Four years after the start of fraud and corruption investigations into Durban businessman Schabir Shaik in 2001, his marathon high-profile trial, involving Deputy President Jacob Zuma and a controversial arms deal with a French company Thomson CSF, finally reached closure on Wednesday.
”Many people told me the trial would last for years,” said chief investigating officer Johan du Plooy, adding that he is happy that the parties in the case made so much progress in such a short period.
He said he is ”relieved because it was hard work, but sad because we’ve been working solidly on this case, especially in the last year-and-a-half”.
Du Plooy said the prosecuting team worked round the clock, often seven days a week, and between September and November last year clocked up a record 287 hours of overtime.
Du Plooy said in all ”we spent 68 full days in court, that’s without the half-days and postponements”.
The start of the much-publicised trial was greeted with a media frenzy in October, with almost all seats in the public gallery taken up by the media.
In stark contrast, Wednesday’s closure was only witnessed by a handful of people in the public gallery and a few die-hard reporters.
Even the number of legal experts who filled the front of courtroom A at the start had thinned out.
At the lunch break, Shaik’s assistants started carrying out some of the huge lever-arch files containing his copies of the evidence and arguments that had been stacked around the courtroom at the start of the trial.
This included some of the forensic evidence presented on behalf of the state by KPMG auditor Johan van der Walt, who was given access to a National Prosecuting Authority strongroom of documents to do his job.
Van der Walt, who described himself as a ”bloodhound”, was in the witness box for 16 days.
Police officers based at the court also said their goodbyes to the journalists whom they had come to know and had searched and tagged with neon-coloured armbands during the first few months of the trial.
At that stage, security was tight and only accredited journalists were allowed to enter and sit in the media section of the court.
Wednesday was also the last day that Hughie Webb, the elderly, slightly stooped and bespectacled court orderly, went up to everyone who entered the court while it was in session, to ask if they had switched off their cellphones.
Journalists in particular were targeted by Webb, who would announce that ”his Lordship is about to enter the court, please switch off your cell telephones” in English, Afrikaans and isiZulu before the start of proceedings.
A date for judgement has yet to be set. — Sapa