A SANDF soldier confronts a woman not wearing a face mask in Hillbrow, Picture: Michele Spatari / AFP
A Treasury memorandum in June 1998 confirmed that SA’s financial circumstances were such that the country simply could not afford the arms deal. The lure of purported offset benefits was therefore concocted to deceive parliament and the citizenry. About 360,000 South Africans died prematurely of HIV-related causes before the Constitutional Court finally intervened. Predictably, neither the “benefits” nor the jobs materialised, and unemployment soared.
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