Stefaans Brmmer, Mungo Soggot and Nawaal Deane
Irvin Khoza’s close association with a self-proclaimed apartheid military agent during the liberation struggle is at odds with the soccer boss’s reputation as a staunch African National Congress cadre.
The relationship between Khoza and Petrus Johannes Koekemoer, alias Peter Murray, pretty much exemplifies that darker part of the liberation struggle where principle and profit, ally and enemy were virtually indistinguishable.
Khoza has claimed in the past that he severed ties with Koekemoer when, during the struggle, he learned of Koekemoer’s apartheid military allegiance. But Koekemoer and Khoza’s versions contradict each other and besides, Koekemoer and Khoza are again close allies.
What has also emerged is that large amounts of money, allegedly from apartheid military slush funds, flowed to Khoza via Koekemoer.
Koekemoer this week told the Mail & Guardian that he first came across Khoza while both men were doing business in Zambia. (Company records confirm that Koekemoer was running a trucking business, Unifreight, that operated between South Africa and Zambia.)
During the early 1980s after he met Khoza Koekemoer claims to have been recruited by the South African Defence Force special forces. He was ordered by his military masters to team up with Khoza (who did undercover work for the ANC in the frontline states).
Koekemoer says the government at the time suspected Khoza was “deeply involved in the ANC at the time, raising money”. He says the ANC used “various methods of obtaining funding, which knew no bounds”.
On Koekemoer’s version, Khoza did not work with him on projects for the apartheid military. Instead, he says, Khoza effectively turned him into an agent for the ANC. In 1983, however, he loaned Khoza some R400 000 from a defence force slush fund. After that Koekemoer “took Khoza into my confidence” and advised Khoza on his covert activities every few weeks.
Koekemoer says that in 1985 one of his special forces colleagues was arrested and blew his cover. Khoza then severed ties with him until 1992 when he (Koekemoer) contacted Khoza and started working for Orlando Pirates. Koekemoer remains the football club’s office manager.
Khoza, however, has presented two somewhat different versions particularly concerning his knowledge or not of Koekemoer’s spying activities.
In 1995 lawyers acting for Khoza stated in writing that during 1986 Khoza and Koekemoer (whom Khoza knew at the time by his alias, Peter Murray) entered into a loan agreement for R390 000, interest free. Soon after, Khoza “read in the papers” that Zambian authorities were investigating Koekemoer on suspicion of espionage.
“The allegations made by the Zambian authorities were later confirmed,” the lawyers wrote, adding that Koekemoer was “in fact employed by the South African Defence Force to set up a trucking company in Zambia in order to obtain info on the ANC and black South Africans doing business in Zambia.” As a result, Khoza fearing for his safety and his standing in the ANC “of which he was a staunch supporter” cut ties.
In a separate affidavit, also dated 1995 but partly at odds with both other versions, Khoza says he met Koekemoer, alias Peter Murray, in about 1983 while Koekemoer operated the Unifreight trucking business between South Africa and Zambia. They had business dealings until about 1986 when they lost contact “as the transport business had ceased to operate”. After the 1994 elections they re-established contact.
Murray established a business, Ivan Khoza Investments cc, in which both had an equal beneficial interest, with the purpose of doing import-export deals in Africa.
The M&G has learnt that both men got dumped into trouble when Koekemoer was arrested as he allegedly tried to deposit a fraudulent cheque in a Nedbank account held by Ivan Khoza Investments.
Correspondence from the National Prosecuting Authority, dated last November, records that the 1995 charges against Koekemoer were dropped after his lawyers made representations to Johannesburg prosecuting authorities claiming that both men were working for the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) “on undercover operations”. (Koekemoer denies he ever raised that defence he maintains the fraud charges were dropped after it was established that they were unfounded.)
The prosecuting authority’s correspondence last November was directed at both the NIA and the Department of Military Intelligence, seeking to ascertain whether both men had been associated with either spy agency “at any stage from 1980 to 1988”. It is not clear whether a response was obtained.
Koekemoer this week defended Khoza, saying he had been “mistreated and slandered” and that Khoza had spent “large amounts of money which has saved the country millions and protected lives”.