Jan Taljaard
As high courts go, the new Pretoria Supreme Court has had little time to steep itself in history. No smells of previous life-or-death dramas cling to the machine- tooled benches. The lighting is almost overbearingly efficient and clinical, the texture of the wood panelling, if not exactly cheap, symbolises transient society rather than the ponderous rock of Roman Dutch law.
Comfortably air-conditioned, the defense and prosecution face the bench in a neatly aligned row. Nothing like the imperfectly lit gladiator’s pit of the old Pretoria Supreme Court, where the benches of the defense and prosecution virtually set a scene of high drama by rearing in angled antagonism at the other.
But if the settings have changed, the crimes hardly have. Nor has society’s interest in those transgressing its rules waned. So it was that when three weeks ago Eugene de Kock stepped into a court built with a sense of purpose rather than history, he was still met by a full public gallery.
Ostensibly driven by professional interest, august members of the legal profession flitted in and out of the public gallery during the first two days of proceedings. They had come to listen to the merits of a debate on a largely untested constitutional clause allowing for a defendant to ask for access to information previously hoarded by the prosecution.
In the end victory went to the constitution and the defence, but if the legal fraternity was riveted by a sometimes very complex argument, others were not.
De Kock’s supporters, most of them having served under him at Vlakplaas, loyally turned up on day one. When the first prosecution witness, former police officer Chris Geldenhuys, was called to the stand a low rumble of derision was the only voluble show of solidarity.
But as time went by, most of them were only willing to accord new witnesses a few hours of attention before decamping to a nearby restaurant when proceedings became too tedious to hold their interest.
They are indeed a peculiar lot, these supporters. Not only turning up to show support, many of them are informally preparing for their own court cases to come. Someone like Vlakplaas sergeant Dougie Holtzhausen, a man implicated in almost all of the evidence led so far, is to be found more often than not furiously scribbling down notes as the trial proceeds.
Others have only turned up to look at state witnesses through narrowed eyes before joining former colleagues at the restaurant. There they sit around a bar, managing concerns such as paving businesses from cellular phones and reassuring one another about the quality of the state’s witnesses.
Investigating officer colonel Ivor Human, a veteran of lengthy court cases (Phillips/Grundlingh, Walusz/Derby- Lewis) sits unmoving through it all, his hands folded serenely in his lap. Only occasionally will he turn around to catch brief snatches of people entering or leaving the public gallery.
Even more impassive is the real focus of attention. At the end of the third week Eugene de Kock remains inscrutable. Responding only to acknowledge acquaintances in the public gallery with a slight nod of his head, his fixed expression has hardly divulged anything yet.Only towards the end of the third week, when prosecution witness major Chappies Klopper admitted that he was scared of De Kock, was there the briefest flicker of a smile.– DigiNews