David Beresford
Judge Willem Heath has been compared with everyone from Batman to Judge Dread. With indefatigable energy true to the comic-book tradition, “Hercules Heath” is at it again: staring down Gauteng’s Mathole Motshekga, preparing to haul half a dozen banks – including the Reserve Bank – before the bar of public inquiry, sparking a panic among the fat cats of the casino industry.
For a man with his reputation, Judge Heath is an unexpectedly amiable figure as he ambles into a Johannesburg hotel foyer, behind his anxious-looking “spokesman” – a large former police officer who looks more like a bodyguard. When one considers the powerful interests the judge has offended, it is a surprise to discover he does not travel in an armed convoy. The surprise turns to concern as one realises who he is relying on to protect him.
Judge Heath enjoys what is known as a “good press” and it is not hard to discover why. There must be few members of the South African judiciary, whether on or off the Bench, who are as friendly with the fourth estate as this particular crusader. The reason quickly becomes apparent; the media and its audience are his shield.
“I think our support in the media and amongst the public is so strong that they would find it very difficult to close us down,” he declares. The impression of happy naivity is compounded when – asked whether he did not need to find some more white targets for his investigative zeal if he is going to survive politically – he smiles: “Yes I think that is a very valid point,” and goes on to explain blithely that he has made repeated appeals to the new dispensation to report the sins of the old, but without much success.
How this man became the nemesis of state corruption in the new South Africa is difficult to figure out, even though the facts of the matter are freely available. He is a man of contradictions. Afrikaans- speaking, but – as his name suggests – descended from 1820 settler stock, his main qualification for his present role seems to have been a stint of five years on, of all things, the Bench in that Ruritania of the Eastern Cape, the Ciskei.
This time, as a homeland judge, he refers to enthusiastically as his period of “human rights training” – he revels in having battered Brigadier Oupa Gqozo about the head with the civil rights code with which the tin-pot bantustan’s would-be dictator inexplicably burdened himself. “We took them to court nearly every day !” Heath happily remembers.
After liberation, it was the Rivonia trialist, Raymond Mhlaba, who as premier of the Eastern Cape plucked Heath off the Bench to head an inquiry into corruption in the region. “When I was appointed to head the commission in the Eastern Cape, I asked them: `Why appoint me, a white, male judge?’ They were surprised I asked the question, probably because they knew my track record,” he recalls.
At first he refused the offer “because we know commissions of inquiry investigate a matter, bring out a report, it goes to the politicians and that is the last we hear of it. I said I wasn’t prepared to do that unless they gave me special powers to recover [lost State assets].” He got them and by March 1997 he had made sufficiently impressive use of them for President Nelson Mandela to set him loose nationally.
The result was the special investigating unit, a body believed to be unique to government in any part of the world, made up of about 100 staff -advocates and attornies, auditors and accountants and special investigators armed with formidable powers.
Its exploits are of course well-known: the clash of swords with the powerful as he calls Minister of Health Nkosazana Zuma to account over Sarafina II; the swoop on the Mpumalanga Parks Board; the skirmishes with the Department of Justice and the presidency (although not, he is anxious to point out, with the president himself); his trials of strength with the Northern Province …
Even more explosive encounters lie ahead, including a confrontation with the Afrikaans business establishment – threatened by his inquiries into the so-called “life-boat” Reserve Bank funding of financial institutions during apartheid – and other investigations into the old order that he is reluctant to discuss until they are formalised.
“I like treading on toes,” he suddenly confesses with all the childish joy of a Dennis the Menace slipped a key to the school tuck shop. Asked what motivates him, the judge replies with passion.
“I hate corruption, I hate maladministration. When people don’t administer their departments properly, I believe in action against them.”
The credo is enough to leave one praying that, where Judge Heath is concerned, fate will again show its inclination to favour the foolhardy.