They warned that he would be required to serve two masters at the same time. Although both masters were members of an alliance, these masters did not always take the same position on a particular issue. Nzimande would then be forced either to defy the cabinet in breach of the Constitution when, as its leader, he would be required to put forward the official SACP position, or he would be forced to abide by cabinet decisions and thus would become incapable of diligently performing his function as leader of the SACP.

As I pointed out earlier this week, South Africa has adopted a system of political party government in which strict party discipline is enforced in the legislature and individual and collective cabinet responsibility for the executive is mandated by sections 92 and 96 of the Constitution. 

This means that ordinary MPs may debate an issue vigorously within the ANC until the caucus has made a decision on it, after which they were obliged to toe the party line or face the consequences (the most severe of which would be to be redeployed out of a job, as happened with Andrew Feinstein when he refused to follow instructions from the ANC - and especially Essop Pahad a.k.a Essops Fables – to stop his vigorous pursuit of arms deal corruption as a member of SCOPA). 

If ANC MP’s in Parliament also happened to be SACP leaders or COSATU leaders they would find themselves in a difficult position as they would be required to vote in favour of measures which their parties did not support. Other MP’s would also face such difficulties – as was the case with the adoption of the Termination of Pregnancy Act and the Civil Union Act.

Similarly, a cabinet minister could forcefully argue his or her position inside and outside cabinet until the cabinet had taken a position on that issue, after which the cabinet minister had to abide by that decision or had to resign. What the cabinet minister cannot do is stay in the cabinet but criticise a decision of that cabinet in his or her capacity as leader of Cosatu or the SACP because this would undermine cohesive government and collective cabinet responsibility.

It also undertmines the authority of the President, who is the  leader of the cabinet. In some jurisdictions the Prime Minister or the President fires Ministers who show too much dissent – often when the President or the Prime Minister is insecure and paranoid about his or her future or has a vindictive streak beyond that which politicians are known for.

This suggests that those in the SACP who expresssed disquiet with Nzimande’s duel role might have had a point: being the leader of the SACP or COSATU is probably incompatible with membership of the Cabinet or the National Assembly. Blade Nzimande sees things differently, of course. If all cabinet Ministers followed his example the cabinet would become even more dysfunctional and cabinet government would run the risk of breaking down completely, in which case service delivery would suffer a further blow. Policy would be made and amended on the trot (something former cabinet Minister Kader Asmal warned against earlier this year) and the system of individual and collective accountability of cabinet ministers provided for in the Constitution would break down.

Are there ways to deal with this and to save Minister Nzimande from having to choose which master he is serving? Could he hold on to his R1.1 million BMW and the perks associated with being a Minister (including occasional two week stays at the Mount Nelson Hotel) while also holding on to his job as general secretary of the SACP?

Murray and Stacey, in their Chapter in Constitutional Law of South Africa, suggest a few options. One would be for a Minister to use the “unattributable leak”. A Minister could leak his opposition to a specific cabinet decision to the media on condition that he or she not be named. Cabinet Ministers in the United Kingdom are masters of this ploy. It allows one to have one’s views known to those sections of the public whose support one wishes to retain (always a good thing when one has to stand for a leadership position), without officially breaking the rules of collective cabinet responsibility. Given the fact that such unattributable leaks are one of the reasons advanced by Nzimande and others for the establishment of a Media Appeals Tribunal, Minister Nzimande might not find this option appealing.

Another option would be to release carefully crafted statements that hint at dissent without actually defying the President and cabinet colleagues. Those who support Nzimande’s statement on behalf of the SACP about the strike argue that this is exactly what he did. I am far from convinced that they are correct, but judge for yourself. According to its spokesperson, Themba Maseko, cabinet had agreed as follows on the strike:

Cabinet is disappointed with the public sector unions’ rejection of the state’s offer of a 7% annual increase and the R700.00 a month housing allowance for public servants. The offer is already way above the inflation rate of 4.5 %. The state’s final offer represented a move from the original offer of 5.2 % and a R500.00 a month housing allowance. This is a clear demonstration that Government was negotiating in good faith in an attempt to meet the demands of our employees.  While Government fully understands and appreciates the plight of all the public servants regarding low wages, it has to be mindful of its responsibilities to all South Africans as the final offer already places a huge burden on the fiscus. We had to make a choice between increasing the salary bill to unaffordable levels by meeting the union demands and cutting other urgently needed services.It’s a choice between improving the wages of state employees and continuing to address the service delivery needs of poor communities and the unemployed.

Nzimande’s statement on behalf of the SACP reads partly as follows:

The CC calls on government and the unions to ensure that there is a very speedy resolution to the strike. It is about to enter its third week now and the longer it is prolonged the more everyone suffers and the danger of unbridgeable positions becoming entrenched increases. The SACP once more reiterates its conviction that the demands of the public service workers are legitimate and we support them in their struggle for just remuneration. In particular, we note that the wage gap in the public sector between the highest paid echelons and the lowest is 91 to 1. Although the gap in the private sector is even wider, we cannot deny that the public sector wage gap is shameful, and every effort must be made to progressively close this unacceptable gap. In this regard, the CC calls on government to set an example by ensuring that there is a collective moratorium on salary increases in the upper echelons of government.

I guess if one parses words one could argue that the two underlined sections are not in direct opposition to one another, but it would take some nifty verbal gymnastics and would stretch the meaning of words a bit further than any ordinary person would be able to do – at least while keeping a straight face. Can one at the same time be disappointed with the actions of strikers who rejected an offer of government and decided to strike and support their strike? I guess its a matter of interpretation (as is almost everything else in life) but my head feels like bursting just trying to reconcile those two statements.

And what about the poor ordinary MP’s who are far more vulnerable as they are not in leadership positions and have not been directly elected so can lose their seats in parliament at the whim of the leadership? What must they do when their party takes a position with which they vehemently disagrees, but which they cannot defy by voting against it for fear of losing their seats in Parliament?

One option would be to take a leaf out of the book of Schabir Shaik and to develop a serious illness on the day that a vote is to take place. But this will not signal to one’s constituents that one really did not like what the party did. Another would be to leak news of one’s opposition to a specific decision to the media on condition that one’s name is not mentioned and then to vote for the bloody measure (or against it – if that is what one’s party had decreed) in any case. Political party leaders and whips hate this kind of thing, but it does happen all the time. Andrew Feinstein did it in protest against President Thabo Mbeki’s speech to the caucus in which he argued that HIV and Aids was part of a CIA plot. It builds some flexibility into the system while retaining a semblance of discipline.

