Opinion

Roberta Flack had a hit song in the 1960s in which she sang about a young man who killed her softly with his love song. It was a figurative expression about how intent and effect sometimes do not match.

The Hefer Commission hearing in Bloemfontein seems to be heading the same way for one Jacob Zuma, deputy president of the republic and of the African National Congress.

Mo Shaik, an intelligence officer for the ANC and for the republic until a few years ago (if one can ever say that about intelligence operatives), is a man hugely dedicated to Zuma.

He has been at pains to say so at the commission.

He reconstructed an intelligence report last year not because his own brother was neck-deep in trouble with the Scorpions, but because he was flying a flag for Zuma. This was because he could not sit there and watch a good man's name being soiled by someone like Bulelani Ngcuka, who could well have been a spy of the old regime.

So like a good lieutenant when the boss is in trouble, he went back to a database being held clandestinely and apparently only known to himself and Zuma, and created a way out. This was to be the explanation that would go out into the public arena to explain why a good man was being hounded by a "scoundrel".

And so the report emerged stating what is now national common knowledge: There is reason to believe that Ngcuka had spied for the apartheid regime under code name RS452.

The basis for this argument was essentially multifold.

Firstly, two reports stolen from the security branch of old, stating that agent RS452 was informing on the National Association of Democratic Lawyers (Nadel) and on a trust fund formed to help prosecute the struggle through education.

Secondly, a belief that Ngcuka was the one who shopped Ntobeko Maqubela, Mboniswa Maqhutyana and Mpumelelo Gaba in Durban in 1981 that saw them arrested and charged with sedition and sentenced to long prison terms.

Linked to this was the corollary that because Ngcuka had shopped the freedom fighters, the system had colluded to hide this by seeming to be sentencing him to a three-year jail term for refusing to testify. The contention by Mo and Mac Maharaj was that he had actually not served the term.

Thirdly, there were a number of passport issues that did not make sense to Mo. These included the fact that a passport which Ngcuka had applied for, just prior to his arrest, had been issued after security police had said they had no problem with him being given a passport. On top of that, the processing of that passport, just about a month, had been too quick for Mo, who saw it as evidence of Ngcuka's spying activities.

Fourthly, a statement by notorious former security branch policeman Gideon Nieuwoudt, who was one of the men that killed Steve Biko in detention, who said he had wanted to recruit Ngcuka but had been told he was already working for the intelligence service. Mo also asserted in that crucial report that a National Intelligence Service agent, Morris von Greunen, had recruited Ngcuka in the 1970s and that NIS had paid for his schooling.

In almost all these assertions, Mo has been shown to be wrong. Ngcuka had not attended the Nadel meeting which RS452 reported on. While Ngcuka had served on the trust, it did not follow that he was a spy whose report could end in RS452's file. The explanation, lawyers put it to Mo, was most likely that another lawyer who worked under self-confessed agent RS452 Vanessa Brereton, and who had been co-opted into the trust, had become the unwitting and unknowing feeder of information about the trust to the police via her.

Maqubela asserted that the man who sold him out was a Swaziland-based agent who was later exposed and who is known to both Mo and Maharaj. Litha Jolobe, also sold out by the same man, corroborated this. The prison-term allegation also went by the wayside when Mbulelo Hongo said he had served the three years with Ngcuka.

The passport theories are simply that. The application was made through a black agency whose owner testified before the commission saying the police had tried to get the passport back. That it was issued too early cannot of itself mean a man was a spy.

Nieuwoudt's assertions have also proved to be false; Ngcuka was in Geneva when Nieuwoudt alleges he put a block on the use of the passport and was about to recruit him. Van Greunen, the intelligence agent who was supposed to have recruited Ngcuka during his school days, has denied this, adding that when he was working in the area, Ngcuka would have been too young for such work anyway.

And so virtually all the pillars of the spying allegations have fallen by the wayside. And with that the issue that loomed larger and larger by the day was: Why? Why start a damaging campaign like that on such flimsy grounds or information against a man who was just trying to do his work?

Mo said it was to protect Zuma after the Scorpions opened an investigation into the deputy president's probable involvement in arms-deal corruption. It was not because of some do-good feeling for the general good of the nation, or protecting the constitution, or the bill of rights, or public morality. It was not even for his brother Schabir, but for Zuma.

