Publication: Weekend Argus Issued: Date: 2006-11-12 Reporter: Jeremy Gordin Reporter:

Why Shaik Still Believes He is Innocent

 

Publication 

Weekend Argus

Date

2006-11-12

Reporter

Jeremy Gordin

Web Link

www.capeargus.co.za

 

On Monday morning, Schabir Shaik's brothers, relatives, attorney and friends sat, grim-faced and almost frozen with disconsolation, on the sunny stoep of a Cape Town hotel.

"C'mon," Shaik said quietly, "think about all those people who are really sick or dying - this is not the end of the world."

The group had just listened, inside the hotel, on a hastily-borrowed radio, to the judgment summary delivered in Bloemfontein by Judge Craig Howie, president of the Supreme Court of Appeal.

Before Howie started reading, Reeves Parsee, Shaik's attorney, had scribbled a quick list on a piece of paper - "count one, appeal upheld/dismissed, count two, appeal upheld/dismissed", and so on. As Howie read, each tick that Parsee made next to each "dismissed" seemed like another blow of an axe on a condemned man's neck.

Howie had dismissed all Shaik's appeals, except a minor one related to one aspect of the asset forfeiture case against him and his 10 companies. He had also upheld the 15-year sentence given in June last year by Judge Hilary Squires in the Durban High Court on two counts of corruption and one of fraud.

Shaik did not listen to the broadcast. Instead he went for a walk in the hotel's leafy garden, carrying his prayer beads.

When he heard the news from his brother Yunis he even cracked a couple of Shaik-style jokes: "The prisoners better watch out. The new Hannibal Lecter is coming to town."

He then quietly agreed with his brothers that it sounded as though the judgment was not going to allow for a Constitutional Court appeal; that he needed to get back to his family in Durban.

Back in Durban on Monday night, the brothers decided on what Mo called "a media shutdown" - "this is no time for spin or rationalisations or being a victim, or any of that bullshit", Yunis said - and Schabir spent Tuesday and Wednesday at his home putting the final touches to arrangements related to his businesses but mainly to his wife, Zuleika, and infant son, Yasir.

His lawyers were still looking for issues in the SCA judgment that might enable them to appeal to the Constitutional Court. But Shaik said he was "at peace" - there needed to be "closure", not vain hope, he said - and he remained calm and controlled.

Even minutes before he "turned himself in" at the Durban High Court on Thursday morning, looking unusually diminutive and frail in a white T-shirt, he apologised to those reporters to whom he had given "a hard time" during his trial.

At peace or not, it was a tough thing Shaik did on Thursday morning.

Going to jail at the age of 49, being driven away in a police van - away from a life in which you have all you want materially and especially from a wife, infant son and family, cannot be easy.

I do not know Shaik extremely well. But I have eaten a couple of meals with him, had four or five detailed conversations with him, last year spent a wonderful evening with him and his extended family on Eid-ul-Fitr, and was there on Monday when Howie read his judgment.

So I know the Shaiks are stayers, not runners. Durban and KwaZulu-Natal and South Africa in general, seem part of the fabric of their being. Mo, Yunis, third younger brother Chippy and their father did not go into detention, courtesy of the previous regime's security branch, because they had nothing better to do. They are deeply committed politically and are proud members of the ANC.

Shaik is by nature optimistic. This does not mean he wakes up every morning smiling. On the contrary, he can be sulky and irritable at times, especially when things are not going his way.

But in Shaik there is something of Wilkins Micawber, the Charles Dickens character in David Copperfield: he does tend to believe that sooner or later something will "turn up" for the better.

Despite this innate optimism, surely Shaik could see the writing on the wall?

It was hard to miss. Alarm bells started ringing about the arms deal in 1999. Shaik was investigated in the early 2000s by the National Prosecuting Authority. The Hefer Commission - the culmination of an attack, orchestrated by Mo and Mac Maharaj, a former minister, on Bulelani Ngcuka, then head of the NPA - took place in 2003. Shaik was then charged. He was brought to trial towards the end of 2004.

He was found to have had a "generally corrupt relationship" with Jacob Zuma, the deputy president. He was refused leave to appeal by Squires on the main corruption count. Why then did Shaik continue being so hopeful, so apparently sure the SCA judges would, at least to some extent, see what it was really all about, even if Squires could not?

