The run-up to the Schabir Shaik corruption trial starting in Durban on Monday has seen the media sharply focusing on the main players in the upcoming drama — even the judge.
Interest in Judge Hillary Squires, who has been called out of retirement to hear the case, perked earlier this week when a newspaper reported — wrongly — that he is already 81 years old.
And on Friday it emerged that Squires also served as a politician and tough justice minister in the then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the 1970s under Ian Smith.
Initial media enquiries about Squires were met with a response that the judge would not release any statements about the Shaik trial or himself to the press.
Reached on the phone by the South African Press Association on Tuesday, the judge’s wife (who asked not to be named) was similarly reticent, but did express amusement at the claim that her husband is an octogenarian.
”He definitely isn’t 81 as reported in the press,” she laughed, while still declining to give any detail.
”I can’t tell you anything about him because I don’t want my head bitten off,” she quipped.
Brief details in CV
But on Wednesday, pressured by a flurry of other media enquiries, the judge’s office released his official CV, giving brief details only of his legal career.
It said that Squires (72) graduated from the University of Cape Town with a law degree in 1955. South African-born, he worked first as a judge’s clerk and then as a public prosecutor.
This was followed by private practice as an advocate, first in Bulawayo and then Salisbury (now Harare).
”Appointed to Zimbabwe/Rhodesia High Court 1979,” says the next entry in the CV, moving straight on to ”resigned 1984 and settled in Durban”.
However, during this period Squires also became an MP and served in Smith’s Rhodesian Front government.
Political commentator David Caute’s 1983 book on Rhodesia, Under the Skin, details a 1978 clash between Squires and Lot Dewa, a radical black MP inside Rhodesia who complained about police threats.
”Dewa bombarded the Minister of Justice, Hilary [sic] Squires, with complaints on behalf of his constituents. Squires threatened to sue Dewa for damages if he distributed any further circulars accusing the minister of dereliction of duty.”
Later that year, after Smith concluded a power-sharing agreement with nationalist leader Bishop Abel Muzorewa — a pact that excluded Robert Mugabe’s Zanu and Joshua Nkomo’s Zapu parties — Squires became co-minister of justice with former detainee Byron Hove.
Hove’s outspokenness on various issues, including the need for transformation in the police and judiciary, drew criticism from several quarters — including Squires — and he was sacked.
In 1979, according to Caute, Squires became minister of defence, but handed over the portfolio to Muzorewa when the bishop in May became prime minister of what was called Zimbabwe Rhodesia.
Squires left politics later that year to take up the appointment as a High Court judge.
In 1983, he presided in the trial of top Zapu officials, including Dumiso Dabengwa and Lieutenant General Lookout Masuku, whom he found not guilty of treason.
Dabengwa eventually became home affairs minister to Zimbabwe’s current president, Robert Mugabe.
After settling in Durban with his family, Squires joined a friend’s firm of attorneys as an articled clerk. He resumed practice as an advocate in 1986, served as an acting judge for periods in 1987 and 1988, and was permanently appointed to the Natal provincial division in 1988.
He ”came off the active service list” in January last year, on turning 70.
‘Highly intelligent’
A Zimbabwean human rights lawyer said on Friday that Squires’s judgements during his time on the bench in that country indicated he is a ”highly intelligent person”.
Another source said Squires had as a minister had an authoritarian, conservative image, and had been ”very tough on security issues”.
Judge President of the Natal provincial division Vuka Tshabalala said earlier this week he had chosen Squires because ”the case may take long and may stop and start and it will be destructive for the functioning of the court”.
He said if a judge in active service takes on a case like the Shaik trial, ”it takes him off his work completely”.
”At least a retired judge doesn’t have to worry about all the other things he still has to do.” — Sapa