Murder, money and mourning …

The glistening azure sea sparkles through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the Ambassador Hotel in Bantry Bay, as the spray from the waves crashing on to the rocks below flies skyward.

I’m sitting on a couch in the restaurant, waiting for Roger and Guy Kebble to meet me. It’s two weeks since Glenn Agliotti was acquitted of Brett’s murder and they have agreed to “spew their poison”.

It’s a magnificent day in Cape Town and already the city is beginning to heave with the December crowds flocking in from Gauteng. Roger and Guy have chosen the venue – a luxury hotel perched on prime property on the exclusive Atlantic seaboard. It represents all that is monied and pretentious.

As I wait, I browse through a copy of the morning’s Cape Times newspaper.

It features an interview with Vinod Hindocha, the father of murdered tourist Anni Dewani. The headline reads “Go back Shrien – Anni’s Dad” and the article conveys a request from the mourning father to his son-in-law, imploring him to return to South Africa to “tell the world what happened”.

It is the story of a desperate father, mourning the loss of his child in a suspicious, convoluted hit apparently orchestrated by someone very close and familiar.

The similarity between the Dewani and Kebble stories is unmissable and it strikes me that in Brett Kebble’s tale, there is also a sad, desperate father looking for answers. The personal tragedy has been overlooked in favour of the salacious and scandalous.

Roger and Guy arrive and are friendly and polite, but seem slightly out of place in the posh surroundings. Guy promises that if I push the right buttons, I will hear “some interesting stuff”. Having never met Roger before, I am curious to determine for myself if he really is “as rough as a goat’s knee”, as he has been described.

Over the course of the interview and subsequent lunch at a boutique restaurant in the city, I find both their characters surprisingly complex, despite coming across as fairly simple men.

They discuss truffle hunting in France and call someone a “bloody p**s” in the same breath. They dine only in the finest of restaurants and sip on the most expensive wines, while discussing whether to keep their box at rugby stadium Newlands for another season.

They are concerned about my breeding and what school I attended as they talk about their close-knit clique of who’s who in society. Conversation ranges from corruption to politics to pasteurised milk.

I have heard a great deal of second-hand commentary on Roger and Guy’s relationship with Brett and I want to hear it from the source. Was their relationship as fraught with acrimony as everyone likes to believe? “He cut us out of his life almost totally,” Roger admits. “We were never invited to his house. He was always buying things we couldn’t work out how and he just tended to keep us away.

“In hindsight it was because he didn’t want us in his presence where he couldn’t discuss things socially, where somebody might have exposed him.” Guy, the former professional rugby player, has a hard-man façade, but the extent of his emotional hurt from his failed relationship with his brother is evident.

“We used to have running telephone battles. There was a stage where there was a total blackout on Brett. He wouldn’t take any calls, we couldn’t see him. The number of times when I did bump into him I’d say, come on, let’s get together on such and such time and occasion,” Guy says, relaying his exasperation. He turns to Roger to emphasise his point. “I mean, you remember the time hey, you were in Canada and Brett phoned you because I wanted to go and take his bloody head off. I’m serious.”

One incident in particular pained him deeply and he raises it more than once during our meeting. “I remember on his birthday the one time, nine years ago in Cape Town, I said we’re going to have lunch tomorrow. I went and bought some CDs and you know, put a little package together for him, only to be called as I was driving up Edinburgh Drive by his secretary, Rita, just to be told we would have to take a rain check. Two minutes before my arrival I’m being told this.”

Guy and Roger agree the distance came from Brett and not them. I propose the theory that the two of them ostracised Brett and didn’t like him because he was not as hard as they were and didn’t share their interests in rugby and other similar things.