Where a political party leader is at the top of his or her game and wields power confidently or, in some cases, ruthlessly, there is less of this kind of ill discipline. With the exception of Pregs Govender and Andrew Feinstein, for example, few ANC MP’s ever dared to go against the party line once Thabo Mbeki had spoken and had indicated what the official line was going to be (sometime after vigorous “debate”). Of course, because of this in the end the seething resentment against King Thabo built up to such a degree that he was thrown out of office at Polokwane.

The fact that Ministers are leaking stuff left right and centre, that Blade Nzimande issues statements that seem to contradict the official cabinet position and that ordinary ANC MP’s are gossiping and leaking to the media like over-excited school boys and girls, suggests that President Jacob Zuma does not nearly have the same stranglehold on his Parliamentary party as Thabo Mbeki did.

But ironically, it might save Zuma’s bacon – at least for now – because all the factions in the party feel that they have a chance to have their side of the story heard and even to have their view prevail because the King is so weak and not nearly as ruthless – at least not on the surface – as that other guy whats-is-name who used to strike terror into the hearts of MPs and cabinet ministers to such a degree that they were all too scared even to admit to journalists that they believed that HIV was a virus that caused Aids.

It turned out that this was a bare-faced lie. The American public forgave Clinton, perhaps because he lied about a personal matter and not – like Richard Nixon before him – about serious matters of state. Or perhaps the public forgave Clinton because the US economy was booming. Despite this, Clinton’s historical legacy will always remain tainted by the telling of this blatant lie – communicated with so much conviction that even his wife (who should have known better) claimed to have believed him.

Will South Africans, similarly, forgive former President Thabo Mbeki and even if they did, will his historical legacy always be tainted by evidence of, and allegations about, his mendacity? The sad fact is, the more we learn about Mbeki’s role in the Jackie Selebi case, the more we are confronted with unpalatable evidence that former President Mbeki was not a person with a strong and abiding commitment to the truth.

Selebi has now been convicted and sentenced for corruption. However, it is unclear whether the full truth about the events surrounding the Selebi case - including the events that led to the suspension of former National Director of Public Prosecutions, Vusi Pikoli after he issued an arrest warrant for Selebi – has been told.

On 9 November 2006, then President Mbeki wrote a letter to Pieter Groenewald, an MP in the National Assembly. Groenewald had written a letter on 7 November 2006, requesting President Mbeki to appoint a Judicial Commission of Inquiry to investigate various allegations of corruption leveled against Selebi. In the letter, Mbeki declined to appoint such a commission and wrote:

Up to now nobody within the state structures has informed me that there are any investigations affecting National Commissioner Selebi that are being conducted by anybody, including the DSO, (the Scorpions). I am certain that if there was such an investigation, or such an investigation was contemplated, I would have been informed accordingly. In this regard. I must emphasise that if any of our law enforcement or intelligence agencies felt that they had information that justified such an investigation, I would encourage them to do their work without let or hindrance, in keeping with their legal mandate….

I have the greatest confidence in National Commissioner Selebi. I am certain that whatever the rumour mill is saying about him, he will continue to do his critically important work with the same diligence, dedication and selflessness he has shown ever since we appointed him as National Commissioner of the SAPS.

The conviction and sentencing of Jackie Selebi demonstrates that the confidence expresssed in Selebi in the second paragraph of the letter quoted above turned out to be misplaced. It has now also emerged that the claim made in the first paragraph of Mbeki’s letter is difficult (if not impossible) to square with the known facts. In paragraph 257 and 258 of the Ginwala Inquiry Report, Ginwala made the following findings:

It is not disputed that Adv Pikoli met with the Minister and briefed her on the investigation into the National Commissioner of Police on 13 separate occasions: In March 2006, in August 2006, on 9 November 2006, on 16 November 2006, on 11 March 2007, on 13 March 2007, on 17 March 2007, on 28 March 2007, on 8 May 2007, on 25 June 2007, on 11 September 2007, on 18 September 2007 and on 23 September 2007. Following these meetings he furnished the Minister with two written reports on 19 March 2007 and 19 September 2007.

It is also common cause that Adv Pikoli met and briefed the President on the investigation against the National Commissioner of Police on 10 occasions: In March 2006, in August 2006, on 9 or 10 November 2006, on 14 November 2006, on 20 November 2006, on 11 March 2007, on 9 May 2007, on 20 May 2007, on 15 September 2007 and on 16 September 2007. The evidence is that he gave the President written reports on 7 May 2007 and 16 September 2007.

President Mbeki was therefore briefed about the investigation against Selebi on at least two occasions before he wrote the letter to Groenewald in which he claimed that no one “in state structures” had informed him about any investigation (or pending investigation) against Selebi. In fact, Mbeki met Pikoli for a third time to discuss the investigation against Selebi on the very same day that he wrote the letter to Groenewald. As this was a letter and not a national televised speech, one will never know if Mbeki’s bottom lip quivered while he was writing this letter.

This casts new doubt on the veracity of a letter purportedly written by Mbeki to the then Justice Minister Brigitte Mabandla on 17 September 2007 – 6 days before Pikoli’s suspension – about the Pikoli case. Mbeki’s office first refused to release the letter to the Ginwala Inquiry - claiming that it was privileged – but later relented and released the letter to Ginwala. The letter did not contain the smoking gun that Pikoli and his lawyers had expected. In part it reads (see paragraph 264 of Ginwala Report):

In view of the constitutional responsibilities of the president with regard to the Office of the National Commissioner of the police service, I deem it appropriate that you obtain the necessary information from the national director of public prosecution regarding the intended arrest and prosecution of the national commissioner. This would enable me to make such informed decisions as may be necessary with regard to the national commissioner.

I have always wondered about the authenticity of this letter. In the context of the known events,  the contents of this letter seem, to say the least, surprising. Pikoli had met Mbeki on 15 and 16 September 2007 to brief him on the Selebi matter and on his intention to arrest Selebi. Ginwala confirmed that at the first meeting on 15 September Pikoli informed Mbeki about the warrants obtained for the arrest of Selebi.

At this meeting on 15 September Pikoli was asked to prepare a report for the President on the impending arrest of Selebi, which Pikoli did. He handed the report to the President on 16 September and again discussed the matter of Selebi’s case with the President. Yet a day later Mbeki wrote a letter to the Minister of Justice asking her to obtain the necessary information from Pikoli about the intended arrest of Selebi – information which Ginwala found Pikoli had already provided to Mbeki the previous day.

What other information – not provided by Pikoli – did Mbeki need? The letter is rather vague and does not specify the nature of the information required by Mbeki. If Mbeki needed specific information not provided to him by Pikoli at the two meetings on the 15 and 16 September and in Pikoli’s report, why did Mbeki not stipulate in his letter to the Minister exactly what information he wanted to obtain?

