South Africa: The Arms deal and HIV/Aids

The Strategic Defence Procurement Package, better known as the arms deal, has angered the South African public. Common sense indicates that in the middle of a health crisis such as HIV/Aids which requires massive public investment, spending large amounts of money on military hardware is gravely inappropriate. Media attention on the arms deal has been primarily focused on Cabinet's lack of accountability to parliament, and the corruption in the procurement process. These are crucial issues that deserve close media scrutiny. Furthermore, without the incentives for graft that exist in the arms industry, it seems unlikely that the deal would have taken place, so an analysis of the arms deal that does not consider corruption would be incomplete. However, it is arguably the misplaced priority given to arms spending that is at the core of public dissatisfaction with the deal. If no evidence of corruption had arisen, and Cabinet had received unequivocal approval from parliament for the deal, it is likely that civil society organisations would still have reacted with indignation.