It is appropriate that arms trade-related corruption should have claimed one of its biggest victims in the shadow of July’s G8 Gleneagles summit. Jacob Zuma, deputy president of South Africa, and tipped by many to be the next president, was sacked in June because of his connection to a businessman who had solicited bribes from a French defence company. The fall of Zuma highlights the “first, do no harm” development approach for rich countries, which was largely absent in Gleneagles. This approach stresses not so much the good things we should do for Africa but the bad things we should stop doing, from money laundering through western banks to dumping subsidised food on African markets. Close to the top of this list sits the western-dominated arms trade, distorting the budgets of poor countries and entrenching corruption. Governments of arms-exporting countries should be asked whether it is acceptable to bribe the leaders of poor countries to buy arms they may not need with money they cannot afford in order to provide employment in rich countries.

Even if exporting countries wanted to control the trade (a big “if”), the inducements offered by producers make the job all but impossible. The long-running saga of South Africa’s $5bn 1999 arms deal, which brought down Zuma, is an exemplary case. It was under attack from the start because of well-founded stories of corruption and its irrelevance to South Africa’s strategic situation. But it took until October last year for the first big case to come to court. In Durban, Schabir Shaikh, a businessman, was found guilty of corruption and fraud, mainly arising from his “generally corrupt” relationship with Jacob Zuma. More specifically, he solicited bribes of 500,000 rand (£43,000) a year from a big French contractor in the deal—Thales (formerly Thomson-CSF)—for Zuma to protect the company from parliamentary investigation. The deal was protected. On 8th June, Shaikh was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Zuma, a popular figure and presidential contender, was sacked a week later. In a parallel case, a South African businessman, Richard Young, is suing the government for 150m rand (£13m) for loss of a sub-contract, part of the 1.3bn rand (£112m) contract for control systems for four new corvettes awarded to Thales, allegedly as a result of corrupt dealing. These two cases are linked not only by the contract, the company, its African subsidiary and Schabir Shaikh, its director, but also by the fact that Schabir’s brother, Chippy Shaikh, was head of procurement in the ministry of defence.

Britain has no reason to be complacent that it was the French who were shamed in court. Young’s tenacious pursuit of information in the courts has turned up leads into the British part of the deal: sales of Hawk trainers by BAE and of Saab Gripen fighters by BAE/Saab. The Hawk was chosen against the wishes of the South African air force, which wanted the Italian Aermacchi (as does the RAF), costing half as much. The Gripen purchase was also questionable because South Africa does not face a threat needing billions to be spent on state of the art weapons. Indeed, the air force did not need new fighters at all, as it had only recently taken delivery of fighters with a life extending to 2012 and beyond—and did not even have enough pilots for them. Thanks to Young’s efforts, evidence was obtained showing how such information had been edited out of the 2001 joint investigating committee report on the deal, widely—and now, it seems, justly—perceived as a whitewash. In April this year, the opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, announced it would be asking the parliament’s watchdog committee, the standing committee on parliamentary accounts, to reopen the matter. The ruling ANC has squashed the committee’s efforts in the past and has the power to do so again.

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