Stefaans Brmmer
Some of South Africa’s high and mighty may well be quaking after alleged mafia boss Vito Palazzolo’s arrest a week ago.
Palazzolo is out on R500 000 bail pending his trial, due to start on December 3, on charges of “lying” in a 1994 citizenship application. The offence is a relatively minor one, but could indicate a new resolve by authorities to clamp down on Palazzolo and those around him.
Palazzolo’s intermittent stay in South Africa since 1986 has caused a few casualties among the many powerful people associated with him.
An interview with former National Party MP Peet de Pontes this week revealed just how deeply Palazzolo wormed himself into the ranks of the apartheid government. De Pontes resigned from Parliament in 1989 and was convicted the following year for his role in helping Palazzolo obtain an irregular South African residence permit.
He maintained he was wrongly convicted – saying former minister of foreign affairs Pik Botha threatened in 1988 to “destroy me” after a photograph of Palazzolo and Botha together at an NP function was published in a newspaper. De Pontes said he introduced the two, but did not know if further contact ensued.
De Pontes said among the deals he and Palazzolo worked on was a 1987 sanctions- busting attempt to import submarines and jet fighters for the apartheid regime. He said it was strange that Palazzolo was allowed to stay in South Africa by NP authorities in spite of the irregular residence permit.
Various local and Italian police documents have alleged Palazzolo’s ability to corrupt politicians and officials. His links to prominent NP figures are a matter of record, but Palazzolo has told the Mail & Guardian he also contributed to African National Congress coffers.
Those who still have to explain their roles in the Palazzolo saga include:
l Former NP minister Tertius Delport, now Democratic Party justice representative. In 1991 he admitted securing jobs for Palazzolo’s sons after it emerged he had offered Palazzolo- bashing journalist Martin Weltz R75 000 to write an authorised biography on Palazzolo.
l A post-1994 Cabinet minister: Italian police found references to an unnamed friendly minister and a general when they tapped Palazzolo’s phone in 1996. A Western Cape police intelligence report that same year named a former NP minister, an ANC minister, an assistant police commissioner and a National Intelligence Agency provincial representative as Palazzolo contacts, but admitted the some of the names came from a single source.
l National Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Jan d’Oliviera, who supported in writing Palazzolo’s quest to stay in South Africa after he was allowed back into the country in 1989 to testify in De Pontes’s trial.
l Former president FW de Klerk, who chaired a 1993 Cabinet meeting that approved a new Palazzolo residence application.
l Andr Lincoln, former head of the police presidential investigation task unit, who formally “cleared” Palazzolo, a target of his unit, in 1997. Lincoln was arrested a year later and faces trial on fraud and theft charges, some relating to his association with Palazzolo. Before his fall from grace, Lincoln often reported directly to then deputy president Thabo Mbeki.