Evidence in (former National Police Commissioner) Jackie Selebi’s corruption trial lasted for well over 50 days with 18 witnesses taking the stand for the prosecution in the stuffy, wood-lined courtroom. The personalities who featured in the case traversed the full spectrum – from lovable rogues to feisty blondes, ex-armed forces soldiers to secret sleuths, designer clothing store stewards to spectacled accountants.
On most days during the one-hour lunch adjournment, Selebi sat alone on a bench outside the court or in a nearby consultation room. He would be bent over, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands clasped together and his droopy, yellow eyes peering down his nose.
On many of those days, he would beckon me with a jerk of his head and I would sit with him as he ate his lunch of one apple. I never saw him eat anything other than that and, when I enquired why, he would pull up his nose and simply say he had no appetite.
During those lunchtime chats, Selebi ranted about the prosecution’s conduct and how the campaign against him was vindictive and malicious. His lip quivered and his brow furrowed as he complained about (security consultant) Paul O’Sullivan’s involvement in the investigations and (prosecutor) Gerrie Nel’s questionable motives.
He insisted that Judge Meyer Joffe, who was affectionately referred to as “The Sandton Shul” by the media pack due to his position on that Shul’s committee board, didn’t like him from the start and didn’t like his legal team either.
But these rants were always imbued with arrogance – he was “confident, very confident”. Selebi told me how his defence team was going to “tear (Glenn) Agliotti apart during cross-examination, you’ll see”. He pre-empted how tapes and audio recordings talking about judges’ allegiances would be shown to the court. “You’ll see, when they start bringing TVs and video players into court, then you’ll see,” he warned me. Some of these tapes were played, to my surprise, but others were not.
He also let on what his own legal team’s strategy was with the state’s star witness, Agliotti – “Jaap Cilliers is ‘getting him onside’, being nice to him, getting Agliotti to say, ‘Yes, that’s correct, yes correct,’ and then we trick him and we get him. He rolls over and gets his tummy tickled, plays into the hands of Jaap and gives him what he wants.”
I asked him why he didn’t make representations to the recently appointed National Director of Public Prosecutions Menzi Simelane, who had taken over from Mokotedi Mpshe, and he replied, “I don’t want to bother Simelane with this. I want it to be sorted out here. Otherwise the DA and the media will all think I’m trying to get out of this thing.”
He was consistent with his line, that he wanted his day in court. Selebi promised great revelations from the witness box, assuring me: “The things I will say will be explosive, about everything.” He insisted. “I cannot wait to get in there and finally talk.”
As an aside, we also debated the state of the country’s politics, how Julius Malema was “a young hothead who knows nothing”.
Selebi was once the president of the ANC Youth League, the position Malema is in. We also discussed the murder of AWB leader Eugene Terre’Blanche, who was killed mid-trial. I asked him his opinions about the crime and the racial undertone of the murder and, without missing a beat, Selebi invoked the words of former Police Minister Jimmy Kruger upon hearing about the death of Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko: “It leaves me cold.”
Inside the courtroom, Gerrie Nel, the meticulous strategist, was slowly constructing a case against the erstwhile Police Commissioner. His first witness was Selebi’s ex-friend, the “corrupter” Glenn Agliotti, who had agreed to incriminate himself in exchange for indemnity.
Agliotti’s testimony was illuminating. He detailed how the two men would meet in the Sandton City shopping centre to go on buying sprees for designer labels like Aigner, Hugo Boss and Gucci, with Agliotti always picking up the bill.
He revealed how Selebi would visit his ex-fiancé Dianne Muller’s Midrand office in full police regalia to collect envelopes stuffed with cash and how he had the country’s most senior cop at his beck and call to attend meetings at a finger snap. There was also testimony about how Selebi had shown Agliotti top secret intelligence documents in the parking lot of the Macro Retail Centre in Woodmead and at the boardroom table of his own office.
Among these documents were top secret UK reports and Paul O’Sullivan’s Casual Source report, which was one of the first pieces of intelligence used by the Scorpions in their investigation.
Television screens were rolled into the courtroom, transforming the staid, serious environment into a movie theatre. On screen, we saw Agliotti meeting with policeman Mulangi Mphego, denying his “bribing” of Selebi.