Mbeki had been briefed 10 times about the investigation against Selebi. He had two meetings in two days with Pikoli about the arrest and also received a report from Pikoli about the arrest. Yet the day after these two meetings he wrote a letter in which he asked the Minister to obtain more information from Pikoli about the arrest without saying anything about the nature of the information required.

The Ginwala Inquiry Report may cast further light on the matter. After receiving the letter written by Mbeki on 17 September 2007, Menzi Simelane wrote a letter to Pikoli the next day (18 September 2007), which was signed by Minister Mabandla and sent to Pikoli. Ginwala comments as follows on this letter sent by the Minister to Pikoli (see paragraph 159 of the Report):

The letter prepared by the DG: Justice did not conform to the request from the President [in his letter] to the Minister dated 17 September 2007. I point out elsewhere in the report that the literal reading of the letter conveys a meaning that Adv Pikoli was to stop any plan to arrest and prosecute the National Commissioner of Police until the Minister was satisfied that there was sufficient information and evidence to do so. . .The DG: Justice should have been acutely aware of the constitutional protection afforded to the NPA to conduct its work without fear, favour or prejudice. The contents of the letter were tantamount to executive interference with the prosecutorial independence of the NPA, which is recognised as a serious offence in the Act.

If I was an investigative journalist or a prosecutor, I would probe the necessity for the writing of this letter by Mbeki to Mabandla. Was it perhaps an after the fact fabrication to cover up a different letter written by Mbeki to Mabandla? I would wonder whether the “real” letter actually instructed Mabandla to issue an instruction to Pikoli to stop the arrest of Selebi (which would have been unlawful).

Remember, after receiving the letter from Mbeki, Simelane and Mabandla sent the letter to Pikoli which contained the instruction not to proceed with the arrest of Selebi. Why would the normally soporific and lethargic Minister suddenly ask her DG to write a letter containing an instruction which Ginwala found was probably unlawful, when all the President asked her to do was to get more information from Pikoli?

Why would Mabandla tell Pikoli on 23 September (when she asked him to resign and he refused and Mbeki then suspended him that same day): ”Vusi, it’s about integrity and one day I will speak” (see paragraph 281 of the Report)?

It does not make much sense to me. Could it be that poor Menzi Simelane drafted the letter (later signed by Mabandla) which ordered Pikoli not to arrest Selebi, because that is what the President had ordered them to do in a letter that was never produced at the Ginwala Inquiry and was replaced by a letter fabricated by the Presidency after the fact?

Of course, I have no idea whether this is what happened. I am not claiming that the letter provided to the Ginwala Inquiry was fabricated and have no hard evidence to suggest that it was. I am, however, posing questions about the events, which – in the light of all known facts – do not seem to add up.

In the light of the evidence that Mbeki was less than truthful about his knowledge about the investigation against Selebi, questions about what actually happened in those fateful few days will remain. Only Mabandla, Simelane or someone else in the Presidency could answer these questions and lay to rest the suspicions of duplicity at the highest level of government.

As the Marx Brothers might have put it, ‘this man may look like a corrupt idiot and act like a corrupt idiot, but don’t let that deceive you – he is a corrupt idiot.’ – Slavoj Žižek

On 30 May 2003 then President Thabo Mbeki published one of his politically and analytically most brilliant internet letters. The missive, which became one of his most famous, attempted to challenge the widespread perception that had taken hold (and remains to this day) that the government arms deal had been riddled with corruption.

The letter laid bare some of the deeply problematic ideological assumptions underlying the discourse on corruption in post apartheid South Africa. It then used this insight – which was not only spot on, but also tapped into a widespread resentment amongst members of the newly emerging post-apartheid elite – to defend what seemed to be indefensible.

(This was a tactic often used by Mbeki in his letters: correctly expose and analyze widespread racist or Afro-pessimistic assumptions, then use the insight to deny the existence of obvious problems or to discredit the valid criticism of progressive voices in our society. He used the same tactic against the so-called “ultra left” in Cosatu and the SACP and against those who pointed out the folly of his HIV stance.)

In the letter Mbeki wrote (and I am quoting at length):

In the Biblical Gospel according to St Matthew, it is said that Jesus Christ saw Simon Peter and his brother Andrew fishing in the Sea of Galilee. And He said to them: “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Perhaps taking a cue from this, some in our country have appointed themselves as “fishers of corrupt men”. Our governance system is the sea in which they have chosen to exercise their craft. From everything they say, it is clear that they know it as a matter of fact that they are bound to return from their fishing expeditions with huge catches of corrupt men (and women)….

[W]e should not, and will not abandon the offensive to defeat the insulting campaigns further to entrench a stereotype that has, for centuries, sought to portray Africans as a people that is corrupt, given to telling lies, prone to theft and self-enrichment by immoral means, a people that is otherwise contemptible in the eyes of the “civilised”. We must expect that, as usual, our opponents will accuse us of “playing the race card”, to stop us confronting the challenge of racism.

The fishers of corrupt men are determined to prove everything in the anti-African stereotype. They rely on their capacity to produce long shadows and innumerable allegations around the effort of our government to supply the South African National Defence Force with the means to discharge its constitutional and continental obligations. They are confident that these long shadows and allegations without number will engulf and suffocate the forces that fought for and lead our process of democratisation, reconstruction and development. However, what our country needs is substance and not shadows, facts instead of allegations, and the eradication of racism. The struggle continues.

Re-reading this letter, it seems almost inevitable that Mbeki would have attempted at first to protect  former Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi. It also explains (better than anything anyone else may have written) why he refused to believe the evidence of Selebi’s corruption provided to him by the Prosecuting Authority and even continued to claim that nobody had provided him with any information that Selebi did anything wrong – even after Vusi Pikolu had briefed him on ten different occasions on the evidence against Selebi.

For Mbeki, his (often perceptive and accurate) ideological insights often trumped the proven facts. His tragedy (if you are sympathetic to the former President) or his evil genius (if you are not) was that these general ideological insights were often brilliant and perceptive, but blinded him to the specific facts and the valid criticism of individuals and about particular problems facing the government and the country and its people.

Which brings me to the set of questions I want to try and address in this post: why did an obviously brilliant, courageous and seemingly deeply principled struggle hero like Jackie Selebi became corrupt? Why are we confronted almost every day by news of crooked cops, Home Affairs officials and tenderpreneurs? Why does it sometime feel as if we are being engulfed in a tidal wave (or is it a Tsunami) of sleaze and corruption in South Africa?

