It was a week of superlative damage to reputations in Cape Town’s Wynberg Regional Court.
Former safety and security minister Sydney Mufamadi was a ”liar”; top policemen had plotted to kill Nelson Mandela; Sicilian-born mobster Vito Palazzolo and German fugitive Jurgen Harksen had got their dirty hands all over agents of the state; and President Thabo Mbeki hovered in the background, compromised by the acts he allegedly condoned.
Pity magistrate AP Kotze, who in the end has to choose what to believe and to make sense of a case that has ”cloak and dagger” and ”smoke and mirrors” written all over it.
In the dock was Andre Lincoln, the suspended commander of the now-defunct presidential investigation task unit (Pitu), an elite police squad launched by then-president Mandela in 1996 to unearth corrupt links between senior government figures and mafiosi. The focus was on Palazzolo.
Lincoln is a former African National Congress intelligence man who by most accounts was a confidant of Mbeki. The subtext of the 46 fraud and theft charges against Lincoln is that he became exactly the kind of government figure he was supposed to investigate — one corrupted by association with Palazzolo.
The marathon trial drew towards a close this week. Captain Piet Viljoen, the policeman who arrested Harksen earlier this year, testified in Lincoln’s defence. Palazzolo, summoned by the magistrate, helped the court to ”clarify” some matters. Neither held back.
Here are some of the players:
Lincoln: Palazzolo, not so subtly, bestowed the kiss of death on the former Pitu commander. Palazzolo, in the witness stand: ”We are always friends. In fact I regard [Lincoln] as one of my best friends … As far as I’m aware he has never done anything against me.”
Viljoen, earlier testifying for Lincoln, was of a similar mind, but with a different rationale: when Viljoen was ordered to take over the Palazzolo investigation after Lincoln’s arrest in early 1998, he found Lincoln’s files on the mobster worthless. Yes, they contained valuable intelligence reports to Mbeki, among others, on Palazzolo and his activities. But none of this had been pursued in a way that could be used to prosecute the man.
Viljoen ascribed this failure to Lincoln’s lack of police suss and not to a decision to protect Palazzolo. ”Director Lincoln has no investigative experience. I am saying this not to be nasty. He also had no administrative experience.”
Viljoen agreed with Lincoln’s own defence, that his apparent closeness to Palazzolo derived from his ”legend” (intelligence-speak for ”cover”): Lincoln had posed as a policeman who could do the mobster favours exactly so he could get close to him and gather information.
But again, Palazzolo shook the court later when he revealed a pre-existing relationship with Lincoln. He first met him in early 1994, before the elections, in the company of Harksen, in the context of a business deal. Lincoln was an ANC intelligence man but he was also ”supposed to perform certain duties for Harksen”.
Palazzolo said he arranged accommodation for Lincoln near where he stayed on Cape Town’s western seaboard. ”We became good acquaintances; I’d say we became friends.”
And, if Palazzolo is to be believed, their friendship did play a factor in Lincoln’s behaviour. In 1996, when Lincoln was already amalgamated in the police, he told Palazzolo there were reports of the latter’s involvement with politicians and policemen. ”He told me that since he was friends with me, he should take over the investigation.”
And another kiss of death: charge 39 against Lincoln is that after he had accompanied Palazzolo to Angola in mid-1997, he claimed and pocketed R12 744 in expenses from the police, while in fact Palazzolo had paid his expenses. Lincoln says he repaid Palazzolo with the police money. Viljoen said his investigations showed a strong possibility this was true.
Palazzolo’s denial was blunt: ”No. As a matter of fact I did not expect to be refunded.”
Who will magistrate Kotze believe: the prosecution and a mobster, or the accused and his defence witness, a celebrated but controversial policeman?
Old-guard policemen: In his testimony Viljoen laid the foundation for a series of conspiracies. If Lincoln’s lawyers build on them, they could argue Lincoln was targeted because he messed with a corrupt old guard.
Exhibit 1 was Viljoen’s investigation (as a member of Lincoln’s Pitu) of ”Project Donna”, a top-secret project run from police headquarters in Pretoria. The project went rotten and police members got involved in a counterfeit currency ring.
There was even information that some of the same people wanted to assassinate Mandela at his May 1994 inauguration. Apparent corroboration was found when Pitu seized a specially built assassination rifle from a police safe house in Pretoria. And it was old guard vs new: while Viljoen and Lincoln briefed Mbeki and Mufamadi, ”the number of senior police members mentioned … meant that our investigation encountered much opposition [from police]”.
