The Information Scandal of the late 1970s provides intriguing and even instructive perspective on what Judge Hilary Squires described as the "generally corrupt relationship" between businessman Schabir Shaik and former deputy president, Jacob Zuma, the more so as the Info scandal set the scene for the demise of the seemingly invulnerable National Party (NP).

Corruption is the common theme of the Info scandal and the spellbinding events of that culminated in President Thabo Mbeki's announcement last week that he was, in his phraseology, releasing Zuma of his responsibilities as deputy president.

The Info scandal is essentially the tale of the secret use of public funds to propagate the cause of NP hegemony, with former prime minister, BJ Vorster; former intelligence chief, Hendrik van den Bergh; and former information minister, Connie Mulder; as the main dramatis personae.

Rewind to the 1970s.

Mulder is elected as Transvaal NP leader. He thus becomes heir apparent to Vorster. Mulder appoints Eschel Rhoodie as the new Secretary of Information. Rhoodie initiates an aggressive clandestine campaign to promote white-ruled South Africa abroad.

Code-named Operation Senekal, the campaign consists of more than 180 projects, one of which involves the surreptitious use of public money to launch a conservative daily newspaper, The Citizen, to indirectly bolster the NP and sanitise its policy of "separate development".

Some six years later, Vorster outwardly still appears to be a kragdadige Afrikaner leader. Inwardly, however, he is indecisive and weary. Death is knocking at his door. Within five years he will be dead.

A succession struggle is in full sway, with Mulder and defence minister PW Botha the leading candidates.

The Info scandal secrets, sexual as well as political, are being uncovered  by investigative journalists from, primarily, the Rand Daily Mail. There is a strong whiff of self-enrichment in the Info department. A disillusioned info official confides : "They are stealing money left, right and centre."

Newspaper investigators are aided by several "deep throats" in the NP establishment who are appalled by the level of corruption. Some of the covert whistle blowers have links, direct or indirect, with military intelligence. Their loathing for Mulder et al is matched by their loyalty to, and fear of, Botha, alias Pangaman.

The disclosures wound Mulder irrevocably. Botha emerges as the winner in the succession battle by 98 votes to 74. He appoints a commission headed by Judge Rudolph Erasmus to investigate the abuse of public money in the info department.

Mulder and Vorster are found to have known and approved of the nefarious schemes. Mulder is forced to resign from the cabinet. Vorster, who serves briefly as the then largely ceremonial president, is compelled to vacate his high office.

Botha, whose generals have stressed containment of black rebellion is 80% political and 20% military, initiates a series of reforms. Instead of appeasing black radicals, these lead to a split in the NP, and the birth of the Conservative Party.

Fast forward to June 2005.

Comparison of the corruption scandal under the African National Congress government that led to the axing of Zuma with the Info scandal under the NP highlights a number of fascinating similarities.

Both took place amidst a succession struggle, precipitated in the case of the Zuma saga by the scheduled expiry of Mbeki's final presidential term in 2009.

Both inflicted heavy blows on the leading candidates.

Beyond that, however, the two scandals are permeated by suspicion that the two men wilfully misled parliament, proved in Mulder's case but in limbo in Zuma's.

While Mulder twice formally denied The Citizen had been financed by public money, Zuma is suspected of misrepresenting supplements to his income from Shaik as interest-bearing loans, as well as being disingenuous about a meeting with Alan Thetard of the French armaments company, Thompson-CSF, where, according to Judge Squires, a bribe of R500 000 a year was solicited.

Another observation is pertinent: Vorster was convinced to his dying day that the final Erasmus Commission report implicating him had been altered, a conviction endorsed by Rhoodie in his book The Final Betrayal.

Photostat copies of the original typewritten Erasmus report are reproduced in The Final Betrayal. Handwritten changes are visible on them and, in an apparent reference to PW Botha, Rhoodie avers in the text that experts have verified the handwriting as that of an "Afrikaans-speaking politician".

The assertion concentrates the mind with a jolt on another strange convergence between the two scandals under review.

Handwritten notes are also visible on the draft copies of the November 2001 Joint Investigating Report into the controversial multi-billion rand arms deal.

One of the notes reads : "The joint investigation team found no evidence of impropriety, fraud or corruption by government". Above it is another note in the same as yet unidentified handwriting : "ADD to overall conclusion".

The armaments transaction is central to the Zuma imbroglio for a compelling reason : his complicity according to Judge Squires in the attempt by Shaik to secure the R500 000 a year protection fee for him from a major beneficiary of the deal, Thompson CSF aka Thales and, later, Thint.

If, as Shaik testified in his trial, the meeting with Thetard took place at Zuma's Durban residence in March 2000, then the Joint Investigation Report finding in November 2001 that the government was untainted by corruption is partially inaccurate and, to that extent, misleading.

The case for re-opening the investigation, better still, initiating a new inquiry into the arms deal, is immeasurably strengthened as a consequence. 

With acknowledgements to Patrick Laurence and The Star.