“The Freedom Front Plus welcomes the decision of President Jacob Zuma to release the Donen report. The FF Plus has continually, since November 2006, when Adv. Michael Donen handed his report on his investigation into the Iraq oil-for-food scandal to the former president, Thabo Mbeki, requested the ANC government to release the report. It is high time that South Africa finds out what advantage the ANC had gained from this scandal,” Adv. Anton Alberts, the FF Plus’ parliamentary spokesperson on Minerals said.

“In October 2008, the FF Plus wrote a letter to Mr. Kgalema Motlanthe, who had succeeded Mbeki as President, in which it requested him to release the Donen report. The party indicated in the letter that Mbeki had for 21 months refused to release the report or reveal the findings contained in the report. Mr. Motlanthe could, due to the fact that he had inherited the report as President, release the report. That would have given him the opportunity to clear the air about his own involvement in the oil-for-food contracts which the ANC had concluded with Iraq. Motlanthe had however, just like his predecessor refused to make the report public,” Alberts added.

“The fact that President Zuma is at this specific time prepared to release the Donen report, nearly 30 months (two-and-a-half-years) after he took up his office as President, begs the question whether he will be releasing the report because he would possibly gain politically from it. It is a well-known fact that political opponents in the ANC of President Zuma, who may have leadership aspirations, could be negatively implicated by the report given their involvement in the negotiations and the setting up of the oil-for-food contracts. The question can therefore justifiably be asked whether the Donen report, just like the commission of inquiry into the arms deal, has become part of the internal struggle in the ANC in the run-up to the ANC Mangaung conference in 2012,” was the opinion of Adv. Alberts.