He was more sensitive and arty. Guy immediately dismisses this out of hand. “That’s so crap. That’s absolute crap. I spent I don’t know how many years it would be now, trying to get this whole family unit together and Brett and his family just weren’t there. Brett made no effort whatsoever to try and bond. We were like on our hands and knees trying to be as comforting as we could, but there were times when I would call him, he wouldn’t take my calls so I would leave voicemails, saying, ‘Brett if you don’t call me back, I’m going to come through from here, I’m going to kick you down in your office, like a brother should do’,” says Guy, speaking deliberately, his voice getting louder with each word. He recounts another incident when Brett blew him off on Father’s Day, cancelling a family lunch to celebrate with John Stratton instead.

Roger admits that Brett never thought his family intellectual or superior enough. “He regarded Guy and I as fools,” Roger confesses, the cadence of his voice softening as he discusses his son’s merits.

“Of course, the other thing about Brett was that he was extremely talented in people skills when he had to make an impression for his benefit and he was very musical. He was the sort of guy who could walk into a bar and open a piano and entertain people. So he had that. He really had the world as his oyster and some people came into his life and just totally buggered it up.”

In their version, Brett rarely made time for his brother and father as he was too busy fulfilling his ambitions, moulding himself as a modern-day Randlord.

“Brett played huge corporate games,” admits his father. “He used to have this vision in his mind that he would become a Barney Barnato and somebody said in the press that Brett was a new Barney Barnato and I think in a way that affected him. He played that role and it was almost impossible to get through to Brett and to talk any logic. He never had time. I very seldom ever got a meeting with him, if ever, by himself. He always had somebody there. We had to wait and see when there was nobody around and then walk in.”

The last time Guy saw his brother was in May 2005, four months before he was killed. There is a sense of regret in Guy’s tone as he relays the events of that day.

“We just couldn’t get close to Brett. The closest I got to Brett, at the end and the last time I spoke to him, was on my birthday, the 2nd of May. It was a Sunday. For some or other reason I think he started to feel pressure. Suddenly we were praying at the table. You remember?” Guy says to his father in astonishment. “We never did that with Brett. This religious thing had come in and Brett had then become over the top.”

His comments trigger my memory about Brett’s odd baptism in his friend’s swimming pool in the run-up to his murder. At that last lunch, Guy issued a warning to his brother, one which he did not heed. “That particular day, I was sitting there with Brett saying, ‘You know, what’s going on? Are you in control of what’s taking place?’ and he sat there with Ingrid and they held hands like and he said, ‘Nah, it’s fine, what are you worried about?’

“I said, ‘No it’s not, it’s not the information that I have, alright. I’ve seen your people, they tell me stories. People are stealing stock, converting it into cash, etc. There’s evidence of it.’ He said, ‘Oh, who told you that?’ so I started to rattle off some names. I said, ‘Brett, John Stratton is going to kill you.’ I’m serious, I said that. I said ‘John Stratton will kill you’. I never heard from him again.”

As the surf crashes ever harder on to the rocks below and the summer sun climbs higher, the interview is drawing to a close. Lunch is calling for these two hungry men. I ask about Brett’s legacy and what they think it might be. Has the State’s failure to properly investigate his death tainted his memory? Guy believes it has.

“It affects the memory of him. At the moment it’s only Brett that’s in the firing line and he’s not here to defend himself.”

This explains why Guy has been on a public crusade to defend his brother whenever possible, despite their diminished relationship. “He’s dead and that’s the sad thing. Everybody’s forgotten about it, everyone on the radio’s discussing ‘Brett Kebble, the mining magnate’ etc. Just refer to him as a person. But then also understand that he’s not the only party. We understand he was wrong.”

Roger interjects. “We understand he made mistakes, but he did them with an ulterior motive of coming right. People have jumped on to the bandwagon and they’re utilising all this sensational stuff.

“I think his legacy is probably, in a way, in changing the old mining structures of this country. I think another legacy is he gave to the planet four kids that are going to be hugely successful. If you analyse Brett, basically he was a person that was intellectually bright, he was very talented in so many ways and he could also charm the pants off everybody.

“But he just missed a bloody step somewhere and they killed him.” - Pretoria News

*This is an edited extract from Mandy Wiener’s Killing Kebble published by MacMillan at a recommended retail price of R195