The easy answer would be to blame everything on the racist stereotypes that Mbeki rightly warned against and to deny the very facts before our eyes. But this approach would not help us to understand the root causes of the problem and neither would it help to eradicate them. Although the Afro-pessimistic master narrative which Mbeki warned us against may well have helped to exaggerate the perception of corruption in our society, it cannot explain away the problem, which is very real and very dangerous for the long term well-being of our country.

For the same reason we should reject with contempt the racist and offensive claim that there is something in the DNA of the ANC and the government it leads that predisposes it and its members to corruption.

I would like to suggest that the problem can at least partly be attributed to the nature of our transition to democracy. South Africa did not experience a true revolution, but a managed transition. The state remained in tact and the private sector was largely left untouched. During the transition period the crony capitalists and the opportunists, who had exploited the conditions created by apartheid to make vast amounts of money, went to work to capture the new elite in order to protect their own financial interests.

Thus some of the big mining houses and other big business institutions who had resolutely supported apartheid, jumped ship and went to work to woo the members of the incoming government in order to protect their profits and their vested interests. They donated money to the ANC, forged close personal ties with some ANC leaders by wining and dining them and by providing them with all kinds of material “assistance”. They claimed they were doing this out of altruism or out of a deep sense of shock about the horrors of apartheid which – so they laughably claimed – they had only belatedly become aware of.

In essence, what large sections of the big business community did, was to offer legal bribes to the ANC as a movement as well as to individual ANC members to ensure that their own financial interests would be secured. They would offer fantastic riches to a few lucky well-connected individuals through BEE deals and directorships with the understanding that there would not be any fundamental transformation of the economic system in South Africa. Workers would still work and die for a pittance, while bosses would be allowed to continue to draw huge salaries and bonuses and subvent profits to London and New York.

Was it then not all too human and understandable that some (but not all) members of the new elite – who had not benefited from these legalized bribes – began to feel hard done by and tried to do something about it? Thus the mutually beneficial relationship between crony capitalism and some members of the new elite became firmly enrenched. In the feeding frenzy that followed, the lines between the legalized bribes paid by the apartheid capitalists and the criminal bribes paid by people like Schabir Shaik and Glen Agliotti became somewhat blurred.

And as more and more people seem to get fabulously rich (perhaps not as rich as those who exploited the apartheid system) and the culture of accumulation and consumption firmly took hold, it was perhaps inevitable that somebody like poor Jackie Selebi would begin to think that there was not really anything wrong with a gangster buying your very own child a nice pair of shoes. Ironically, it is exactly against this new kind of colonization that Mbeki himself warned in his Nelson Mandela Lecture when he said:

Thus, everyday, and during every hour of our time beyond sleep, the demons embedded in our society, that stalk us at every minute, seem always to beckon each one of us towards a realizable dream and nightmare. With every passing second, they advise, with rhythmic and hypnotic regularity – get rich! get rich! get rich! And thus has it come about that many of us accept that our common natural instinct to escape from poverty is but the other side of the same coin on whose reverse side are written the words – at all costs, get rich!

Is it too late to turn around this ship? Well, extraordinary political and moral leadership is required to address the capturing of our hearts and minds by the crony capitalists. We have the perfect Constitution and the perfect laws to fight the good fight and to stop the rot, but without the political leadership there will be no success. That is why the fight raging currently inside the ANC between the tenderpreneurs and those who believe in the creation of a more fair and just society is pivotal for the long-term well-being of our society.

Sadly, because he is himself compromised and implicated in the culture of greed through his association with the fraudster Schabir Shaik, President Jacob Zuma is probably not the best leader to lead the fight. Time for a change in ANC leadership perhaps?

Writing to then leader of the opposition, Tony Leon, Mbeki said the following in 2000:

In your letter to me of June 19, you make the extraordinary statement that AZT boosts the immune system. Not even the manufacturer of this drug makes this profoundly unscientific claim. The reality is the precise opposite of what you say, this being that AZT is immuno-suppressive. Contrary to the claims you make in promotion of AZT, all responsible medical authorities repeatedly issue serious warnings about the toxicity of antiretroviral drugs, which include AZT.

On 28 October 1999, Mbeki told the members of the National Council of Provinces:

Two matters in this regard [the demand to make AZT available in the public health service] have been brought to our attention. One of these is that there are legal cases pending in this country, the United Kingdom and the United States against AZT on the basis that this drug is harmful to health. [This claim was untrue.] There also exists a large volume of scientific literature alleging that, among other things, the toxicity of this drug is such that it is in fact a danger to health. These are matters of great concern to the Government as it would be irresponsible for us not to heed the dire warnings which medical researchers have been making. I have therefore asked the Minister of Health, as a matter of urgency, to go into all these matters so that, to the extent that is possible, we ourselves, including our country’s medical authorities, are certain of where the truth lies.

And of course the later Minister of Health also had rather dangerous and bizarre views on the matter. Dr Tshabalala-Msimang, launching an anti-TB campaign on 15 March 2003 said the following:

In my heart I believe it is not right to hand them [AZT and other ARV drugs] out to my people.

The late Peter Mokaba, who died tragically under the influence of this denialism told The Star the following on 4 April 2002:

We have seen colonization, we have seen imperialism, we have seen apartheid … and all of them used against us as a people. [Africans have] won their liberation and now they are fighting another war and they are being psychologically terrorised once more because people want to sell [ARV drugs] and make profits. And there is no benefit in those products. The only thing that can really happen is that once you touch the antiretrovirals you can go one way.

This is the story behind the advert.

° What Would Mbeki say.

On 22 October 2007 Vusi Pikoli’s lawyers wrote a letter to Adv Menzi Simelani, then Director General in the Department of Justice. The letter stated, inter alia:

May we please have copies of all communications and other documents relating the investigation and prosecution of Mr Selebi  which you or your Department may have sent to or received from the president or anyone in the Presidency at any time since 15 September….

This request seems pretty clear. Any half-way honest person would have understood what it meant. It must be conceded that a careless or overworked person might not have provided all the documents as requested because of an oversight or negligence.

A dishonest person, on the other hand, would have deliberately chosen not to provide all the documents as requested or would have followed instructions from his boss to be dishonest and to lie. Unless something far more sinister is at work here, Adv Simelane’s failure to produce this letter – a failure curiously not addressed by Radebe at all – suggests that he is a man who will deliberately try to mislead legal opponents by hiding information lawfully requested by them in order to protect the President.

