The South African parliamentary public accounts committee, on which the ruling ANC has a majority, has called for a high-level investigation into a controversial multi-million-rand arms deal.
The investigation has the potential to embarrass the ANC-led government by exposing its cost calculations as seriously inept and by confirming suspicions that several ANC leading figures are the beneficiaries of shady deals.
In its report on the arms deal the committee has urged the government to initiate a simultaneous but co-ordinated investigation by five agencies, including the Heath Commission of Inquiry (set up by the former president, Mr Nelson Mandela, to counter corruption in post-apartheid South Africa), the Auditor General's Office and the Office for Serious Economic Offences.
The report stands in contrast to the defensive reaction of ANC cabinet ministers and parliamentarians when the deal was challenged a year ago by Ms Patricia de Lille, of the opposition Pan Africanist Congress, who, citing unidentified informants, charged that a clique of ANC notables stood to benefit unlawfully, and massively, from the deal.
The public accounts committee report now before parliament carries the imprimatur of approval from its ANC majority, some of whom played a critical role in questioning members of the Defence Department involved in the procurement of arms.
Allegations submitted to the parliamentary committee include charges that a company with familial and ideological links to the chairman of the arms procurement committee is one of the beneficiaries of the deal.
The chairman of the arms committee is Mr Shamin "Chippy" Shaik, one of four brothers with close connections to the ANC. The director of the company in the deal, African Defence Systems (ADS), is his brother, Shabir. His wife is a senior marketing executive with ADS.
A major shareholder in ADS is the French arms company, Thomson-CSF, one of the European companies chosen to supply arms.
The suspect "Shaik connection" aside, alleged ANC beneficiaries according to documents submitted to the parliamentary committees include the ANC parliamentary chief whip, Mr Tony Yegeni (purportedly the recipient of a "success fee" from a British firm), shop stewards in the National Union of Mineworkers (accused of accepting a "sweetener" from the same firm) and the former defence minister, Mr Joe Modise (reputed to have been paid 10 million rand by a German armaments company).
The suspected web of corruption spreads, according to a document placed before the parliamentary committee by Economists Allied for Arms Reduction, from the military complex to the C-Cell, the Saudi Arabia financed consortium. CCell has been awarded the licence to run South Africa's third mobile telephone network in the booming telecoms sector of the economy.
While the accusations before the committee have yet to be tested, they are no longer rejected outright. As Mr Andrew Feinstein, the most conspicuous and articulate of the ANC members on the committee, told The Irish Times: "It could turn out to be a matter of a few procedural errors or it could turn out to be a major scandal".
The committee has another major concern: government calculations on the costs of the deal. Estimated at 29.9 billion rand (£3.65 billion) last year, the cost has now risen to 43.8 billion rand, excluding interest payments.