Eye on the Money

About the book

"The clerk of the court called all rise as judge Blignaut swept in dressed in his black gown. He sat down, and moments later we rose again as he swept out, having pronounced the verdict. 'The clerk handed [my lawyer] a copy of the judgment. I received my own copy by e-mail that afternoon. [My lawyer] commented that it was being awarded against me in an issue brought in the public interest.' The issue was the South African arms deal scandal. The costs were almost a million rand. The plaintiff was Terry Crawford-Browne. As the scandal around the arms deal gathered force during the late 1990s, Crawford-Browne launched a campaign against an armaments acquisition programme that has locked South Africa into twenty years of debt repayment. With no discernible foreign enemy, he asked,...