During cross examination Simelane first conceded that the letter allegedly written by thenPresident Mbeki falls squarely within the ambit of documents requested. Yet Simelane wrote back after the request mentioned above was received and stated as follows:

We are not in posession of any documents relating to the investigation of the National Commissioner of Police, save for reports prepared by your client [Pikoli].

When first asked by Trengove why the letter was not produced Simelane said:

Well, I wasn’t informed about the letter, I became aware of the letter much later.

But later Simelane conceded that he was aware of the letter, which means his first statement was not truthful. Although he had not read it, Simelane claimed, he knew the President had sent a letter to the Minister. It was this very letter which led to the writing of another letter by Simelane which was later signed by the Minister (ordering Pikoli to stop the arrest of Selebi).  Yet he did not provide Pikoli’s lawyers with the letter as requested. Worse, he stated that there was no such documents in their possession.

When confronted about this, Simelane again changed his story and said that he did not think the letter by the President, requesting more information on the Selebi matter, related in any way to the investigation against Mr Selebi. This is unfortunately not a line of argument that could reasonably be pursued without losing every shred of credibility one might have had as a witness.

Trengove then pounces:

Trengove: You said: we have no such documents in our possession. And I want to know who decided to tell that lie. You or the Minister?

Later Simelane contradicts himself yet again and tells another wopper when he says:

No, we didn’t, we didn’t deny that the letter was there.

This is of course not correct. Simelane had written to Pikoli’s lawyers denying that there were any documents relating to the Selebi investigation in the posession of the Department. Yet the President’s letter – which he admitted he was aware of – dealt directly with the Selebi investigation. With Adv Trengove we should ask: Did Simelane decided to lie of his own accord or was he instructed to lie by the Minister, the President or any legal advisor of the President?

What makes this so curious is that the letter allegedly written by then President Mbeki to the Minister of Justice one day before the Minister of Justice signed a letter drafted by Simelane instructing Pikoli not to proceed with the arrest of Selebi does not contain the smoking gun evidence Pikoli had hoped for. The content of the Ministers letter, which contained the unlawful instruction to Pikoli not to proceed with the arrest of Selebi, seems to go much further than the request contained in Mbeki’s letter, which merely asked for more information on the Selebi case (information, we now know, which the President had already been given by Pikoli).

A conspiracy theory is doing the rounds that Simelane had not produced the letter because it contained an illegal instruction from then President Mbeki to have the arrest of Selebi stopped. According to this theory, another letter was conjured up after the fact when it became clear that it would have had to be produced to the Ginwala inquiry.

I am not sure I buy this. Surely Mbeki and his advisers would not have deliberately concocted fake evidence to escape responsibility for their unlawful actions? A more plausible explanation is that Simelane decided to lie about the existence of the letter because it showed that the suspension of Pikoli was directly related to the pending arrest of Selebi. At the time, President Mbeki had denied that the suspension of Pikoli had anything to do with the impending arrest of Selebi and this letter provided proof that Mbeki’s claim could not be sustained.

To protect the person who had appointed him, Simelane then misled Pikoli and the Inquiry by not producing the letter written by the President – despite being requested to do so and despite having a legal duty to do so.

Minister Radebe failed to explain why this action by Simelane does not warrant disciplinary action against Simelane. This is because there is no plausible explanation for this failure to produce evidence which Simelane had a legal duty to hand over.

This sorry tale provides more proof that Simelane is a man who is so loyal to his political bosses that he would try to hide the existence of evidence that would make his boss look bad. No wonder he was purportedly appointed by President Jacob Zuma as National Director of Public Prosecutions. With such a guy heading the NPA, President Zuma clearly has nothing to worry about on the legal front – even if the decision to drop charges against him is declared invalid.

We may observe a moment of silence for the hundreds of thousands of people who have already died of AIDS related illnesses in South Africa. Many of them died needlessly because of the greed of pharmaceutical companies, the criminal neglect of some of our public health system officials and the madness that was then President Thabo Mbeki’s flirtation with AIDS denialism. With some notable exceptions, one must also decry the lack of leadership from many politicians across political party lines who through their actions, utterances or silence have contributed to the stigma and shame that still attach to HIV and prevent many South Africans from getting tested and treated for this manageable disease.

Ten years ago then President Thabo Mbeki first suggested that AIDS drugs could pose “a danger to health” in a speech to Parliament, setting the stage for the denialism and obfuscation to follow. This year, for the first time in ten years, World Aids day is not the depressing event filled with anger and frustration at all the wasted lives that we have become accustomed to over the previous ten years. Last month President Jacob Zuma made a ringing speech in which he rejected the absurdities of the Mbeki era and stated:

South Africans must know that they are at risk and must take informed decisions to reduce their vulnerability to infection or, if infected, to slow the advance of the disease. Most importantly, all South Africans need to know their H.I.V. status, and be informed of the treatment options available to them.

What we tend to forget is that we would not be where we are today if it was not for the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and for the Constitutional Court. The TAC took on Mbeki and his government at the height of Mbeki’s power. It played a brilliant and strategically astute role in challenging the government’s confusing, intellectually arrogant and destructive, and often heartless policies and actions on HIV.

Making use of a combination of political mobilisation and legal action, the TAC won a famous victory in the Constitutional Court. This forced the then Minister of Health to swallow her words – uttered live on the TV news – that she would refuse to obey a Constitutional Court order to provide ARV’s to HIV pregnant mothers to save their new born babies from HIV infection.

The Constitutional Court, arguably going further than it had in the Grootboom case, found that the government had acted unreasonably by restricting the provision of ARV’s to HIV pregnant mothers to a few pilot sites. The Court rejected all the arguments presented on behalf of the Minister (the same arguments which President Mbeki also peddled) regarding the efficacy and dangers of ARV’s and found that the government action was so unreasonable that it was acting unconstitutionally by preventing poor women from accessing life saving ARV’s  for their babies.

Shortly after this judgment was handed down I attended a workshop with members of the Department of Health to discuss the possibility of providing wider access to ARV’s to South Africans living with HIV. Two things struck me at that meeting: all the officials were terrified of Tshabalala-Msimang and all the officials were terrified that their HIV policies will be successfully challenged in the Constitutional Court.

Shortly afterwards the government announced that it would progressively roll our ARV’s to all who needed it. Without the TAC and without the potent judgment of the Constitutional Court, this would not have happened and many more people may have died needlessly. Some lawyers dismiss the social and economic rights (including the right of access to health care) enshrined in the Bill of Rights on the basis that the do not mean much and has little effect. But they forget that these rights have an effect not only in courts but also more broadly.

The TAC understood from the start that the right of access to health care in the Bill of Rights provided them with a tool through which it could mobilise civil society and the ANC alliance partners against Mbeki and his allies. They understood that social and economic rights battles should be waged strategically, both inside courtrooms and on the streets.

