KwaZulu-Natal gets the honours as South Africa’s dodgiest province in the year 2000
Paul Kirk
They fled with trust funds, they fleeced investors and they stole from the state this year’s crop of rogues proved that crime does pay and that 2000 was a bumper year for South Africa’s underworld.
The survivor of the year has to be Piet Meyer, the senior KwaZulu-Natal policeman accused of a string of corruption and extortion charges. He is sitting pretty after discovering that he cannot be fired, despite being caught red-handed. Meyer is currently pocketing a handsome salary while sitting in his luxury Umkomaas home. Bizarrely, Meyer’s bail conditions prevent the police from holding a disciplinary inquiry into his transgressions. And without a hearing he cannot be fired.
Meyer stands charged with running his own crime empire while heading the police organised crime unit. He is alleged to have stolen exhibits and money from the police, demanded protection money from criminals and forced casino owners to make extravagant donations to the police officers’ club.
Meyer is one of several residents of KwaZulu-Natal who have arguably enabled it to pip Mpumalanga as South Africa’s dodgiest province this year.
Another fortunate Durban rogue is Ian Stokes, a dapper attorney who was struck off the roll for indulging in creative accounting with his trust funds. Before Stokes could be arrested he fled the country. He is currently enjoying the fruits of his nefarious activities in exile.
Stokes left South Africa with between R30-million and R45-million from his trust funds as well as pillaging from a business he started. He talked businessmen into investing in his innovative scheme to exploit the Road Accident Fund by buying claims from acci- dent victims for 60% of their value and then pocketing the extra 40% when the fund eventually paid a claim out.
One nest of Durban rogues that was dealt a heavy blow was the Chatsworth police station. Many Chatsworth policemen successfully turned their careers in law enforcement into lucrative sources of income by masterminding a series of scams, robberies and thefts. Chatsworth police station pulled off South Africa’s largest armed robbery, ran protection rackets on primary schools and sold dockets at an alarming rate. Many of the offending policemen were expelled in a major shake-up. The cleansing of Chats-worth police station came after the Mail & Guardian’s report on the station’s activities, which prompted the Chatsworth Community Police Forum to describe it as “the major source of crime in Chatsworth if not Durban”.
In one incident the charge office safe was allegedly opened with welding equipment, allowing various errant policemen to steal the bail money inside. No one on duty heard or saw the safe being cut open despite the fact the incident took place at lunch time on a weekday. Since the shake-up the crime rate in the suburb has dropped remarkably.
While the Chatsworth cops went about lining their pockets, a Midlands prison boss, Russel Ngubo, continued with his unique reign as Deputy Director of Correctional Services. In the space of two weeks Ngubo brutally assaulted his immediate boss for not signing his leave forms and was linked to the murder of a 15-year-old boy. The youth was mistaken for a witness against Ngubo and shot dead in his hospital bed. The real target of the assassination allegedly had information about Ngubo’s involvement in armed robberies and is currently on the witness protection programme.
It now appears that, in addition to allegedly killing his political rivals, Ngubo has become involved in armed robberies. As 2000 drew to a close Ngubo was transferred from the Pietermaritzburg New Prison to Cape Town a move that should spice up life in the Mother City.
Staying in KwaZulu-Natal, the M&G broke the story of how a member of the Gambling Board, Londiwe Mthembu, was also a board member of a company that was awarded a casino licence. The Gambling Board refused to comment on the story and has taken no action against Mthembu, who pockets cheques from the casino company and from the gambling board every month.
On the national stage there were a few incidents deserving of attention. One was the latest initiative by those in charge of the Central Energy Fund to make the drab state oil company a household name. This time they effectively privatised the state’s oil reserves without telling anybody including the Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. The mini-ster has dispatched a crack team of inter- national investigators to work out how the dubious deal was assembled.
The medical profession was also put under the spotlight this year as it emerged that the public spends about R8-billion a year paying for the effects of medical fraud. This is the figure the Board of Health Funders arrived at when they concluded that a quarter of all private-sector medical claims were questionable. And then there were the revelations about how doctors have been securing kickbacks from pharmaceutical firms to push their products.
For now the government’s controversial arms deal has yet to develop into a fully-fledged scandal. Questions are merely being asked about the propriety of the deal, which has the potential to blossom into a full scam next year.
Apart from various unsubstantiated allegations about kickbacks, the main focus of interest so far has been the head of the procurement section of the Department of Defence, Shamin Shaik, who oversaw the award of billions of rands of contracts to a company called African Defence Systems an operation that not only employs his brother, but also provides employment to his wife.
Back in KwaZulu-Natal, Prince Gideon Zulu like Shaik also kept business in the family in 2000. It emerged this year that Zulu’s daughter was receiving large deposits from Cash Paymaster Services and these deposits were then being transferred directly to her father. Cash Paymaster Services had recently been awarded the contract to pay pensions in the province. The company won the contract in spite of the fact that they lost the tender, their bid being far more expensive than rival bidders Absa Allpay.
A commission of inquiry was appointed by Zulu’s friend and fellow Inkatha Freedom Party hardliner Lionel Mtshali, the Premier of KwaZulu-Natal. The commission was headed by the advocate representing another of Zulu’s friends, fellow IFP strongman Inkosi Khawula.
The commission never bothered to obtain any of the bank account details with which the M&G substantiated its article. It was only a matter of time before a beaming Zulu held a press conference with Mtshali at his side and announced he had been cleared of any wrongdoing.
He said the money paid to his daughter was a fee for conducting a study into micro lending. The study was, according to the author (his daughter), nearly completed and due to be printed within a few weeks. Four months later it has yet to surface.
The leader of Zulu’s party, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, was also in the news. He raised more than a few eyebrows when it emerged that back in 1998 he walked into the Ulundi First National bank with plastic bags full of cash. The feisty IFP leader refused to reveal where the R2-million in cash came from.
As the year drew to a close, Mpumalanga made something of a comeback when it emerged that its notoriously imaginative politicians had built themselves an illegal Parliament at great expense to the taxpayer. The construction of the Parliament, which was built without proper tender procedures being followed, also resulted in the destruction of several protected plant species. Intriguingly, the politicians built the edifice in the flood plain of a river, which could provide several opportunities for a clean-up of Mpumalanga politics.