The stalled judicial commission of inquiry into whether the City of Cape Town broke the law when it hired private detectives to investigate its political opponents will continue, Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool has told his advisers and Cape Town mayor Helen Zille.
Rasool suspended public hearings by the Erasmus commission last month after Zille complained that the inquiry was unconstitutional. He has now received a progress report from the commission’s evidence leader, Frans Pietersen, and according to sources familiar with his thinking, he is determined to press on with the inquiry.
The commission has been looking into the conduct of the council and investigations firm George Fivaz and Associates (GFA). The probe was ordered by Cape Town speaker Dirk Smit into allegations that Badih Chabaan, a councillor with strong ties to the local underworld, had been using bribes and threats to induce other councillors to cross the floor to his National People’s Party.
Zille confirmed this week that Rasool had told her that he would not scrap the commission. ”He will have to back down though, because the commission is not legal,” Zille insisted.
The premier’s decision comes as a number of criminal cases and disciplinary hearings sparked by the ”spygate” saga gather momentum.
Philip du Toit, the investigator who was subcontracted by GFA to handle the Chabaan investigation, is due to appear in the Atlantis regional court on Monday charged with possession of abalone worth R9-million.
That case deals with the first of three occasions last year when Du Toit was arrested while doing undercover work as a paid informant of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA).
He was supplying information about abalone and drug smuggling syndicates in the Western Cape to NIA. This was passed on to the Scorpions and police, resulting in several arrests, three law enforcement sources have told the Mail & Guardian.
The police, however, are denying any knowledge of his informer status, and the NIA has made no move to assist him.
On the contrary, Du Toit’s handler, ”Cassie” Karstens, has been suspended and Du Toit was called to testify at Karstens’s internal disciplinary hearing last week.
Karstens’s suspension flows from a different set of charges against Du Toit — that he was involved in the alleged September 2007 hijacking of a truckload of electronic equipment.
Both underworld and law enforcement sources familiar with the circumstances insist that there was no hijacking and that Du Toit simply allowed stolen goods to be stored in his garage. He informed Karstens before the delivery was made, these people said.
During that arrest, the police seized the recordings of conversations between councillors and electronic surveillance equipment that sparked the Erasmus commission.
During Du Toit’s application for bail in the hijacking case, investigating officer Captain Lisa Potgieter testified that NIA officials had told her superiors at the police’s organised crime unit that Du Toit had no ties to the NIA and was not an informant.
But it seems she had, in fact, known about his status for the best part of a year.
A handwritten note, apparently written by Potgieter to Du Toit in early 2007, reads: ”Cassie het met my gepraat — alles gereël vir Februarie 8. Moenie worrie. [Cassie spoke to me — everything is arranged for February 8. Don’t worry.]”
The note refers to a court appearance in the abalone case, in which, it is understood, Du Toit’s informer status would ensure that he escaped conviction.
This week, Potgieter said she had simply told the court what the NIA told her superiors.