IT‘S official. South Africa will get a new presidential jet whether South Africans approve of it or not.“We are not prepared to negotiate with the lives of our principals.“This aircraft will be obtained and it will be obtained within the next 18 months. The negotiations for this are under way.“South Africans need to realise once and for all that the principal (President Jacob Zuma) is not the aircraft and that the aircraft [presidential jet] is not the principal.”A defiant Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula — speaking before the opening of the African Aerospace and Defence show in Pretoria yesterday — criticised the controversy about the purchase of a new VIP presidential aircraft.The cost of the new aircraft, said Kevin Wakefield, CEO of Armscor — the military‘s acquisition arm — has been budgeted at roughly R300-million. Until the aircraft — likely to be one of SAA‘s A340 Airbus‘ “parked off” aircraft from its cancelled Johannesburg-Beijing route — is bought and retrofitted...
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