The Desai Commission wound up its public hearings on Friday with testimony from a wealthy German businessman on how he bankrolled Cape Town mayor Gerald Morkel.
”He was a friend in need,” said Wilfried Sauerland, who spends several months each year at a home in Cape Town’s upmarket Atlantic coast suburb Llandudno. ”Mr Morkel is not the only person I supported. I’ve given to a lot of charities and people in need.”
Alleged fraudster Jurgen Harksen, currently behind bars in Goodwood Prison, has told the commission he channelled money through Sauerland to Morkel and the Democratic Alliance, which Morkel leads in the Western Cape.
Sauerland, who made his money largely by selling equipment for the brewing and soft drink industry, but who also promotes boxing tournaments as a ”hobby”, denied this.
”No, not at all,” he told Morkel’s advocate Peter Hodes when asked if he got money from the alleged fraudster. ”I once received a big bottle of wine as a present. That’s all I got.” Sauerland said he did not know politics in South Africa ”too well”, and had helped Morkel because he regarded him as a friend. He said he met Morkel, then still Western Cape premier, when Harksen invited him to a charity function at the premier’s residence Leeuwenhof in October last year.
”I was very impressed by him (Morkel) from the first minute,” he said. ”When I saw how he cared to those handicapped people … that showed me that for me he’s a good man.”
He gave amounts of 6 000 Deutschmark and R48 000 towards the costs of Morkel’s legal clash with the New National Party at the end of last year, R50 000 for the rent of a city bowl apartment after Morkel lost the premiership of the Western Cape, and $2 500 for expenses related to a DA congress.
Questioned by judge Siraj Desai, he said it was not an unusual thing for him to contribute to Morkel’s rent. ”I’ve earned my money and I can give my money to whom I like,” he said. He had not expected anything in return.
Asked whether it was practice to pay politicians’ rents in Germany, he said: ”I don’t know. I’m not involved in politics in Germany.” He said he met Harksen through an inconclusive proposal to bring a boxing bout to Cape Town. Harksen was always coming up with ideas.
”We could do this and this: not only buying properties; he wanted to set up businesses and casinos, but I realised it was a lot of talk and no substance.”
The commission also on Friday heard Harksen’s attorney Zirk Mackay state ”for the record” that his client stood by the evidence he had given.
Harksen earlier this month threatened to ”withdraw” his testimony, in an apparent fit of pique at being removed from protective custody and put back in jail. The commission, appointed by former Western Cape premier Peter Marais, began sitting in May.
Since then it has heard not only Harksen’s claims that he gave over a million rand to Morkel and the DA, but also reams of evidence on the Watchdog electronic device, which sparked a bugging scare in the Western Cape provincial administration. Judge Desai has set an October 31 deadline for written submissions from the lawyers involved in the hearings. November had been set aside for finalising the commission’s report, which he said would be ready no later than November 30. – Sapa