Four witnesses took the stand in the Schabir Shaik fraud and corruption trial in the Durban High Court before lunch on Wednesday.

First was Abdool Mangerah who testified that personal loans he made to Deputy President Jacob Zuma were settled by Shaik who regarded the payments as a donation to the African National Congress.

Then it was advocate Gerhard Visagie, formerly second in charge at what was then the Heath Special Investigating Unit.

He testified about the unit's difficulty in getting an investigation into possible arms deal irregularities off the ground.

Next advocate Jannie Lubbe, also from the former Heath unit, told the court about a letter he received from former justice minister Penuell Maduna just before midnight *1 on January 16, 2001, requesting him to "quickly go through whatever material, particularly that which was furnished to Judge (Willem) Heath by Ms Patricia de Lille MP some time last year".

Maduna said he wanted Lubbe to advise him on whether or not information about alleged arms deal irregularities warranted a criminal investigation.

In the letter, Maduna said President Thabo Mbeki had requested Lubbe's help before deciding whether a special investigation unit had to be established or whether the Heath unit should be tasked with the matter.

Lubbe said at that time there were issues surrounding the legality of Heath's appointment as head of the unit.

Three days after the request was sent to Lubbe, Mbeki *1 announced that the Heath unit would be excluded from the investigation.

Next in the witness box was David Read, the former audit manager at Thomson-CSF Southern Africa.

He told Judge Hillary Squires that he and his audit partner had confronted Thomson boss Alain Thetard about bribery allegations made by former secretary Susan Delique.

She alleged that Thetard was involved in bribing government ministers for defence contracts.

He said Thetard "flatly denied" the allegation and they could find no evidence to the contrary in the company's books *2.

The trial continues.

With acknowledgement to Sapa.

*1 Desperately seeking the Houdini manoeuvre.

For those who may remember the infamous fully televised goon show (waving intercepted organigrams and other theatrics) that January day (19th) in 2001, the show started a little late because Maduna went to brief his boss beforehand. When Maduna returned he was asked by someone how The Boss had reacted and the response was something like "he just gave a smile" - sure he did - things were now going His Way.

*2 As said before, this was because the donation went straight into the ABSA bank account of Kobitech (Pty) Ltd from Thomson-CSF International (France) to Thomson-CSF International (Turkey) to Thomson-CSF International (Mauritius).

This happened on 2001-02-16, which the SABC might note is half-way through Accused No.1's long-time friend's first term in office.

Interesting though, someone else (who made the application for the foreign exchange transfer by completing Form E) also forgot that this was a donation to a bursary trust and called it a "Commission or Brokerage" - silly billy *1.

Billy probably also graduated from the Sultin College of Cryptography and Interest-Free Loanations, but got a condoned pass for Covering Your Tracks I, or maybe he slipped the dean a fiver and passed with a distinction.