Many thought that the Arms Commission would turn into a fiasco, but those who gave it the benefit of the doubt must surely be regretting it now.  There is no doubt that no findings it makes have a chance of being credible, and one is just astounded at the goings on and the resignations of all the advocates and attorneys who were working there as evidence leaders and say they were side-lined and not permitted to use certain reports. For example, one report, which is apparently particularly damning, showed that a German arms dealer paid R300 million to various senior politicians to secure the sale of submarines to South Africa and that report was not allowed by Judge Seriti to be utilised.  

When one of the main complainants, Dr Richard Young, met with the Commission he did not get to meet with the main evidence leaders, being the ones who have just resigned and in fact met with a more junior staff member.  He supplied that staff member a disc with 1 061 documents on it being a lot of the evidence that he wanted considered.  Two advocates who have just resigned from the Commission revealed that they were never told of this disc and nor were they given a copy of it.  Richard Young has now revealed that he subsequently realised that the disc he supplied to them had a technical glitch and in the circumstances the Commission would not have been able to have seen any of the documents on the disc.  The funny part of this of course is that nobody got back to him and said that there is a problem or said anything at all – meaning that they never ever tried to see what documents were contained on the disc, or that they did, and could not care that it did not work.  Either of those options are as damning as the other and with most of the senior staff having resigned, evidence being ignored, reports being prohibited from being discussed and evidence leaders being told that they cannot re-examine certain people, the stage is set for a complete whitewash.