Claire Robertson
Jacques Pauw once wrote of Ferdi Barnard that his head “hopped like a rubber ball on his broad shoulders” while he smoked a crack cocaine pipe and confessed to killing Dr David Webster.
That was some three years ago, when Barnard – a convicted killer, former narcotics policeman and dirty-tricks operative – was a cocaine addict.
This week, as he denied killing Webster – or ever making any confession to that effect – Barnard’s head would still not stay still. Given that he is being held in the CMax maximum security prison during the trial, cocaine is not the likely cause.
It could be nerves. Barnard is already serving 10 years for stealing diamonds, and if convicted of the 34 murder, fraud and robbery charges facing him, he could be in jail for life.
He is 39 years old. He has sat – or hunkered – in the dock for two months listening to 11 witnesses repeat to the court what they said were his own boasts about killing Webster.
This week he moved into the witness box to refute some very, very detailed accounts of what he allegedly said about the murder, where and when he said it, and even why.
And the judge does not believe he is telling the truth. He told him so on Tuesday: “Mr Barnard, you twist the truth to suit yourself.”
Barnard spent February and March glaring at witnesses – none of whom would meet his eyes – strutting his gangster walk during breaks and generally looming large.
Since Monday this huge man has shrunk a bit. When he denied culpability for Webster’s death at the Harms commission eight years ago, he was surrounded by the manne, supported by defence force generals, lying in concert with his Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB) colleagues.
During the Webster inquest in 1992 he sat shoulder to massive shoulder with death-squad colleague Calla Botha, lying or listening to the manne lie to the court.
At the the Harms commission and the inquest, his legal costs were picked up by the defence force; his statement carefully drawn up to conform with other CCB statements; his back patted and ego stroked by covert cronies who needed him to shut up about what he knew.
Now he is alone, his father the only supporter who comes to court every day.
Barnard spent enormous energy helping Vlakplaas boss Eugene de Kock during his trial, all but managing the cross-examination of turncoat spooks via notes to lawyers. But he is not sure De Kock will return the favour.
The Vlakplaas killer – now a fellow CMax prisoner – might be called by the defence, but as Barnard himself said this week, friends are few when one is “contaminated”.
Calla Botha, now a successful Roodepoort businessman, flatly refused to get involved this week when the investigators asked him to clarify a detail. Botha is Barnard’s alibi for the day Webster died.
Until Tuesday, Barnard did not have an alibi; he remembered nothing about the day except that he did not start it by killing Webster.
By implication he did not dress in a blond wig, get into a car with Botha, drive to Webster’s Troyeville home that he had been monitoring for months, spot Webster outside offloading plants from his bakkie.
He did not fire at Webster from the car with a short-barrel shotgun of the sort he had recently tested for accuracy from a moving vehicle; did not hit Webster in the chest and watch him “fly through the air”.
He did not listen to Webster’s lover, Maggie Friedman, scream “like a stuck pig”; did not change cars a block away.
This is the sum of what journalists, policemen, crooks, ex-wives and lovers have told the court, saying they were repeating Barnard’s own version of events.
Since Tuesday, Barnard is asking the court to believe he has now remembered he was out jogging with Botha that morning.
As he says this, and as senior state advocate Anton Ackerman – the man who nailed De Kock – smiles a chilling smile at him, Barnard’s head bobs its crazy rhythm.