Much still has to be done to fix the HIV/AIDS mess. Many poor people and people in our prisons still die because they have no access to ARV’s. Some government officials still peddle the utterly counter productive ABC message of prevention instead of focusing on condom use and the difficulties experienced in our patriarchal culture by many vulnerable women in trying to protect themselves from infection. But at least something is being done.

Meanwhile, I can only hope that former President Thabo Mbeki (for once) takes advice from Zwelenzima Vavi and apologises for the way in which his government dealt with HIV. Who knows, an apology might even enhance his reputation, which must surely be at rock bottom in South Africa at the moment.

This settlement to a large extent vindicates Pikoli and others who have maintained that he was fired on spurious grounds. Pikoli was obviously suspended by then President Thabo Mbeki because he failed to follow the unlawful instructions from then Minister of Justice Brigitte Mbandla, who took a few minutes out ohe her busy tea drinking schedule, to order him not to go ahead with the arrest of Jackie Selebi.

Mbeki and Mbandla – as became clear at the Ginwala Inquiry – had a strange view of the constitutional requirement that the NDPP must act without fear, favour or prejudice and wrongly thought that the government had the power to order the NDPP to conduct specific investigations and arrests in a particular manner – something forbidden by the Constitution and not authorised by the NPA Act.

Then President Motlanthe fired Pikoli because – as Pikoli made clear during his testimony in the Selebi trial – he was not willing to be party to the unlawful dropping of charges against Jacob Zuma. Unlike Mokothedi Mpshe, who was somehow ”persuaded” to drop charges against Zuma despite believing that the state has a winnable case against our President, Pikoli had shown during the Selebi standoff with Mbeki that he is a man of principle. 

We will now have to see if Mpshe will be “rewarded” for dropping the charges against the President by being appointed as the permanent head of the NPA or whether President Zuma will appoint one of his other friends to that position. If I was President Zuma I would think twice about appointing Mpshe because he stuffed up the dropping of the charges by plagarising an overturned Hong Kong decision and providing “reasons” for his decision that were so laughable and absent any legal reasoning that even Pinocchio would have been embarrassed to have been associated with the decision.

On the other hand, the case challenging this seemingly unlawful decision by Mpshe is still going ahead, so President Zuma has a vested interest in keeping Mpshe on board and happy and not to upset the man who has done him this very big favour. If Mpshe is not appointed and he throws his toys out of the cot and reveals what happened during the dropping of the charges, it might just reflects very badly on our President, Hulley and others who was party to this obvious political deal, which had very little to do with the law.

But Mpshe does not seem like a strong-willed man who would ever make any waves, so it might well be that President Zuma will decide not appoint Mpshe but will rather appoint a trusted ally to the position of the NDPP.  After all, he will have to be on the safe side in case the challenge to the dropping of charges is successful. Zuma would then need a trusted friend as head of the NDPP to ensure that the charges are made to go away once again.

There is one thing we all know and that that Zuma cannot afford to go to court because there is a wealth of evidence amassed against him and if he has to stand trial it will ruin his reputation. There is also a strong likelihood that he will be convicted and it would be rather awakward to have a President convicted of fraud and corruption.  (Even those who claim that there was some kind of a conspiracy against Zuma knows deep down that our President took money from a crook, did favours for that crook and then lied about it – that is why they have to shout so loudly about the conspiracy in order to take our minds off the elephant in the room.)

Of course we are all feeling a bit awkward to talk about this simple but rather inconvenient fact as Jacob Zuma is now our President and many of us sort of like him (even if he seems indecisive and weak and not the sharpest tool in the shed – compared to Mbeki, at least). It’s a bit like dealing with that alcoholic aunt or that brother in jail: we remember them fondly at family events, but we studiously avoid mentioning THAT.

After all, we feel somehow implicated because it is our family and we are justifying their destructive or illegal behaviour by our support. So better not talk about it in case we have to confront our own complicity in the family scandal.

Thus he would write a brilliant analysis of the ways in which a kind of Afro-pessimism and racism influenced the discourse in South Africa on crime and corruption, and how such discourses reflected the fears and prejudices of “some among us”, before abusing this insight to make completely laughable claims to defend himself and his government from the valid criticism leveled against it.

He would point out, correctly in my view, that fears about crime was entwined with some people’s fears about a black run government and that perceptions about crime could not be divorced from perceptions about the so called criminality of black men. When many white people spoke about crime this was a way for them to express their racism and fears about black people in a more “acceptable” manner. But then he would go on a tangent and claim that crime was not really a problem at all in our country and that complaints about crime itself was just a matter of perception not linked to any “objective reality”: who would ever be robbed walking to the SABC studios he once mocked, just a few days before a journalist from CNN and his wife were robbed at gunpoint outside the SABC studios in Auckland Park!

He would point out, once again correctly in my view, that negative, deeply embedded, but often unspoken assumptions about Africa and how Africans are “naturally” corrupt clouded the vision of “some among us” about the prevalence of corruption in South Africa. But then he would rail against the “fishers of corrupt men” in the media and deny that there was a corruption problem in South Africa at all. After all, the “objective reality” according to Thabo Mbeki was that there was no arms deal corruption, that municipal officials (all disciplined cadres of the ANC) almost never stole public funds, that officials of the Department of Home Affairs were almost all imbued with the spirit of Batho Pele.

He also pointed out, correctly in my view, that Pharmaceutical companies are often unethical and exploitative and care more about profits than about the health of people in poor nations. But then he would madly veer off into cloud kookoo land and question the link between HIV and AIDS (”A virus cannot cause a syndrome”, “HIV is a CIA plot”) to try and justify the decisions of the government not to provide HIV positive mothers with the medicine required to save their babies from HIV (in other words, a decision to let those babies die).

Now our former President is back to his old ways. In an interview with the Sunday Independent he rails against the Nicholson judgment and points out (correctly in my view) that Nicholson did not base his judgment on proven facts according to appropriate the rules of evidence:

Mbeki explained his understanding of the meaning of Nicholson’s judgment. He felt that Nicholson “really sought to impugn our integrity”, and presented Mbeki and his cabinet as “dishonest people” who “for whatever reason want to intervene in ways that are illegal and unconstitutional”.

He said he, like his cabinet colleagues, took the oath of office seriously and the oath was, for him, not just a formality. “For somebody to pop up from somewhere with absolutely no basis … to come to a conclusion that these are bad people, dishonest people, acted in violation of their oath, this and that and the other; that was bad,” he said.

