Attempts by the government to obstruct the Democratic Alliance's (DA) enquiries into the Arms Deal have continued. The DA has received a response from Justice Director-General, Adv. Menzi Simelane, this week stating that the Department will not give the DA access to the German and British Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) agreements with South Africa. The MLAs set out the details of South Africa's cooperation with Britain and Germany in respect of their investigations into allegations of corruption connected with the Arms Deal.

We believe that the German investigation ceased because of a lack of cooperation from South Africa, and we suspect that the British investigation may likewise also be ended due to a singular lack of assistance from the government.

If this is untrue, we challenge the Minister of Justice to refute this allegation by providing the public with substantive evidence that South Africa is cooperating fully with the British authorities.

By accessing the MLAs, we would be able to hold government to account in terms of whether it assisted the German and British investigations. It is essential that our government cooperates fully with the investigations and ensures that any South Africans who benefited unlawfully from the billions of rands spent on the Arms Deal are publicly held to account.

The reason for the refusal that Adv. Simelane gave is as follows:

"Disclosure of the copy of the request as well as other documents which accompanied the said request will in my view, prejudice the good international relationship that the Republic of South Africa has with the United Kingdom....I therefore refuse you access to the requested records..."

Government has repeatedly stated that there were no irregularities in respect of the Arms Deal - yet they continue to obstruct and prevent access to relevant documents. If there are no irregularities, then government should have no reason to prevent those documents from being scrutinised and no reason to believe that the disclosure of any information in these documents would prejudice its reputation.

We challenge government either to release the documents that they have refused access to, or to admit that they are concealing information.

Statement issued by Eddie Trent MP, Democratic Alliance spokesperson on the arms deal, August 24 2008