Former intelligence operative Mo Shaik handed reporter Ranjeni Munusamy an intelligence report stating that head prosecutor Bulelani Ngcuka was a probable apartheid spy, the Hefer commission heard on Tuesday.
Former transport minister Mac Maharaj testified that Shaik would admit to this when he took the stand before the commission.
Evidence leader Advocate Kessie Naidu extracted the admission from Maharaj during lengthy cross-examination on Monday. Maharaj told judge Joos Hefer that Shaik had reconstructed the particular document in December 2002.
The original report dated from late 1989 or early 1990. It was an analysis of information that Shaik’s intelligence network had gathered on Ngcuka, Maharaj testified.
At the time, Shaik was head of the African National Congress’ intelligence operations within apartheid South Africa. The report stated that Ngcuka was “most probably” at the time a “high-level source” for the apartheid government within the National Association of Democratic Lawyers (Nadel).
Up till now the commission had been trying in vain to identify the sources for a newspaper report by Munusamy in which spying allegations against Ngcuka first surfaced.
Shaik and Maharaj were the first to confirm the reported allegations.
According to Munusamy she had used several sources to verify the spy claims.
She earlier refused to testify before the commission, claiming that it could force her to reveal confidential sources.
She told Hefer in a sworn affidavit that she had been receiving threats from sources who feared to be identified.
On Tuesday Naidu quoted from an article by Munusamy, in which she told how she had come across a database where the names of apartheid spies are stored.
Naidu asked Maharaj where this database could be found, and Maharaj said it could have been the database of Project Bible, (a project headed by Mo Shaik and Jacob Zuma to identify apartheid era spies), the database of the ANC’s intelligence section, or a database of a “democratic government”.
“It could be any of those three,” said Maharaj.
Naidu asked Maharaj if he had given this information to Munusamy, which he denied, adding that he had no idea where she had seen the information.
Maharaj said he believed that Ngcuka’s conduct was in breach of the National Prosecution Authority Act. Maharaj has alleged that Ngcuka told black editors at an off-the-record briefing that Maharaj’s wife Zarina was about to be investigated for tax evasion.
“It is me, or is it a pattern?” said Maharaj.
The result of the briefing was a Sunday Times report revealing the allegations against the Maharaj couple.