It’s hard to imagine what will be the final outcome of the Hefer commission. Will it produce new information, uncover some previously unnoticed subterfuge or harshly illuminate an existing one? Will it produce startling new intelligence, expose a few more surprise entrants, like Vanessa Brereton? Will it bring into dazzling light the sheer moral purity of all involved in the arms deal? Or will it fizzle out like the King commission into Hansie Cronje’s match-fixing? It’s almost impossible to predict at this stage. The commission seems hardly able to get itself off the ground. In fact it doesn’t even seem able to find the runway. With all the bells and whistles of serious media attention plus loads of good intentions it sort of staggered into action. No one knew what to do, where to look.
That Mac Maharaj and Mo Shaik were playing a very artful game was easy to see. Right from the outset they identified and deployed the commission’s available options to a degree that threatens the whole affair with long-term diversion. Whether they have the right to ask for sight of classified documents — some apparently dating from the files of the previous government — or whether their intention is merely one of causing distraction, is not as yet established. Counsel for the current government security apparatus, George Bizos, argued that such documentation is privileged and that, in any event, Maharaj and Shaik had earlier announced that, in fact, they were in possession of the relevant documentation. They had said so in support of their contention that National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka was a spy for the apartheid security apparatus. ‘Why do they want documents they already have?” was Bizos’s quiet but very pointed question.
Judge Joos Hefer’s position is unenviable. Were he to decide to call the bluff, he would no doubt immediately be accused of juggling with the impartiality of the process. If he does nothing it seems more than likely that when Messrs Mac and Mo show up again, later in November, they will produce some brand new rabbits out of some brand new top hats. Judge Hefer’s position is truly unenviable: a pioneer in some ways, in others a somewhat baffled traveller.
It was most enlightening to listen to the evidence given to the commission by two of Ngcuka’s coevals, one from his days at university, and both of whom had spent time in prison with him. I did not see other witnesses in support of Ngcuka, but to find more patently credible witnesses than these two would have been difficult. The recollections by Patrick Maqubela and Mbulelo Hongo of events and dates aligned snugly, were unemotional, reserved and presented a picture that must have been entirely ungratifying to those who accuse Ngcuka of political heresy. What these two had to say will be hard for anyone or anything to neutralise. This was straight-from-the-shoulder stuff.
When it comes to the matter of former Sunday Times journalist Ranjeni Munusamy the commission’s water becomes murkier. Here the long-argued ‘right” of journalists to protect their sources is up for yet another bashing. Everyone has an opinion about that chestnut. There is much elegance in arguments forwarded by Rob Amato of The Sunday Independent. Journalists, wrote Amato, have no absolute right to silence about their sources. Due care has to be taken about people’s reputations and each case should be judged on its own merits.
It’s quite hard to question the legal grounding behind that view. Given overarching protection by either court or statute, journalists would be set free to do virtually whatever they wanted to do, write whatever they liked secure in the knowledge that whatever they wrote would be accorded a specious credibility, never to be tested in open colloquy. In the case of Jacob Zuma and Ngcuka, each had and used opportunities to accuse or settle grave doubts on the character of the other. The result is that both men’s reputations have been sorely injured. The media went along with all that and it can be argued that the media amplified the slander. If a journalist had, in effect, invented a story, so dire in the telling as to taint reputations, it would seem grossly unfair that the journalist could then seek shelter from accusations of improper professional conduct behind some barricade of immunity. There has to be a stage at which answers have to be given.
Judge Hefer clearly recognised these conflicts and made a ruling that said Munusamy would have to give evidence to the commission. His decision is on appeal. But he did allow some slack in the painter, saying that Munusamy could refuse to answer questions she felt were compromising of her sources. This was a bit like letting the horse decide where to take the cart.
In recess until November 10, the Hefer commission closed off its second week with the advantage securely in Ngcuka’s court. What this sometimes bizarre procedure will eventually bring forth is all for the guessing. All the wailing and gnashing of teeth is decidedly biblical.