Statement – Minister of Energy: South Africa is tired of secret deals!
Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson. (Sapa)
R2K is outraged to learn that Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson intends to keep a promised Nuclear Deal affordability/ funding model study secret and out of the hands of the public. According to the Minister the study will be ‘classified’ and therefore only made available to Parliament’s Energy Committee. This is completely unacceptable. We demand an end to nuclear secrecy!
We simply cannot have the most crucial aspect of what could be the largest ever government procurement programme hidden from public view, discussion and participation. With our public finances already stretched to the limit and creaking under the weight of seemingly never-ending exposés of corruption and mismanagement, it is more than ever necessary for the public (who are the government’s paymasters) to be fully informed and engaged.
We need to stand up and let the Minister and government know that we will not have the Nuclear Deal forced on us through a secret process!
We need more transparency, not more secrecy!
How can we forget the secret Arms Deal, which saw South Africa spending up to R70 billion that was meant for the poor into the bank accounts of foreign arms companies, under a cloud of corruption. Government’s affordability plans for the Arms Deal were also secret. In fact, the Arms Deal affordability report remained secret for another 15 years, until activists forced government to declassify the report only just last year. Once it was public, the affordability report showed what whistleblowers had argued from the start: that government knew there were serious procedural and financial risks and problems with the Arms Deal but went ahead anyway.
To this day, the public continues to pay for that secrecy, not just financially but also politically. The secrecy with which the entire nuclear deal has been and continues to be approached carries all the hallmarks of the corrupt Arms Deal: the risk of massive corruption-prone foreign tenders that may put us in debt to foreign companies and rob the country of funds for service delivery and job creation.
It would appear as though no lessons have been learnt. What does the Minister and the government have to hide? Considerations of ‘commercial confidentiality’ do not trump our constitutional rights to information and transparent government and public expenditure. The political and economic relationships and interests of the ruling party and/or senior politicians with the same in nuclear vendor countries cannot be allowed to override what is in the interests of the South African public.
If the Minister is genuine when she says that “we are not going to compromise our country in any way”, then the very first step to ensure that this is the case is to release the affordability study into the public domain. A secret process will compromise our country, not an open one!