Well, although Nicholson clearly got it wrong by basing his decision on very flimsy evidence, this does not demonstrate that Mbeki and members of his cabinet did not act dishonestly. We all know that Mbeki and his Minister of Justice had a rather peculiar idea about the independence of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and that they tried to interfere with his work in order to stop the arrest of Jackie Selebi, that an unlawful order was given by his Minister to Vusi Pikoli not to arrest Selebi, that Pikoli was suspended because he refused to be intimidated by the President.

We all know that the Minister in the Presidency (old Essops Fables) shamelessly intimidated members of Parliament to try and stop them from launching a proper investigation into the arms deal because we have read Andrew Feinstein’s first hand account of this intimidation. (If there was nothing to hide, why go to such extraordinary lengths to hide that nothing?) We all know that former President Mandela was humiliated and ridiculed by Mbeki cabinet members because he dared to speak up about Mbeki’s HIV and AIDS folly. We all know that there was arms deal corruption (some of it even leading to prosecution). We all know that Shaik and Zuma were investigated while others in the ANC and in government, who were not threatening Mbeki’s political position (like Zuma was), and who clearly had much to explain, were left alone.

Some will say: well we do not know this at all because it was never proven in a court of law. Bring the evidence! Until you have satisfied US that we are indeed crooks, we are not crooks! Prove it! Well, a court has never found that the apartheid state supported hit squads and at the time the government denied involvement in such hits squads and also demanded from those who pointed to all the available evidence to “bring the evidence” while at the same time doing everything in its power to discredit those with inside information and personal experience of such nefarious activities. Sometimes the truth does not wait for a court of law.

Often a body of evidence – both circumstantial evidence and hard evidence – emerges over time. Even where someone is not prosecuted, any reasonably well-informed person will be justified to make conclusions based on that evidence. For example, no one was ever prosecuted in the United States for fabricating evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and for deceiving the public about the reasons for going into Iraq. But there is such a wealth of evidence supporting the fact of fabrication that only a few die-hard George Bush supporters will now claim that Bush and his cronies were not thoroughly rotten and dishonest about the reasons for going to war with Iraq (and much else besides).

The same is the case surrounding the arms deal, corruption and political interference in decisions to investigate and prosecute (or NOT to investigate and prosecute) some well-connected ANC types for arms deal and other forms of corruption. It might not form part of the “objective reality” in which President Thabo Mbeki lives, but it does not mean that it is not so.

Following the announcement that Radebe-Khumalo and the entire executive committee has been axed, jubilant crowds gathered outside the city hall. Sakhile residents sang, blew vuvuzelas and popped champagne bottles in celebration. “Bye bye, Juliette Radebe-Khumalo. We have told you it has always been coming,” they sang. Residents had called for Radebe-Khumalo’s head months ago, saying a municipal finance report showed R30-million in municipal funds that could not be accounted for.

The one person who might feel aggrieved is Radebe-Khumalo. How could she have known that the disappearance of a paltry R30-million would prompt the ANC to act against her? It is not as if this is a common occurrence. If she had followed the ten year saga around the arms deal scandal – also fresh in the news (again!) – she might have been forgiven for thinking that the alleged theft of R30 million would not raise an eyebrow.

It seems to me the kind of unhappiness expressed by the Sakhile residents and by residents elsewhere in South Africa about poor service delivery resulting from nepotism and corruption can at least partly be blamed on the arms deal and the cover up of the corruption associated with the arms deal. Few have been left untainted by the arms deal scandal – including the NPA, former President Thabo Mbeki, current President Jacob Zuma, Trevor Manuel, Jeff Radebe, and Mosieu Lekota.  

The arms deal and the way allegations about corruption in the arms deal was dealt with (or not dealt with), established the template later followed by many ANC politicians who thought that if Manuel, Modise, Lekota and Mbeki would not be held accountable, they also would escape any censure for nepotism and corruption. We are, after all, all innocent until proven guilty. There are many good people in the ANC, but only a few of them spoke up when it became clear that the arms deal was riddled with corruption. Many others actively supported the cover up. The question should be asked why they did not follow their conscience but remained sthum.

Back in 2001 then President Mbeki set the ball rolling when he announced that a formal legal opinion by the Attorney-General of the Western Cape, Adv Frank Kahn SC and the SIU’s own senior legal advisor, Adv Jan Lubbe SC, confirmed that no prima facie evidence of unlawful  conducted existed concerning the Arms Deal. The truth was exactly the opposite as the two gentlemen had stated in their report to Mbeki:

[T]here are sufficient grounds in terms of the Special Investigating Units and Special Tribunals Act No 74 of 1996, for a special investigating unit to conduct an investigation, and, in our opinion, such an investigation is warranted.

And yesterday the DA released a damning report in which it provides further convincing evidence that the joint investigation arms deal report was doctored. Comparing a draft report with the final report, researchers demonstrate that:

• Crucial ‘Overall Conclusions’ reached by the Auditor-General are entirely omitted from the final version of the Report. Notable in this instance is the conclusion that “there were significant flaws in the selection of BAe/SAAB as the preferred bidder for the LIFT & ALFA programme”. This is omitted from the final Report. Following this page, the editor inserts a further note – that certain ‘additions’ need to be made to the overall conclusion. This includes the conclusion that “the joint investigation team found no evidence of impropriety, fraud or corruption by Cabinet [or] Government” and that “government co-operated with the investigation teams and assisted them with their endeavours”.
• Similar sizeable alterations on the Auditor-General’s findings regarding the ALFA/LIFT contracts are made later on page 57. Here, a passage reads “[t]here is an indication that the former Minister of Defence [Joe Modise] could have influenced the decisions of role players in the process”. Examples are then provided of where this is believed to have happened. This finding is entirely excluded from the final Report. Even the title of this section is earmarked for overhaul. The Auditor-General titles the section “Decisions of the Minister of Defence that could have influenced the process”, which is replaced by “The visionary approach of the former Minister of Defence”:
• Another crucial section that does not make it: the Auditor-General’s conclusion that “[d]uring the investigation is became apparent that … preference was given to BAe/SAAB”:
• A section that concludes that apparently preferential treatment given to some ALFA bidders was “not in accordance with good procurement practice” is scrapped. The editor notes that “No evidence of any preference awarded to any of the bidders during these visits were (sic) obtained”. This, of course, is not the point that the Auditor-General’s report was attempting to make. Further down, another passage concluding “fundamental non-compliance with good procurement practices” is also removed. Once more, the editor notes “No evidence” – though again this is not his/her call to make. On the page following this one, another section concluding further “noncompliance with good procurement practice” is also removed.
• All of the key conclusions drawn by the Auditor-General in one section of the report are removed. The A-G concludes that “deviations from the approval process occurred” and “good procurement practices were lacking”. These failings included “apparent attempts at exertion of influence towards certain subcontractors” and “amendment of the overall formula to determine the preferred bidder”. These crucial findings are not only omitted from the conclusions section of the chapter in the final Report dealing with submarine contracts, but in their place precisely the opposite conclusions are substituted.
• Throughout the section on submarine contracts, various other changes are made. For instance, the Auditor-General notes that because no minutes of a particular workshop were maintained, there is no evidence that the final NIP value system scores were agreed to by all members present – and that there was the possibility that some individuals may have influenced scores awarded. This is removed, and
  does not appear in the final Report.
• A section detailing problems experienced dealing with government officials is marked for deletion. The single sentence that appears earmarked to survive the cut is altered such that it reads “[the two attorneys] co-operated with investigating teams and assisted them ably”. Further down, another section on difficulties experienced with state attorneys is cut.
• At the end of the document the editor of the document makes notes on a copy of the Public Protector Draft Document (Part A of the JIR) under the headings “Trevor Manuel” and “President”. It appears s/he is instructed by Manuel to emphasise the fact that government cooperated with the enquiry (point 8), and that government was not reckless (point 4). The president’s concerns appear to include “country emerging” (point 1); and “Defend integrity of inv. (investigating) agencies” (point 2). This could be problematic if what was implied was that government needed to be protected. A further section headed “Lekota” follows. This is almost certainly, then, ‘feedback’ received from Mbeki, Manuel and Lekota at a meeting in October 2001.

