Yachts bob in the harbour at Simon’s Town, but beyond their masts loom more sinister shapes — the sharp rectangular outlines of South African warships. The harbour, down the coast from Cape Town, is home to the South African navy, and the corvettes anchored at Johannesburg are the pride of the fleet. They are part of the massive $4.8bn the country spent modernising its military when United Nations arms sanctions were lifted at the end of apartheid.

But ever since that arms deal was signed in November 1999 it has been the subject of controversy, with allegations of bribery and corruption. At the centre of those accusations is the man most likely to be South Africa’s next president — Jacob Zuma, who is accused of taking bribes from a French arms company, Thales.

Zuma, the president of South Africa’s governing party, the African National Congress (ANC), has repeatedly denied the allegations and says he will fight the corruption charges “with every sinew in his body”. He is asking the Constitutional Court to question the legality of raids on his home and that of his lawyer.

Zuma was formerly South Africa’s deputy president, before being fired in 2005 when his financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, was found guilty of corruption and jailed for 15 years in connection with the arms deal. Just after Zuma’s election as ANC president in December last year, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) charged him with corruption, fraud, racketeering and money laundering.

But it is thought that even if Zuma did take the money, he was one of the smaller beneficiaries. When the arms deal was signed, Jacob Zuma was a provincial leader and not in government.

Martin Weltz, editor of the investigative magazine Noseweek, does not believe Jacob Zuma was a key player in the scandal. He says Zuma was only included in the illegal payments after the deal was signed, in order to protect the French company from scrutiny by the South African authorities. He says other people allegedly received the bulk of the estimated $200m paid in bribes.

Martin Weltz believes the largest recipient was the ANC, which used the money to finance its 1999 election campaign. “The African National Congress is a party of the poor,” he says. “There is no way that a party like that could fund a modern election requiring media exposure, travelling, etc. The ANC saw the deal as a short term opportunity to fund itself, but the cost to the nation in the long term is phenomenal,” he says.

The ANC denies this and has now decided to conduct its own inquiry into the affair. But Moeletsi Mbeki, President Thabo Mbeki’s brother, is scornful about such an investigation. “It’s a worthless exercise,” he says. “They think they can intimidate the judiciary, but they were freedom fighters too and won’t be intimidated.”

Swedish, British and German investigations are also under way into how the arms contracts were negotiated. “Our agencies have been most unwilling to co-operate with the British and the Germans,” says Judge Willem Heath, who first looked into the deals, “so it’s a black mark against our country one that South Africa will never lose.”

If these investigations are successful, other South African politicians will be implicated. The consequences of the Thales affair could ripple across Africa and the rest of the world — a sign that the Rainbow Nation could yet be smeared with a stain from a murky past.

BBC News Service