Andy Duffy
The National Party’s new Western Cape leader, Gerald Morkel, played a central role in propelling a convict’s outlandish sex claims against NP chief Marthinus van Schalkwyk into the public domain.
Morkel, provincial police MEC and now premier elect, was party to the decision to put senior investigators on to the case. His office says Morkel had wanted to avoid later accusations that police had failed to investigate properly, or claims of a cover- up.
It has also emerged that one day after thief John David Hermanus laid the complaint against Van Schalkwyk, his torrid claims had circulated among police and politicians stretching from Table View to Pretoria.
The Mail & Guardian decided to report the probe last week following an approach by Senior Superintendent Attie Trollip – the province’s top sex-crime sleuth who was quickly assigned to the case. Until then, the M&G had withheld the story of Hermanus’s allegations because of a lack of independent corroboration.
Morkel’s office says the decision to give the case high priority was justified. The possibility of the resultant publicity was not a consideration.
Morkel’s representative David Frost says that, as the case had already been lodged, “there was an expectation it would come out … in any country, if the leader of the opposition is involved in any allegation it will surface.
“It was a case of being 100% sure that no one could say the police did not investigate properly,” he adds. “It was good judgment on his part to give the instruction to see if there was an offence, and to put a senior man on to it to investigate the facts so there could be no cover-up.”
Willie Fourie, NP MP and Van Schalkwyk’s legal adviser, says: “Sure, the fact that Attie Trollip is on the case will attract everybody’s attention, and more likely that [a journalist] will be in a position to write a story.
“If it was a normal policeman, the possibility is that no one would have paid any attention to the matter.”
He adds the NP does not believe the case could have been handled more discreetly. “We appreciate the fact that a lot of police were involved, and that it was investigated at the highest level.”
Trollip is one of the top officers in the serious violent crime division, and a key figure in the fight against Cape gangsterism.
Morkel did not check whether the key claim against Van Schalkwyk – consensual sodomy with an adult – was a crime. The investigation ran for 10 days before Trollip decided the allegation did not constitute a crime – as the M&G reported last week following a call to provincial Attorney General Frank Kahn.
Frost adds that he “daily” sees cases where consensual sodomy between adults is lodged as a common-law offence. Morkel would have left that decision to Kahn.
Morkel’s role in the affair sits uncomfortably with the NP’s attempts to portray Van Schalkwyk as victim of a smear campaign orchestrated by the African National Congress.
Morkel’s involvement came the day after the NP voted him successor to Hernus Kriel as its Western Cape leader – a contest he won thanks, in part, to Van Schalkwyk’s lobbying.
Morkel called Van Schalkwyk hours after he was briefed on the Hermanus charge. “I have been aware about the allegations for some time and considered issuing a public statement at one point,” Van Schalkwyk told the Saturday Argus last weekend.
“However, when I was phoned by Gerald Morkel, who informed me that Hermanus had laid a charge, I decided to allow the police to investigate and not to make a statement.”
The NP has spent much of the past week vigorously denying Hermanus’s claims, alleging the ANC managed the whole affair (which it denies), and threatening legal action against Hermanus and the M&G.
The party failed to get support for a parliamentary motion condemning the M&G report. The motion noted “the possible involvement of journalists and party political members and/or functionaries in the events leading up to the publication” – which, taken to its logical conclusion, would also include Morkel.
Trollip expects to finalise his investigation over the next few days. He says he found nothing to substantiate Hermanus’s claim that Van Schalkwyk had paid the convict R20 for gay sex in Bloubergstrand more than two years ago. He says the house identified as the site of the alleged incident did not check out.
Voorberg prison, where Hermanus is serving seven years for theft, has no records to support Hermanus’s claim that NP representatives visited him to discuss buying his silence.
The prison records show only four visits to Hermanus since the start of the year, three by M&G reporters and one by ANC branch executive Steve Carolus – Hermanus’s initial contact and the target of the NP’s fight back.
Trollip discussed the legality of consensual sodomy with his superiors this week and decided that “the question of the sodomy case does not exist, so there can’t be such a charge”.
The closure of the central charge affects the second alleged offence – that Van Schalkwyk had dispatched minions to shut Hermanus up. “You cannot corrupt anyone over something that is not a crime,” Trollip adds.
The allegations initially did appear to constitute a sex crime, Trollip says, but he changed his mind after further, undisclosed discussions with Hermanus.
Trollip is now looking at other possibilities, including bringing charges against Hermanus for wasting police time.
He is also studying statements from Carolus and M&G reporters.
The M&G has identified the official links in the chain that pulled Hermanus’s claims from a jail cell to the public arena. Hermanus laid the charge with Porterville police station on Thursday April 23 – the day Morkel was elected new NP leader in the Western Cape.
Porterville sent the docket, 120/4, to Table View police station – which has authority over the area of the alleged offence – the next day. It arrived late in the afternoon. Station commander Jackie Litzenborgh says he found it “funny” that the charges had been laid more than two years late, and that he knows the alleged offence is not a crime.
He nevertheless called East Metropole area commissioner Neil van Heerden for guidance. Van Heerden called Smit (who assigned the case to Trollip), Provincial Commissioner Leon Wessels, National Commissioner George Fivaz and Morkel.
Van Heerden says the decision to put a senior man on the case was made “because it’s a politician … I thought this would all surface far sooner. When politicians are involved in any case, it’s a big story. This was a serious case.”
Hermanus called the M&G on Friday morning. Reporters confirmed the basic details of the docket at Porterville, and contacted Litzenborgh before the long weekend. Litzenborgh called the M&G over the weekend to direct all inquiries about the case to the police public relations unit.
Trollip contacted the M&G before it could make any further inquiries – a call that finally persuaded the paper to publish.
In a statement sent to Trollip’s office, one M&G reporter stated: “He [Hermanus] said he wanted to lay a charge. I told him that was probably pointless, first because sodomy wasn’t a crime, second because he had left it more than two years, and third because I suspected the police, even if they were interested, would struggle as much as we had to build a credible case.”
Hermanus told the M&G this week he did not regret laying the charge, nor had he considered withdrawing it. He also denied, as the NP claimed, that he had told police Carolus advised him to lay the charge. Trollip supports his denial.
“I’m glad I placed the charge because now the law is on my side,” he says.