OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Saturday
SOUTH Africa’s ex-corruption buster Judge Willem Heath may have been poisoned three years ago, according to his wife, Marita Heath.
In an interview on Friday, Heath expanded on a comment to a local women’s magazine, Fair Lady, that she and several doctors believed her husband was probably poisoned in November 1998.
The judge made headlines at the time when he was rushed to the intensive care unit of St George’s Hospital in Port Elizabeth, after collapsing at the home of Judge Hennie Liebenberg.
The judge was found bleeding profusely in the guest bathroom.
“The doctor on the scene asked me immediately whether he had anything in him that poisoned him,” Heath said.
Doctors, including a specialist in East London, believed he may have been poisoned, but tests for strychnine proved negative.
“The specialist told us that unfortunately in our country, they’re not able to test for all poisoning.
“The doctors also said there could have been a defect in his duodenum, but the specialist said he believed it was rather poisoning.”
Heath said she had also received a telephone call from a senior German politician, who had urged her to convince the Judge to travel to Germany for tests, as they knew he had been poisoned.
Heath would not be drawn on who she believed was behind her husband’s alleged poisoning, but said the judge had received several death threats.
Security was also stepped up, on the insistence of his office, immediately after his hospitalisation.
Asked why this had not been made public at the time of Heath’s hospitalisation, she said: “It was decided it should be kept off the record.”
However, it was an open secret among those close to the judge, with people often referring “to that time when you were poisoned”, she said.
A statement from the Heath Unit at the time, states: “The cause of internal bleeding and his illness had not been established.” Heath’s son, Wimpie, is also on record as saying tests revealed the judge had a small ulcer in his stomach, but that alone was not the cause of the internal bleeding.
Heath on Friday said: “The doctors told Wimpie that there was an ulcer present, but since the blood that poured out of his body was clean and pure, it was proof that the bleeding did not come from his tummy.”
Heath also said a private Port Elizabeth company had found that her home telephone and the family’s cellphones were bugged.
“In one week we had to change our telephone number five times. For the first time I’m scared. I feel there are eyes watching me all the time,” she said.
Heath is angry about how her husband has been sidelined as head of the unit, following a Constitutional Court ruling that it was unconstitutional for a judge to head the special investigating unit, as he could not be both prosecutor and judge.
However, Heath says the judge never gave evidence before the unit’s special tribunal, and certainly never presided over any of the cases before it.
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