LETTER: Denel is unfixable and Business Day should know it
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It was glaringly evident 25 years ago during the Cameron commission of inquiry into Armscor that Denel (as the offspring of the apartheid era and Armscor) could never be economically viable.
Armscor was revealed during that investigation to be managerially incompetent and irredeemably corrupt. Instead of immediately disbanding both Armscor and Denel, the ANC poured tens of billions of public money into the grotesque assumption that killing foreigners is a lucrative and profitable business.
Those billions advanced to Denel against government guarantees dismally failed any due diligence studies or the constitutional obligations of sections 216 and 218 of SA’s much lauded but rarely applied constitution. The financial institutions that so readily funded Denel against such government guarantees should now face the financial consequences.
Why should SA taxpayers again suffer the consequences of the greed of rentier banking, and the corruption within the ANC? (Talib Sadik has a sturdy plan but he can’t turn around Denel on his own (, August 18).
In his last defence budget address in parliament in March 1999, the late Joe Modise gushingly declared that SA’s “defence” industry (Denel) would be the prime beneficiary of the arms deal. Well, we know what the arms deal unleashed — and its consequences 20 years later.
Denel should finally be liquidated as a matter of national priority. It’s unfixable.
It is inexplicable that Business Day even questions the stipulations of the National Conventional Arms Control Act that SA will not export armaments to countries that abuse human rights (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey) or to regions in conflict (the Middle East).
Former president Nelson Mandela vowed that never, never, never again would post-apartheid SA be the “skunk of the world”.
Has Business Day’s sense of ethics become so malleable?
Terry Crawford-Browne
World Beyond War SA
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an e-mail with your comments. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Send your letter by e-mail to letters@businesslive.co.za (mailto:letters@businesslive.co.za). Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
Armscor was revealed during that investigation to be managerially incompetent and irredeemably corrupt. Instead of immediately disbanding both Armscor and Denel, the ANC poured tens of billions of public money into the grotesque assumption that killing foreigners is a lucrative and profitable business.
Those billions advanced to Denel against government guarantees dismally failed any due diligence studies or the constitutional obligations of sections 216 and 218 of SA’s much lauded but rarely applied constitution. The financial institutions that so readily funded Denel against such government guarantees should now face the financial consequences.
Why should SA taxpayers again suffer the consequences of the greed of rentier banking, and the corruption within the ANC? (Talib Sadik has a sturdy plan but he can’t turn around Denel on his own (, August 18).
In his last defence budget address in parliament in March 1999, the late Joe Modise gushingly declared that SA’s “defence” industry (Denel) would be the prime beneficiary of the arms deal. Well, we know what the arms deal unleashed — and its consequences 20 years later.
Denel should finally be liquidated as a matter of national priority. It’s unfixable.
It is inexplicable that Business Day even questions the stipulations of the National Conventional Arms Control Act that SA will not export armaments to countries that abuse human rights (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey) or to regions in conflict (the Middle East).
Former president Nelson Mandela vowed that never, never, never again would post-apartheid SA be the “skunk of the world”.
Has Business Day’s sense of ethics become so malleable?
Terry Crawford-Browne
World Beyond War SA
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an e-mail with your comments. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Send your letter by e-mail to letters@businesslive.co.za (mailto:letters@businesslive.co.za). Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
