ACTIVIST and former banker Terry Crawford-Browne has received much of the credit for forcing President Jacob Zuma ’s hand on the arms deal investigation. He thoroughly deserves the accolades, having bankrupted himself in the process of standing by his principles for years. SA needs more like him.

We are told Zuma will be announcing the terms of reference of a new commission of inquiry into the arms deal in the next few weeks. The scope of those terms of reference and the identity of the commissioners will determine whether Crawford-Browne withdraws his application to the Constitutional Court for a review of Zuma’s decision not to appoint an inquiry, which is still set down for November 17.

I’m not holding my breath, and given all that Crawford-Browne has been through to get this far — including a bid by Minister in the Presidency Trevor Manuel to have him sequestrated — I doubt he’s holding his breath either. Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, and presidents don’t appoint commissions of inquiry that might implicate them or their parties in corrupt activities either.

Still, one lives in hope. Another who lives in hope, but places a lot more faith in the courts, is Paul Hoffman, a Cape Town advocate and contributor to Business Day’s opinion pages. It is not widely known that Crawford- Browne’s victory is at least partly Hoffman’s too. The organisation of which he is a director, Ifaisa — it stands for the Institute for Accountability in Southern Africa and happens to sound like the Xhosa word for “confront” when pronounced phonetically — is representing Crawford-Browne in his Constitutional Court application.

Ifaisa has had an excellent run in the past few months, emerging as a David in civil society’s battle with the Goliath ruling party-state axis. Ifaisa was also behind Johannesburg businessman Hugh Glenister’s successful bid to have the government’s decision to scrap the Scorpions declared unconstitutional early in the year. And it provided counsel to Clifford Hendricks, who was acquitted of drunken driving in the Western Cape High Court last month after Judge Nathan Erasmus ruled that the Drager breathalyser device is not reliable enough to be used without blood tests to back it up. Last week, P ublic P rotector Thuli Madonsela ruled in response to a complaint from Hoffman that former labour director-general Jimmy Manyi’s parallel position as Black Management Forum president was a conflict of interest.

Not bad for an organisation famously described by the Democratic Alliance’s Dene Smuts as “one man and a fax machine” after Hoffman provoked her ire with one of his uncompromising Business Day opinion pieces. The Drager case, as a matter of interest, was taken on not to make it easier for drunk drivers to wriggle off the hook but because the institute wanted to ensure that the Drager stood up to legal scrutiny. The calibration of the device is now being revisited and the traffic authorities hope its eventual reintroduction will have a real effect in the battle to keep drunk drivers off our roads.

Ifaisa has its fingers in any number of other pies, including legal research projects, monitoring SA’s legislative, policy and regulatory processes and promoting awareness of constitutional rights and the tenets of accountability and state responsiveness.

Hoffman is especially passionate about basic education, so it wouldn’t surprise me if this is the arena where Ifaisa’s next big Constitutional Court battle takes place. The institute is hosting an international conference on governance, corruption and fraud in conjunction with Denis Worrall’s Omega Investment Research in Sandton on October 18 and 19, including sessions on the funding of political parties and the parameters of the arms deal probe. From what I hear, the response from the small- business and nongovernmental organisation sectors has been good, but precious few big companies or legal firms have signed up so far.

I sincerely hope this isn’t for fear of incurring the wrath of the government, which is none too impressed with Ifaisa for obvious reasons. But given the number of high-profile companies prepared to sponsor the African National Congress Youth League’s conference promoting nationalisation a while back, it is sadly not out of the question.

• Marrs is Cape editor.