Najwa Petersen appeared in court every day wearing a colour-coordinated suit, matching scarf and hennaed fingernails.
She ordered 30 new outfits for the trial, allegedly underwent liposuction and had a breast enlargement operation barely a month after Petersen’s death. ”She’s now a 36DD!” friends and relatives of Petersen said outside court.
Najwa comes from a fruit- and diamond-trading family, the Dirks of Namibia. Her father, Suleiman Dirk, who died last year in a car accident en route to Namibia, was a highly influential figure in her life. Tabloid newspapers reported that Najwa’s relationship with him helps explain her four failed marriages, the last to Taliep. ”Nobody lived up to daddy,” said Die Son in its analysis of the marriage.
In court the alleged hitmen said they received some payments directly from Dirk, who owned Dirk Fruit, an importer of fresh fruit to Namibia.
When her trial started the street outside the high court was packed with Oshakati-registered cars, mostly BMWs and large 4x4s, there to support the sister who married the man who made them famous.
Dirk and his wife lived in Athlone in a house that police suspect was bought with money made by Petersen, who was quite wealthy after decades making the minstrel performances of the Cape globally famous.
The fruit fortune, combined with Peterson’s, meant the couple were comfortably well-off. But the money, with Najwa’s fragility, was instrumental in straining their marriage to breaking point.
Revealing just how money flowed, on the night of the murder Najwa allegedly gave a bag with R27 000 in cash to Fahiem ”Piele” Hendriks and Waheed Hassen, the supposed hitmen. More would be paid in wads of cash in the days following the murder, according to the state.
Najwa had power of attorney over all Petersen’s money. Two weeks after his death, Petersen’s sister arrived at their house and found Najwa and a broker completing paperwork to claim Petersen’s R5,3-million life insurance policy.
Petersen’s family and friends claim he wanted to divorce her and had bought a house where he planned to live with his children. He had four children from a previous marriage and another with Najwa.
The mirror into Najwa’s personality is contained in Petersen’s diary of his last year, 2006. An analysis of the first four months reveals she was a chronically ill woman who spent almost 85% of her time in bed.
The singer was obsessive about his wife’s health and wellbeing, revealing their intimacy even as he contemplated taking leave of her. He kept tabs on her medication, on her every ailment and movement. The diary reveals Najwa as a woman with everything and nothing: more money than she needed but without the mental health or vitality to enjoy her marriage.
It’s also clear from his diary that Petersen himself was intimately involved in taking care of Najwa. He meticulously recorded her ailments, the medicines she took, her doctor’s appointments and her stays in hospital …
Even after he was stabbed in the neck with a knife, eight months before he was shot, he wrote: ”Najwa discharged from Gatesville at 15h30.”
At the end of the same day another entry reads: ”Taliep rushed to GMC (Gatesville Medical Centre), stabbed,” he wrote about himself.
Later when she was checked into the Crescent Clinic for treatment for depression. ”Najwa extremely depressed,” he wrote. ”Najwa head confusion AGAIN” is a frequent entry. The detail of care, the constant calls to doctors and the way in which Petersen documented everything suggests a highly dependent relationship — but we now know that it was fraying.
The state’s case suggests the marriage quickly came apart in 2006 once Najwa got wind that Taliep wanted out. By December that year she had allegedly contracted Hendriks to find somebody to undertake the hit, for which she promised payment of R100 000. There were two failed attempts: in the first the alleged hitmen (different to those on trial) did not have transport to get to the airport to take out Petersen as he got off a plane from London; in another Najwa allegedly told them exactly when she and Petersen would emerge from the Luxurama cinema in Wynberg.
It was third time unlucky for Taliep when he opened the door of his home on hearing a knock on the night of December 16 2006.
While Hendriks struggled with Petersen, Najwa came in. ”She grabbed him around the neck. Tears flowed from his eyes when he realised that she was in on the whole thing,” Hendriks said in his affidavit. ”I put the gun in the cushion and I said to Najwa: ‘Do it yourself.’ She pulled the trigger and then screamed.”
The trial continues on Tuesday