Mungo Soggot and Tangeni Amupadhi
They are one of the South African legal profession’s odder couples: Shafique Sarlie, a smart Indian attorney with neatly coiffed black hair, and advocate Manie Dempers, a former colonel in the South African Defence Force who could be mistaken for a security policeman with his balding head and piercing blue eyes.
They are South Africa’s heist lawyers, defending suspects in all of the major cash robberies to have made the headlines over the past year: the R17-million Bronkhorstspruit hit, the R10-million Marble Hall robbery in Mpumalanga where six security guards were gunned down, the R3,8-million Sandton heist, the attempted R22-million heist in Kempton Park …
Sarlie developed a taste for criminal work when he defended a car theft syndicate in the Caprivi Strip in the early 1980s.
Dempers served as a senior legal adviser in the army, until he was court-martialled for having a relationship with a female sergeant.
In America they might be labelled ”mob lawyers” and subjected to Federal Bureau of Investigation surveillance as intense as that suffered by the Godfathers themselves.
But in South Africa, although police are intrigued by their emergence as the ”A- team” representing the new aristocracy of the underworld, they do not attract investigation. Police say they do not suspect any impropriety.
The two lawyers themselves are at pains to avoid giving the impression they are close to the men they defend. They also do not boast of any intimate understanding of their clients’ modus operandi, beyond saying there is inevitably inside help from the security companies.
Sarlie says they get the work through word of mouth – not from gangster bosses – after having developed reputations as effective criminal lawyers. They have both also earned a good name in the world of car hijackers – an industry Sarlie believes is far more organised.
Both Sarlie and Dempers say there is no mastermind behind the heists or a centralised operation. Sarlie dismisses the notion of a military or Umkhonto weSizwe link to the heists, saying that merely because the robbers often use standard military tactics to stop armoured cars – like a spiky chain in the road- does not mean there is a military mastermind in the wings.
”There are basically two ways to stop a truck. Either you take a bigger truck and ram it – that’s if you’ve seen Heat – or you take the chain method. It’s obvious.”
Sarlie and Dempers say they do not earn massive fees from their work, Dempers adding that they bring home far less than a successful civil lawyer. Sarlie works from his house in the Johannesburg suburb of Bez Valley which, although comfortable, does not lend credence to the popular belief that gangster lawyers are fabulously wealthy.
Sarlie says he charges ”a little more” than in normal cases. ”They are big cases.”
He is more coy when it comes to discussing his clients’ method of payment, saying he discourages the use of cash – ”I would feel uneasy” – but that many of his customers do not possess cheque books. He adds: ”Those rumours of secret lawyers’ trust accounts are not true. Mine are open for inspection.”
Sarlie says he believes some gangs do co- operate on heists – which corresponds roughly to police heist sleuth ”Bushie” Engelbrecht’s assessment of how organised these robberies are. Engelbrecht has ruled out the possibility that they are linked to any cause other than greed. Sarlie also admits they do it ”purely for monetary gain”.
Dempers says they are usually contacted at most two hours after arrest, sometimes by a relative or friend. They complain of the difficulties they encounter tracking down their clients. Sarlie says it can take days to find them, as they are often moved between prisons.
Torture claims are commonplace. Dempers says clients in robbery matters frequently sign confessions or become state witnesses.
”Why would a man who is strong enough to …” – he resorts to the word ”allegedly”, one of many times he does so during the interview – ”do this horrific thing, suddenly confess? It is very rare to get confessions in other types of crime like rape, and even murder.”
It is presumably a reflection of their skill that suspects defended by Dempers and Sarlie are rarely convicted, although they admit police ineptitude often helps. ”It can make our life much easier,” Sarlie says.
One of Sarlie’s more intriguing accounts of police bungling was how police in Rustenburg were tipped off about a bank robbery, sped to the bank and immediately arrested two robbers in the getaway car outside. Sarlie says it did not occur to the police to look inside the bank, where 10 other robbers were helping themselves. The police returned to their base, only to be informed that they had missed the real action.
They also successfully defended a man who seemed to have been caught ”red-handed” in the attempted R22-million heist in Kempton Park. Their client, who was shot and immobilised next to his AK-47 at the scene, was acquitted in November 1994 after benefiting from what Sarlie describes as ”unbelievable” police incompetence.
Dempers says in the three years he has been doing this type of work, he can remember only one conviction, and that was for a car hijacker. None of the recent high-profile heist cases have come to trial yet, but the Dempers/Sarlie team have secured bail for many of the suspects.
In the Bronkhorstspruit matter, two clients were denied bail – a decision not welcomed by Sarlie, who believes the courts often fail to apply the Constitution, allowing themselves to be swayed by the hype in the media surrounding heists. He says of the Constitution: ”If it can’t protect the worst of us, it is not going to protect the best of us. As a lawyer, it shocks one when the Constitution is not being applied.”
Rumour has it that the state wants to make a showcase trial out of the Bronkhorstspruit case, which is likely to open in the Pretoria High Court in October and will probably run for as long as 10 months. Sarlie and Dempers expect to win Bronkhorstspruit, their confidence fuelled by claims that the police tried to torture confessions out of their clients using an apparatus resembling scuba- diving equipment.
Sarlie says the police still rely heavily on brute force, although their detection work is improving. He says if all policemen were hooked to a lie detector and asked whether they had either tortured or witnessed torture, all would reply in the affirmative or fail the test.
He also says it is striking how police rarely extract confessions out of suspects when they have legal representation – or when they have a watertight case.
Sarlie says the Achilles heel of the police is their forensic work – in the Kempton Park case, for example, they omitted to seize bloodstained clothing and failed to test the suspect’s hands for gunpowder.
But the helping hand of an ailing criminal justice system comes in many guises. Sarlie and Dempers recently found themselves with more spare time than usual after a client who was to appear in the Johannesburg High Court last week on armed robbery charges rendered their services redundant by escaping from prison.