South African and Mozambican investigators have failed to contact a potentially crucial witness in the McBride affair, writes Mungo Soggot
A close associate of Robert McBride, who has offered information to counter allegations that the foreign affairs official was smuggling weapons in Mozambique, has still to be contacted by Mozambican and South African authorities.
As McBride entered his sixth week in custody in Maputo this week, it emerged that Aubrey Lekwane, a former official of Lawyers for Human Rights, has not been interviewed by Mozambican police who have been in South Africa preparing a case against McBride with the help of local detectives.
Lekwane has publicly stated he believes McBride was set up, and is prepared to become McBride’s star witness. He has also informed Minister of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi and others of his position.
Lekwane says the man with whom McBride was arrested, Vusi Mbatha, has often worked with military intelligence, which has been accused by McBride’s supporters of masterminding the set-up which led to his arrest.
Lekwane told the Mail & Guardian last month that Mbatha had told McBride and himself, while they were meeting an investigator from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, that Mozambican gun-runners were supplying South African criminal syndicates.
Lekwane said when he heard of McBride’s arrest he was almost certain he had been arrested while following up on Mbatha’s claims. “I contacted Mpumalanga Premier Mathews Phosa immediately, and informed him that I believed I had information that would be useful in this matter,” he said.
The M&G has already reported on evidence that McBride was working in an undercover investigative unit probing crime syndicates. The truth commission has confirmed Mbatha’s crime-syndicate story.
The failure on the part of the Mozambican police to question Lekwane suggests their South African colleagues have not directed them to evidence which could exonerate McBride and bolster his “set-up” defence.
Safety and security representative Director Joseph Ngobeni said this week the South African police had merely been deployed to assist the Mozambicans, not to direct the investigation in any way.
The Mozambican police have finished their probe and handed the matter to a judge, who has still to decide whether to charge McBride.
If he goes on trial, his legal team could be forced to call witnesses who would confirm under oath his intelligence work. Such disclosures could embarrass the South African government, particularly in light of its failure to inform Mozambique of intelligence activities on its soil.
McBride’s legal team is compiling a dossier on his past intelligence work to lend credence to his defence. This includes probing the assassination of African National Congress stalwart Dulcie September, and corruption at South Africa’s firearms registry.
The government’s reluctance to assist McBride is becoming a growing source of consternation among his supporters – particularly given the composition of the South African police team despatched to investigate the affair.
The team this week lost the services of one of its more controversial members, Superintendent Lappies Labuschagne, who is due to be probed by the truth commission for apartheid-era political assassinations.
Mufamadi said Labuschagne’s departure followed a National Intelligence Agency debriefing of an unidentified source who was prepared to repeat his allegations under oath.
Last month, the M&G reported claims by police hitman Eugene de Kock that Labuschagne had murded prominent ANC activists in Swaziland in 1987. At the time of the report, Mufamadi effectively defended Labuschagne, saying the allegations were “untested and malicious”.
Police Deputy Commissioner Zolisa Lavisa added in a statement earlier this month that the police did not “discriminate against any member only on the basis of previous affiliations, unless we have reliable and proven evidence of past human rights violations”.