Publication	Business Day Weekender
Date	2006-11-11
Reporter	Carmel Rickard
Web Link	www.bday.co.za

As former millionaire businessman and political puppet-master Schabir Shaik begins his 15-year jail sentence for corruption, the prison authorities must take stock of his character in order to prepare for the “rehabilitation" process.

Time spent in prison is supposed to serve a variety of purposes, including retribution and rehabilitation. So what personality traits does Shaik display that might be corrected, if he is to come out of jail a useful member of society? The appeal court’s judgment gives a number of clues.

First, he was found to be a serious liar. He lied extensively. In promotional publications, he lied “about his professional qualifications and business achievements", though the trial court regarded this as a form of “puffing" and was prepared to overlook it. The court was unimpressed by his lack of embarrassment or regret about these particular lies. The trial court also took into account, as part of Shaik’s “pattern of conduct", his “wild overstatement", in a presentation to a bank, of the value of a contract he said had been secured by Nkobi, one of his companies. In fact no contract had been secured and the statement was made to impress the bank.

The court described Shaik as ambitious and brazen, “aggressive in pursuit of his interests and discernibly focused on achieving his vision of a large successful multi-corporate empire”.

He was a bully who had no qualms about using his relationship with Zuma as a stick with which to intimidate potential business partners who didn’t do what he wanted.

During 1999 Shaik sent a letter to a company with which he was trying to do business, confirming his interest in a joint venture and saying he would appreciate it if a senior official contacted him personally to discuss the matter.

When the official wrote back that his South African agent would contact Shaik within seven days to liaise with him, Shaik showed his short temper. He had a colleague write to the official saying Shaik found the man’s response “insulting to say the least", and that he was not prepared to meet a mere agent. Through his intermediary, he wrote, that he (Shaik) was “prepared to give (the official) three days to come back to him … failing which he will go back to Minister Zuma."

Later, Shaik wrote that he was meeting with Zuma the next day and if he did not have the response he had requested, “I shall move to inform … Zuma and seek to do whatever is necessary to stop (the official’s) process."

True, Shaik had no previous convictions. He built himself up from humble beginnings with great energy to a position from which he headed a corporate empire. But as a result of his convictions he has been effectively stripped of his fortune. The appeal court commented that “his criminal activities have reduced him to a position without money and power, the two things he most sought and strove towards". The judges said Shaik “calculatingly" made payments to the powerful politician, over a period of more than five years and “subverted" his friendship with Zuma into a relationship of patronage designed to achieve power and wealth.

In the view of the appeal judges, Shaik often behaved "aggressively and threateningly", using Zuma’s name “to intimidate people", and particularly potential business partners.

They regarded it as an “aggravating factor" that Shaik sustained a relationship with one of the most powerful politicians in the country for his corrupt purposes.