If one reads this report, it is very difficult not to conclude that the final arms deal report was a complete white-wash and that it was fundamentally changed after interference by Mbeki, Manuel and Lekota. Maybe now that many of those involved in the white-wash are out in the political cold winds and the new Zuma administration is trying to show that it is different from the Mbeki lot, the ANC will finally lance this boil and will come clean about the obvious corruption linked to the arms deal and the blatant cover up of that corruption.

If they do that many of us ordinary citizens will see the sacking of mayor Radebe-Khumalo as only the start of a wonderful new beginning. We will praise the ANC for returning to the values it held so dearly before taking power and before some of its members were corrupted by the old business elites – to the detriment of the poor and downtrodden in whose name it fought the struggle.

We do not know yet whether former Police Commissioner, Jackie Selebi, is guilty of corruption and defeating the ends of justice as alleged by the State. The State alleges that Selebi made R1.2-million from corrupt relationships with druglord Glen Agliotti, slain mining magnate Brett Kebble and former Hyundai boss Billy Rautenbach. We also do not know whether the claims by Selebi that both Bulelani Ngcuka and Vusi Pikoli pursued the case against him because they themselves are corrupt is true. That is for a court to decide.

However, the claim by Selebi that he was being prosecuted after discovering that Pikoli and his predecessor, Bulelani Ngcuka, had improper business dealings with dodgy businessmen, does (at least at first glance) seem curious from a legal perspective. Selebi made these allegations not in an attempt to have the case against him thrown out. In the light of the SCA judgment in the Zuma case that a prosecution does not become unlawful “merely” because charges were brought for an ulterior purpose – as long as the State brought the charges in order to secure a criminal conviction – this is a wise move.

But why is Selebi making these claims as part of his defence? Is he making a legal argument or is he rather playing a political game in order to garner sympathy by attacking two men who are rather unpopular with the crowd currently in charge of the country? It is difficult to say. 

In order to secure a conviction in the corruption case against Selebi, the State will have to convince the court beyond reasonable doubt that Selebi received the more than R1.2 million from the dodgy “businessmen”. It will then have to prove that Selebi did corrupt favours for these men and that there was a link between the payments and the favours, thus establishing Selebi’s intention to be part of the corruption.

In order to try and secure a conviction the state will call a very long list of witnesses. (See here and here.) The list does not include the name of Buleleni Ngcuka, but does include the name of Vusi Pikoli. One imagines that in order to stave off conviction Selebi will have to discredit a fair number of the witnesses that will come to testify about the R1.2 million allegedly received by Selebi and about the favours allegedly done by Selebi in return.

If the State has strong evidence – including documentary evidence – of the money allegedly received from the various criminals and underworld figures, then the case will probably turn on whether these payments could be linked to favours done by Selebi. The crux of such evidence may well have to be provided by witnesses who have concluded plea bargains with either Ngcuka or Pikoli.

I have no inside knowledge of the strategy employed by the defense, but from the available evidence it seems plausible that Selebi is attacking the credibility of Ngcuka and Pikoli not so much in an attempt merely to discredit them, but rather to try and undermine the credibility of the evidence provided by key witnesses who had concluded plea bargains with the state, including Glen Agliotti and Billy Rautenbach who will have first hand evidence of any favours  done by Selebi – if indeed favours were done.

The Selebi defense is therefore perhaps more astute than it seems. If the plea bargains can be attacked and the credibility of the witnesses who entered into such plea bargains can be destroyed, then Selebi might have a much better chance of being acquitted.

(As an aside, I am rather disappointed by Selebi for employing Advocate Jaap Cilliers SC to defend him. This shows a shocking disregard for the need to transform the legal system. How can talented black lawyers gain the necessary experience required to be elevated to the bench if criminal defendents like Selebi fail to employ them and choose instead to make use of the services of pale males. Is Selebi perhaps a victim of internalised racism and does he perhaps wrongly assume that a senior white man would provide him with a better defense than any of the many talented but less experienced black counterparts?  I am sure Advocates for Transformation and the Black Lawyers Association will shortly issue angry statements condemning Selebi for his racism. Besides, was Kemp J kemp to0 busy to take the case? Oops, for a moment there I forgot that President Jacob Zuma’s lawyer was also white.)

In any case, time will tell whether this strategy will work. Personally I am so confused by all the allegations and counter allegations in this case, that I have no clue which way it will go and whether either Selebi or the NPA will emerge vindicated or whether Selebi will manage to make his allegations stick.

On the one hand that great legal expert, Thabo Mbeki, claimed that he had not seen any credible evidence of any wrongdoing by Selebi and therefore could not suspend him – even after being fully briefed by Pikoli about the evidence against Selebi gathered by the State. On the other, a panel of eminent legal experts (admittedly perhaps not as well qualified as Mbeki in matters of criminality) who was asked to looked at the evidence by Mokotedhi Mpshe, concluded that there was a prima facie case against Selebi and that he should be prosecuted.  

Move over 7de Laan and Generations. The Selebi show is coming to town.