million houses.

Crawford-Browne said the South African government had "aggressively promoted the sale of armaments, and actively colluded in the economic irrationality and absurdity that offsets would make the transactions not only 'affordable', but would stimulate economic development and create more than 60,000 jobs - none of which have really materialised". Offsets are generally measures included in arms procurement deals to encourage local development.

The British arms sales included BAE Hawk aeroplanes for training pilots and BAE/Saab Gripen fighter aircraft, but the overall procurement also listed submarines, frigates and helicopters. The total purchase reportedly saw an offset deal of more $15 billion secured.

In October 2006, Business Report, a section of the South Africa-based Independent Group of newspapers, quoted BAE and Saab as saying that South Africa's acquisition of Hawk and Gripen aircraft to modernise its air force had resulted in 100 new investments in manufacturing, skills development and technology transfer projects across its aerospace, defence and various civil industries.

The companies also said they had invested more than $120 million in six existing South African projects, and created about 800 jobs.

South Africa's Department of Trade and Industry has consistently defended the offset deals linked to its foreign arms suppliers, reporting that several thousand jobs had been created with the billions of dollars worth of industrial investments.

According to Crawford-Browne, the European armaments industry has a long history of corruption, and "the South Africans probably got a very tiny portion of the kickback". He said cancellation of the arms deal would encourage civil society in European countries to investigate the role of their governments in the international proliferation of armaments, and the consequential threats to world peace.

Hennie van Vuuren, a researcher with the Institute for Security Studies, a South African think-tank, commented that since Zuma's dismissal South Africa had emerged with a better reputation than many European countries, who "very often sweep corruption allegations involving its senior politicians under the carpet".

However, he said the authorities needed to complete the probe with urgency, for the sake of public confidence, "otherwise, with the continuous soap opera, people develop the impression that corruption is endemic to the country".

The arms deal probe has got itself entangled in a succession battle in the ANC. Zuma's supporters regard him a possible candidate to succeed President Mbeki, who completes his second term of office in 2009, and label his dismissal over the defence deal allegations as a smear campaign.

Critics of the deal also point out that South Africa did not need the high-tech Hawks or the Gripen fighters, when its foreign policy role is geared more to peacekeeping in Africa.

"Not only is there doubt about whether or not the equipment was actually necessary ... this money could have gone towards improving the lives of the poor. Instead, it now lining the pockets of the rich and unscrupulous," said Laura Pollecutt, Executive Member of Ceasefire Campaign, a Johannesburg-based anti-arms lobby group.

The UK's Guardian newspaper, which has written in detail about the BAE scandal, has speculated about the involvement of British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the South African deal, as well as similar deals in Tanzania, Kenya, India and Czechoslovakia.

According to the British Broadcasting Corporation, last month Blair ordered the SFO to end its investigation of BAE payments to Saudi Arabia in the controversial more than $78 billion Al-Yamamah deal, saying that it was not in Britain's national interest.

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