Police bungling and the inexplicable disappearance of five key witnesses are behind the withdrawal of murder charges against an alleged drug lord. Stefaans Brmmer reports
The name Alexander Kavouras inspires fear even on the crime-hardened streets of Hillbrow, his stomping ground. Once friendly with Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB)hit men and no stranger to the underworld of drugs and prostitution, that reputation may be well earned.
When “Big Alex” was arrested in March 1997 after allegedly gunning down four of his Safari International hotel employees, another employee felt safe enough to tell a reporter: “We think he has gone out of his mind and is capable of killing us if released from police custody.”
The unnamed employee should not have bothered. By the time the article appeared, Kavouras had already been released on a paltry R2 000 bail – even though two of the shooting victims, Maritzio Rotta and Mario Steward, were dead and another two seriously injured.
And so began the tale of failed attempts to put one of Hillbrow’s most notorious figures behind bars. On Monday this week, Kavouras walked free from the Johannesburg High Court after the state withdrew a range of charges against him, including two of murder and two of attempted murder. The stated reason: five key witnesses could not be traced.
>From the outset, the case seemed simple enough: the state alleged that on the night of March 7 1997 Kavouras held a meeting with a group of six or more of his employees at the Safari International hotel, which he owns, about a wage dispute. There was a disagreement over stolen disco equipment, and Kavouras opened fire.
Witnesses were ample enough, including the two who were seriously injured but survived. The only catch, of course, was that they were all employees.
The first sign that Kavouras had little to fear from the criminal justice system came with his release, hours after the shooting, on R2 000 bail. And there are strong indications the crime scene was never properly investigated.
The easy bail led to an outcry and soon a better arm of the law took over. The case was handed to a Hillbrow detective and a member of the Hillbrow police internal investigations unit. Early the next week the police duo managed to have the bail amount upped to R30 000 and strict conditions imposed, but Kavouras was still free to walk the streets.
The fact that internal investigations was called in is significant: this unit concentrates on cases where there is a suspicion that other police members colluded in a crime.
Internal investigations Inspector James van Rooyen this week confirmed that he was called in to help investigate “because the investigation on the scene was not done properly” and due to the low original bail.
During Kavouras’s late-night court appearance, when R2 000 bail was set, police somehow neglected to tell the court that two of Kavouras’s victims were dead. But Van Rooyen said he could not point fingers – he did not know whether the bungling had been on purpose.
During a preliminary magistrate’s court appearance in July 1997, the state applied to have Kavouras’s bail revoked after broke his bail conditions by talking to one of his employees, a state witness. The magistrate ruled that the contact had been “innocent”, and dismissed the application.
But there has been a history of allegations that Kavouras or those around him used threatening tactics. When The Star ran an article on Kavouras’s alleged vice rackets in 1990, Kavouras hauled the newspaper before the Media Council.
Reporter Janine Lazarus testified in the hearings how two of Kavouras’s associates had threatened to “slash her face” when she tried to contact him. The Star won the case.
Earlier reports featured a businessman claiming Kavouras had threatened that his nightclub “would be burnt down” if he spoke to the press, and also two vice girls who claimed they had heard Kavouras would “get us” after they spoke to the media.
Herman Broodryk, Johannesburg’s deputy director of public prosecutions and the man who would have waged the court battle against Kavouras, this week agreed Kavouras was “certainly notorious”, but he said: “I cannot go to court with that.”
Broodryk said the reason the murder case was withdrawn was because his witnesses had disappeared. “It was purely a case where the witnesses were all Nigerians and Bulgarians, etcetera, and as is in the Hillbrow culture, they were all transient characters.”
He said the witnesses – whom he confirmed had all been employees of Kavouras – were not on the witness protection programme as there had never been such a request. And he was satisfied that police had done all in their power to find the missing witnesses. Broodryk said he was determined to reopen the case if they were traced.
Van Rooyen speculated: “Perhaps they are scared to testify against him. If you consider his reputation, everyone thinks he is the great satan. The witnesses were not interested in witness protection. I don’t know whether they were scared [or] whether they felt they would have been tied down too much.”
Kavouras’s alleged connections certainly have given him a reputation which could have frightened witnesses, even if Kavouras did not lift a finger.
A member of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) this week said his organisation had investigated Kavouras around the time of the shooting incident. “It was the issue of syndicates around [drug smuggling] and the issue of protection [enjoyed by the syndicates].”
He said the NIA had also probed Kavouras’s alleged links to policemen. “He did communicate with the Johannesburg South African Narcotics Bureau [Sanab, the police vice and drugs squad] at one stage.”
Kavouras popped up in Johannesburg in 1986 after he was expelled from Zambia, where he ran the Lusaka nightclub, Moon City – and where his circle of connections extended into the African National Congress exile community.
Kavouras ran the club with Panji Kaunda, son of then president Kenneth Kaunda. But he was ordered to leave Zambia after a crackdown on the drugs trade in which Panji Kaunda and others close to Kavouras were fingered.
In his Media Council complaint against The Star, Kavouras denied he had been expelled from Zambia. But the council ruled that two letters Kavouras presented to back his version, ostensibly from Kenneth Kaunda and the Zambian immigration service, were fake.
In Johannesburg in 1986, Kavouras started the club In the Mix. The club’s name was an apparent reference to “MX”, the abbreviation for the drug mandrax. Glossy invitations reportedly featured illustrations of mandrax tablets. Kavouras at the time said the illustrations were “an unfortunate error”.
Over the years Kavouras has owned a string of hotels in Hillbrow, including the Quirinale, where singer Brenda Fassie’s lover died of a drug overdose, the Park Lane and the Safari International, all of which gained a reputation for vice. At the Park Lane, Kavouras employed Staal Burger, a senior member of the CCB, as a manager.
There have been numerous allegations of CCB meetings at the Park Lane, involving Burger and other members of his cell. Another former CCB member, “Slang” van Zyl, this week claimed that while he had met Kavouras, it was never in a work context. He said the CCB may have used Kavouras “on an informal basis, but as far as I know he was not used in projects”.
Van Zyl added: “As far as I’m concerned, he is not the type I want to be involved with.”
Kavouras’s attorney, Ian Small-Smith, replied to the allegations this week, saying that if his client had been involved in drug dealing or prostitution, the numerous specialised units of the police and NIA would have caught him out long ago.
“They have all investigated him fully and, as far as I know, he has not even been charged.”
He denied relations with policemen could have saved his client. “If he’s got friends in Johannesburg Sanab for example, I can’t imagine that they can control every policeman of every other specialised unit.”
Small-Smith said Kavouras denied links with the CCB, and that he had not known of Burger’s involvement in hit squads. Burger has since left his employ.
While refusing to reveal Kavouras’s defence on the murder charges – which were dropped before he could plead in open court – Small-Smith did confirm that the excuse of “self-defence” was partly true.
He said if the case were resurrected, ballistic and other evidence would be presented to “disprove every bit of statement that the state had in its affidavits”.
But what neither Small-Smith nor the prosecuting authorities can answer is a simple question: how, more than two years after a seemingly straightforward multiple murder was reported, and where at least five eyewitnesses were prepared to make statements, can a case not be presented in court – and the truth or falsity of these charges be settled once and for all?