CHIPPY Shaik signed a letter pretending to be the “secretary of defence ” to create a “new” committee that eventually helped to make the final choices in the multi-million rand arms deal.

Former Lieutenant-General Pierre Steyn, who was then the real secretary of defence, yesterday told the Seriti commission he had never given Shaik the mandate to write the letter.

“He also did not have the authority, or my delegated authority, to write such a letter or create the committee,” Steyn said. He said following the letter, Shaik chaired the so-called Sofcom, a committee that helped to decide which strategic weapons South Africa would buy.

Shaik signed the letter with his signature resembling a dollar sign. Steyn said he neglected to use the secretary’s file reference on the top right of the letter, because he used his own file reference as head of procurement.

Steyn said Sofcom was not authorised to take any decisions on purchasing arms, because it was a parallel committee, but it nevertheless did. He said the Sofcom committee also circumvented other committees.

Steyn testified that former defence minister Joe Modise was very keen to get the arms deal approved quickly. Steyn said to get the equipment properly evaluated would have taken 10 months, but Modise said if the evaluations were to take that long, the arms deal would be dead.

“He refused to accept the constant delays with the evaluations and insisted it had to be completed by the end of July 1998.”

Shaik in the same meeting said he would be ready by July with a decision on what to buy.

He then suggested that the evaluations committees had to be excluded to expedite the process. Directly after this meeting, Shaik wrote the letter in which he called himself the secretary of defence and created Sofcom.

Steyn said he is convinced Shaik created Sofcom with the approval of Modise.

Steyn said this cleared the way to circumvent both the approval processes and head of the army General George Meiring and prevented him from doing his job as chief accounting officer for the department.

He said that with the Sofcom committee Shaik created confusion and tension between all the involved parties, which became a major contributing factor in the dysfunction of the procurement process.

With acknowledgement to Erica Gibson and The Witness.

---

CS is the open sesame of the Arms Deal.

Crack him and the whole truth will come tumbling out from source.

The simple truth of the Arms Deal was pre-1999 election :

One for Ye,
One for Me and
One for the ANCeeeeeeee

Modise, Erwin and Shaik made it happen on behalf of Mandela and Mbeki.

What is also pleasing for me is that General Steyn's evidence before the APC is on all fours with much of what I have been bleating about for over a decade, especially regarding there being no necessity of acquiring the Gripen, at least not initiating the replacement of the Cheetah C in 1997, the very same year that 54 of them were taken into service by the SAAF's 2 AFB.

Of course then, Modise said if you have Gripen you have to have Hawk. You need a fast jet trainer and you need a glass cockpit like the Gripen.

That is also cock and pitbull because firstly the Aermacchi MB339 could also have a glass cockpit.

Also one does not  need a fast jet trainer these days to transition from a basic training aircraft to a fast jet fighter. The SAAF had also decided that by 1997.

These days one can use advanced simulators, or one can use the two seater jet fighter such as the Cheetah E.

One could also outsource a short intermediate training phase to another country such as Australia.

And if one is only training say 6 jet pilots a year, why can they not do a jet conversion on a commercial jet.

Indeed, simulators are so good these days, that the SAAF traded two of its 28 Gripens for two Gripen simulators.

I am not even convinced that 24 Impala of the some 250 that Atlas Aircraft built were still not useable a jet trainers for some time to come (or then to come).

Sure, the SAAF had lost a couple of Impalas due to old age, but these were the very earliest ones.

The aircraft leg of the Arms Deal was the biggest and most gratuitously irrational, but the naval leg wasn't far off.

Sure we needed new deep water patrol craft, but did we need the most modern, NATO-class, stealth frigates with CODAG-WARP propulsion and with 70 km range French missiles at R5 billion a pop?

Did we need attack submarines at R5 billion a pop?

Did we need maritime helicopters at R1 billion a pop?

It's simple, not only was this Arms Deal a redistribution exercise, we bought The Wrong Stuff.

[all 2014 Rands]