Why did Shaik go on proclaiming his innocence?

The answer, I believe, is that Shaik has genuinely believed, and still does, that he is innocent. He does not believe he is innocent in terms of the law. He would have to be deluded to think that, and he is not deluded.

Shaik believes he is innocent because he did not do anything contra to the mores of the "culture", the way of life, in which he grew up, in which he was living during the 1990s, and in which he believed.

Excluding the fraud charge, related to hiding money paid to Zuma, a charge which Shaik does not in any case contest, consider the state's case against Shaik - in its basic form it is that Shaik had been paying Zuma money in exchange for Zuma's help in business ventures in which Zuma could exercise political influence because of his position.

Shaik scratched Zuma's back and expected Zuma to scratch his in return.

This was exactly the way things had worked for years.

Zuma had been commander of the underground cell in which the Shaiks operated. And one took care of one's comrades. The ANC had won a victory and the party was the centre of the world. Yes, there was a government that was supposedly separate from the ANC party and there was a separate justice system - that is how a constitutional democracy had to work.

Even though Zuma was an MEC or minister, a provincial or state politician, he was still the same old ANC comrade, wasn't he? And Shaik had to help him out - Zuma was having distracting financial troubles - and Zuma would presumably assist him.

Black economic empowerment was becoming the order of the day.

It was time the country's riches and opportunities were shared among everyone, especially those who had opposed apartheid. What was so bad about that?

This was the way Shaik and others thought. It was for these reasons that there was such a deep level of indignation on the part of Maharaj,

Shaik and Zuma when they came under investigation by the NPA. They had fought selflessly, and often at great personal cost, in the struggle. How could their own people be imputing criminal motives to them? It was unthinkable.

This was why Maharaj and Shaik assumed something had to be "wrong" with Ngcuka *1 - culminating in the Hefer Commission.

Two questions Shaik's defence team never asked were these: given the extent to which Shaik bust his financial gut for Zuma, did he receive a payback of equal value *2? And, if not, why did Shaik continue to assist Zuma? Presumably the questions were not asked because the answers do not matter in terms of the law. All that mattered legally was to prove Shaik's intentions.

But the answers, if one looks at the state's evidence, were that Shaik did not get anything of commensurate value from Zuma.

He could have left Zuma in the lurch but he did not because Zuma was his friend and ANC commander. The transition in South Africa - from the old underground ways to the laws of a state and national government - has been taking place for 12 years. Shaik did not really see this. That is why he believes he is innocent.

With acknowledgement to Jeremy Gordin and Weekend Argus.

Pass the barf bucket.

And another.


*1      There was something wrong with Ngcuka - he was a jackass for dropping charges against Thomson-CSF and for not charging Zuma.

But the NDPP is not man alone - his prosecuting and investigation teams recommended criminal charges against Shaik and in the face of insuperable prima facie evidence and his constitutional duty, he really had little option but to accept this recommendation.

But Shaik was offered a plea bargain and he refused.


*2      Shaik started Nkobi Investments in the mid-1990s with nothing but a cellphone, a bumiputerian vision and some political capital.

Until around 2000 it was worth virtually nothing, although it had traded its political capital and its corporate ethics for some BEE equity and a few loan accounts.

Payback came in the forms of giant dividends and capital growth from Prodiba, with a Department of Transport contract won with the help of Minister Mac Maharaj and from ADS, with a Department of Defence contract won with the help of Deputy President Jacob Zuma.

At that stage Shaik had paid the latter some R2 million and the former an amount not exactly known, but definitely several tens of thousands of Rands. Shaik boasted that he was worth some R100 million and he was certainly in the right order of magnitude.

His later legal expenses came to some R10 million, his fines some R5 million, his forfeiture of assets some R34 million - That makes about R50 million. There are still the Prodiba shares, Cell C shares, motor vehicles and properties as well as the balance of the Nkobi Holdings shares. This probably makes about another R50 million.

And his legal travails only cost half his fortune.

How many people can make R50 million clear capital profit in 15 years?

Three Conclusions

Jacob Zuma's and Mac Maharaj's payback was of far greater than equal value.

If Schabir sits for one sixth of his sentence, i.e. 30 months, then his criminal business will have paid quite handsomely for him.

If his family doesn't spend too much, this capital will have grown by another R12 million tax-free and risk-free.