Zuma, he said, was his commander to whom he had sent the first report on Ngcuka in 1989. Zuma knew, he said, that he held a database giving him access to 888 names of possible agents of apartheid and Zuma was the only person who could order him to hand it over. That order had not come, until this past weekend when he handed a number of CD-Roms to the state.

It was to Zuma that Mo had immediately turned when two years ago Justice Minister Penuell Maduna had asked him about the existence of a file or investigation on Ngcuka. Zuma had told him not to confirm or hand over anything.

And as one of the advocates at the hearing asked, why was it wrong to answer a minister of state who wanted to know about a senior official in his department? Why did the deputy president of the republic feel his minister should not know?

In saying all these things Mo inadvertently put Zuma in the middle of the Hefer hearings, making it virtually impossible to argue for his non-appearance. It had undone a delicate plan that the ANC had put together to extricate Zuma from an earlier problem he had put himself in.

This was when soon after the commission was appointed, Zuma had laughingly told journalists he would have no problem testifying if the commission felt he could be helpful. It was a statement that was designed to say that the deputy president has nothing to hide or fear and would help a government-appointed structure.

But what it really meant was that he was placing himself in a situation where he could be called and cross-examined by Marumo Moerane, Ngcuka's advocate, about his relationship with Mo and when he had known about the reconstructed report. He could be questioned about whether he had shared his concerns with President Thabo Mbeki, why he had not intervened when Ngcuka was appointed to this sensitive post, and even his relationship with the other Shaik brother Schabir and the huge loans from that quarter.

In short, Ngcuka, who had opted out of failing in a court of law to prove a case against Zuma, would be able to prove his prima facie case before Hefer in Bloemfontein.

It was a serious situation and a National Working Committee (NWC) session of the ANC came with a way out to save him.

They said the ANC had no documents that could be used to help in the matter before the commission and as all documents had been given to state agencies, Zuma would not go to the commission, as he could not help it. This was true for those documents that may have been in official ANC custody, but not Mo's and Zuma's secret stash for rainy days.

People pooh-poohed this explanation, saying that it was obviously designed to save Zuma from the embarrassment of testifying, but it seemed to cool the temperature. Until Mo, ever so keen to defend his erstwhile boss, let it be known that there is actually a database that Zuma knows about and from which Ngcuka's reconstructed spy report had been extracted.

Being part of the NWC, it has to be asked, did Zuma lie to the organisation by omission when it declared publicly that all documents that Zuma could testify about were in state hands? Did he stay silent hoping it would not come out, at least not now? If so, did he tell Mo not to talk about it? Even without these questions, why did Mo say it anyway?

Whatever the answer, Mo had consciously or unconsciously dragged Zuma into the centre of the inquiry. And the past weekend must have seen serious consultations, because by Monday, Mo had handed the database to the state, meaning that Zuma again had no documents about which he could be questioned or help the commission. It can only mean, in terms of Mo's testimony last week, that Zuma had now made the order.

Also, the ANC may itself have leaned on Ngcuka to not insist on calling Zuma, thus taking him off from a potentially embarrassing situation, in return for the database being handed over.

For the ANC, this would have been crucial because both Maharaj and Mo came out of the gruelling cross-examination exercise badly bruised and with images tarnished. Maharaj is a has-been trading on a famous past, and Mo a mere state functionary at best. Zuma is deputy president and in his mind at least, a possible president in five or so years.

Had he gone to the commission and had come out as badly, what would that have meant for his position in the government? It may have been this real possibility that saw him tell Hefer over the weekend to go to hell, saying that he would not respond positively to a subpoena.

Beyond this, however, the question now is what impact the Hefer Commission's evidence - that the hugely inaccurate report was done to save him, and that he probably knew of its creation - has had on his image.

Both these considerations are not criminal acts for which he can be prosecuted, but do not at the same time leave him politically smelling like roses.

And therein lies the problem for President Thabo Mbeki.

If the shenanigans of the Hefer Commission leave Mbeki uncomfortable about the man, can he ask him to go or sack him or not re-appoint him next year? What political storms would that unleash within the ANC, where Zuma has already displayed an uncanny ability to mobilise grassroots support despite massive but non-complimentary media attention?

Whatever eventually happens, however, Zuma must have breathed a huge sigh of relief to hear Hefer say yesterday that he will not have to go to the commission and that he will live to survive another day.

Even if the reason for the alarm bells this time around was because a man who loves and adores him so much, was killing him oh so softly with love.

With acknowledgements to Mathatha Tsedu and The Star.