/ 12 December 2003

‘All of this will pass’

On Monday Bulelani Ngcuka’s spokesperson, Sipho Ngwema, strutted into the Hefer commission wearing a Kaizer Chiefs tie, clearly proud that his team had won the Coca-Cola Cup the previous weekend. Ngwema proceeded to taunt those he knew to be fans of Chiefs’ rivals Orlando Pirates, saying the Bucs were going to be his team’s next victims when the two meet in the Soweto derby this weekend.

If there had been a tie with Ngcuka’s face or name on it, Ngwema would probably have been wearing it. And taunts would have been reserved for his chief’s main rivals, Mac Maharaj and Mo Shaik.

Such was the triumphant mood in the National Director of Prosecutions boss Ngcuka’s camp this week. The scent of victory was in the air all week. It was becoming increasingly evident that allegations that Ngcuka was an apartheid spy were not going to stick. And with Judge Joos Hefer ruling that the abuse of power allegations could only be admissible if a causal link was shown with claims that Ngcuka was a spy, Shaik and Maharaj’s case was a dead duck.

As the temperature rose in the Free State capital, climbing from 31°C on Monday to 34°C on Thursday, the heat was on for Ngcuka’s foes. There was speculation among some journalists that Shaik and Maharaj, who arrived on Tuesday with caseloads of documents, would spring a surprise. But as Shaik’s white short-sleeved shirt on Tuesday showed, there was no ace up their sleeves.

This week was also meant to be a difficult one for Ngcuka because the witnesses, lined up to prove that he was a spy, came apart at the seams or failed to show up. First, retired security branch policeman Bernie Ley, who had participated in the making of a documentary suggesting that Ngcuka might have been a spy, admitted he had lied on camera to save his erstwhile security police comrade Gideon Nieuwoudt. By the time he had testified, the pathetic Ley was ready to be put down like a hapless pet.

Nieuwoudt saw the futility of coming to the commission to tell his story. He was expected to ask for a 14-day postponement, but Judge Hefer said he saw no reason for the commission to be dragged into the new year on the account of a man denied amnesty for his part in the killing of Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko and the Port Elizabeth anti-apartheid acti-vists known as the Pebco Three. Then home affairs official Willem Vorster told Judge Hefer that there had been nothing untoward in how Ngcuka had acquired his passport in 1981 nor in its subsequent renewal in 1986.

With this, he had reduced to a shambles Maharaj and Shaik’s most compelling piece of evidence. Unconvinced, Shaik told black journalists later in the week: “You guys should have applied for a passport in the apartheid years, it was much easier than now.”

By this time it was clear that Ngcuka had no case to answer — a point underscored by feisty evidence leader Kessie Naidu, who told the commissioner that he would not be cross-examining Ngcuka.

Naidu’s decision was remarkable given that he had developed a reputation as a ruthless cross-examiner who kicked bad witnesses when they were down. At best, Ngcuka’s taking the witness chair was, in the words of his counsel Marumo Moerane, SC, “to tell us in his own words how these allegations had affected him personally”.

When Ngcuka did, it was “not to clear my name. I am not here to prove my innocence.” In a direct swipe at his detractors and those making spy allegations against him, he added: “Not a single honourable member of the ANC has ever suggested that any operation had been compromised, that any cadre had been arrested, detained, sentenced, tortured or killed because of anything that I had done or failed to do or say.” Referring to the now infamous off-the-record briefing with newspaper editors, he said: “I broke no law, and I defamed no one.”

Ngcuka said he would not “descend to the gutter” by betraying his word to the editors at the briefing and repeating its contents in public.

Ngcuka’s other victories were beyond what he could have anticipated. For example, as Ley complained that his friend of three decades, Nieuwoudt, had “played me like a fiddle”, his former comrade, Ntobeko Maqubela — whom Ngcuka was alleged to have sold out, causing him to be sentenced to a 20-year jail term — came out stronger.

After a day and a half on the witness stand on Thursday, it started looking as if Shaik and Maharaj’s lawyer, Steven Joseph, could extract a confession from Ngcuka.

But in the end Joseph succeeded only in getting Ncguka to concede that he might have been the source The Star deputy editor, Jovial Rantao, was referring to in an interview with Maharaj. In this, Rantao asked Maharaj whether he was aware that his wife was about to be arrested.

But even if that was correct, Ngcuka added, the information was incorrect because there was no such arrest in the offing.

The romantic side of the man who strikes terror in the hearts of criminals also shone through. He said contrary to allegations that he had a jolly time in jail, he was in fact prevented from seeing his then fiancÃ