The Kebbles featured prominently. Agliotti recalled how he had effectively sold Selebi to Brett Kebble and John Stratton during a time when they were mid-brawl with Wellesley-Wood and fighting criminal charges. They had a complaint which they wanted addressed at the highest level possible in the SAPS, Agliotti approached Selebi and a meeting was arranged. Judge Willem Heath and Stratton presented the complaint to Commissioners Mphego and Rayman Lalla. Agliotti had successfully bought Selebi’s influence. He realised this could be a long-term business prospect.
Agliotti: “They (Brett Kebble and John Stratton) wanted the accused to be on board and to have access to the accused and I said to them it would cost them $1 million, which was my consulting fee, and they agreed to that amount.”
Advocate Nel: “They would pay you that amount to do what?”
Agliotti: “Well, as part of my consulting fee and obviously in their minds to keep the accused on board. He was basically on board our team.”
Advocate Nel: “Now you said that they wanted access to the accused, they paid you $1 million. Did this happen, was access granted?”
Agliotti: “Well, not initially. That only came with time or later in time.”
Advocate Nel: “What happened?”
Agliotti: “Well, after quite a time they insisted on meeting the accused. I tried to prevent this but there reached a time where they insisted and if this did not happen they would terminate my services with them, so I arranged a dinner with the accused, myself, Brett Kebble and John Stratton, which then took place in Illovo, 65 Fifth Street, because by this time they had moved to the address which I have just mentioned.”
Advocate Nel: “You said that you resisted. Why resistance?”
Agliotti: “Well, I did not want them to have easy access to the accused because then they would no longer need me or my services. So it was a decision that I took, a business decision.”
Selebi listened to all this evidence from the dock, where he sat on the black “Luciano Pavarotti – Live in Africa” cushion he brought with him daily.
Ultimately, Judge Meyer Joffe would not find Agliotti to be an honest and truthful witness. I suspect because Agliotti did confirm from the witness stand that, “I do lie from time to time,” and defence advocate Jaap Cilliers did label him, “One of the worst, if not the worst, witnesses ever to testify in a South African court.”
Joffe decided he would only accept Agliotti’s evidence where there was corroboration.
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Our lunchtime discussions came to an end when Selebi took the witness stand. Instead, he spent the breaks alone, not speaking to his legal team as he cut a solitary figure in the corner of the consultation room, eating his apple.
A member of Selebi’s camp confirmed to me what I suspected. They had an inkling that he was in poor health. I had heard that he was seriously ill but that he had refused to admit as much.
“The old man doesn’t remember what he’s saying or what is going on. He can’t remember what he had for dinner last night and we think there might be early-onset Alzheimer’s. He’s such a macho man, he was a flagship for our country and now that’s all gone. We’ve tried to get him to a doctor but he won’t go.”
For me, it was a possible explanation for his incoherent statements from the box.
I ran the theory past another journalist who responded: “It is a sickness. It’s a sickness called arrogance.” In the end, I had to agree. One of the Scorpions investigators described it as “Kort Kombers Sindroom”, which translated into English is “Short Blanket Syndrome” – if the blanket is too short you can cover the head and not the feet and vice versa. Selebi couldn’t hide all his lies all the time.
Midway during Selebi’s testimony, fate would have it that Agliotti had to make an appearance as an accused in the Brett Kebble murder trial in the very same courtroom as his erstwhile friend. It was a picture that spoke a thousand words. Standing in the bare wooden dock was Agliotti, the charming corrupter who had allegedly conspired to have a mining magnate killed in an extraordinary assisted suicide. Next to him stood the country’s former police chief, the improper beneficiary of Agliotti’s largesse, fighting for his dignity in the face of corruption claims. Behind them in the public gallery sat Guy Kebble, churlishly heckling Agliotti. Outside in one holding room were Mikey Schultz, Nigel McGurk and Faizal “Kappie” Smith, the hired guns who had shot the tycoon in the still of the night. In another holding room nearby was the ostracised Clinton Nassif, Brett Kebble’s ex-security boss, who had given the instruction for the job to be carried out.
It was an unreal sight. It brought the entire sordid story home for me to see it played out in such stark reality. How did we get here? How is it that the country’s most senior policeman is standing in a court of law as an accused along with a cast of such unsavoury characters? What drove him to meddle in this underbelly? And what pushed Kebble, a cultivated tycoon, into this dark world?
n This is an edited extract from Mandy Wiener’s Killing Kebble, published by MacMillan at a recommended retail price of R195.