In the end, Viljoen testified, the investigation went nowhere when Lincoln was arrested and then-police chief Georg Fivaz told him, Viljoen, to prioritise the Palazzolo investigation.
Viljoen gave no direct evidence that Lincoln’s arrest was to protect old-guard policemen or others, but said: ”I started wondering if Director Lincoln did not have to be removed to squash certain investigations.”
Mufamadi: A main point of contention in the trial has been the reporting lines followed by Lincoln and his unit. Mufamadi, in earlier testimony, maintained the official position that Lincoln had reported to Fivaz as police chief. Lincoln maintained that he reported primarily to Mufamadi and Mbeki.
If the court accepts Lincoln’s version, it may also accept that some of Lincoln’s alleged actions were sanctioned from the very top even though the police say there was no sanction. It may help get him off the hook.
Prosecutor Andre Bouwer to Viljoen: ”What is your comment if Minister Mufamadi were to say, as he said in this court, that he did not receive reports [from the unit]?”
Viljoen: ”I am not here to embarrass anyone. But if he said that, it was a total lie.”
Viljoen detailed seven meetings between 1996 and 1999 with Mbeki, Mufamadi or both. And those were only the meetings that he, Lincoln’s subordinate, attended. There were more to which Lincoln went alone.
Just how fraught the issue of reporting lines became is evident from one of the meetings Viljoen attended, in August 1997. Lincoln asked Viljoen along to Mbeki’s Union Building office, where Lincoln told the then-deputy president of ”his unhappiness with interference in the Palazzolo investigation” and the fact that Fivaz had summoned him (Lincoln) to see him.
Mbeki, according to Viljoen, said he was ”tired of these problems” and told Lincoln not to go see Fivaz. Instead Mbeki arranged a meeting with Fivaz, Mufamadi and both policemen at his residence. When Viljoen and Lincoln arrived, Mbeki and Mufamadi were not yet there. Fivaz was waiting outside in his car. The policemen were invited to wait inside; Fivaz was not. ”I had a problem with this. The protocol was not right,” testified Viljoen.
Mbeki: Did the president or did he not?
”Exhibit K” is heavy artillery in the state case against Lincoln. It is a letter Lincoln wrote in August 1997, at the request of Palazzolo’s lawyer, ”clearing” the mafioso of various allegations made against him. It concludes: ”It has been a pleasure for me to assist your client … I really hope that this letter contributes toward solving your client’s problems.”
The state suggested this was prime evidence that Lincoln was corrupted. Not so, countered Lincoln: it was just part of his ”legend”. He could not pose as a friend of Palazzolo and not write the letter. It was only a ploy and the investigation continued. What’s more, Lincoln testified, Mbeki had sanctioned the letter and even followed up with a personal meeting with Palazzolo to ”reassure” him he was not under investigation.
The presidency has refused comment under the sub judice rule. All eyes were on Palazzolo this week in the witness box — would he confirm that the president falsely reassured him he was not being investigated?
Palazzolo confirmed the meeting with Mbeki, but put a different spin on it, planting another kiss of death on Lincoln. According to Palazzolo, Lincoln took him to Mbeki, who said: ”I don’t know why you have come to me — to do what?” Mbeki made it clear to Lincoln at the meeting that he should report to Fivaz, Palazzolo claimed. ”The deputy president made it clear he was not responsible for this task unit … he made his distance clear,” Palazzolo told the court.
As damaging to Mbeki could be another claim by Lincoln: that the president condoned the theft of privileged documents from Cyril Prisman, then Palazzolo’s lawyer. Charge 38 against Lincoln is that in 1997 he defrauded the state by claiming R15 000 in police money had been paid to ”PI-11”, an unnamed informer who, the prosecution says, did not exist.
Lincoln’s defence is that PI-11 did exist: he was an employee in Prisman’s office, where he lifted valuable documentation which showed, among others, that Palazzolo intended to negotiate a deal with the United States FBI.
To cover the eventuality that Lincoln’s defence may be true, the state also charged Lincoln with, alternatively, conspiring with PI-11 to steal privileged documents.
Lincoln said in cross-examination earlier this year that Mbeki was handed the documents after they had been lifted from Prisman’s office and that he knew of their origin — in other words that the then-deputy president had, at least retrospectively, condoned the ”theft”.
Again, pity magistrate Kotze who must decide the truth in all of this.