This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.
26 Aug 2005: Shaik, Yunis
YS. Isn't it Mo's birthday today?
POM. It is. There's a party tonight. Aren't you going?
YS. Yes. I'm looking at my file notes in my book of record where I record all interviews, meetings and so on, I've got a book note here that says on 6 July 2002, it could be 6 August, I'm not too sure what that date is, Dirk arranged a meeting with Ivor Powell to explore settlement of the dispute with Scorpions. We meet at Rosebank, 1600 hours. The meeting was held at a hotel in Rosebank at 1600 hours. At this meeting Ivor raised various issues with me and the notes I have got here are – some of it doesn't quite make sense now but in general these notes say nothing simple, close – that the way they see this matter trying to be resolved is that JZ needs to give an apology with Mac, there was no corruption.
POM. Needs to give an apology to?
YS. I don't know who. I just seem to have scribbled a note that says 'JZ apologise', I don't know for what now. Schabir Shaik, they will close the case.
POM. Mac no corruption.
YS. No guilt plea. If he does we will sit back.
POM. What does that mean?
YS. They will close their case against Schabir Shaik.
POM. If he pleads?
YS. If he gives the guilt plea.
POM. If he pleads guilty?
YS. No, he doesn't have to give a guilty plea.
POM. It's like you don't contend the charges, it's nulla contendra.
YS. No, what he was saying then was that Schabir Shaik, they will file charges for breach of some of the Company Act provision and Schabir must plead guilty on that, on breach of those company procedures which gives rise to what is called the fraud charge. So Schabir must plead guilty on some lesser count, that they didn't follow the strict accounting in terms of those and that would suffice and with Mac Maharaj they were quite categoric there was no corruption against Mac Maharaj. Against Jacob Zuma they said we must see this Jacob Zuma / Schabir Shaik relationship in the context of like him helping an emerging BE company to get going. I'm trying to again look at my notes before I comment.
. Ivor Powell makes a couple of points that it's understandable, his intervention with his ADS shares, which is the shares in the arms company, that Zuma's involvement around that was quite understandable. What happened was Schabir got some shares in a company that is known as Thales, or a subsidiary of Thales, and Zuma participated in that because Zuma had to speak to the French company to say that Schabir is entitled to participate in BE and he is to be considered as part of the black empowerment by virtue of his colour and so on, the fact that he's an Indian, he could participate in BE. The French didn't quite understand what this BE is all about, is it franchised and so on. So I think that's what he was referring to.
. And then Jacob Zuma will respond to the questions that were then being put to him. K, that means Kessie, must discuss these answers with Bulelani Ngcuka, responses I agreed before they are filed.
POM. Kessie Naidu is it?
YS. Yes.
POM. Was the Hefer Commission already up and running?
YS. No.
POM. OK. But Kessie was then acting for Zuma? That's right.
YS. Zuma. To answer questions. Certain questions were being put. That's right.
POM. So Zuma would respond to those questions.
YS. Yes, but the way it must happen is Kessie must discuss it with Bulelani Ngcuka, the answers.
POM. To those questions?
YS. Yes, and they must be agreed before they are filed. With Zarina with SARS, failure to declare some income received from Schabir.
POM. Now who was to get JZ to do these things?
YS. Who was to? What was being discussed as part of all to be put into this mediation, and then we agreed that I was to approach Cyril Ramaphosa and check whether he is willing to act as a mediator and that's why I ran out and got Ramaphosa's numbers, and you will notice immediately in my notes come Cyril Ramaphosa's numbers. Then I phoned Cyril Ramaphosa to find out whether he's available and willing and I asked them to give me Bulelani's number. Now you will notice this in the way my book unfolds, I get Cyril Ramaphosa's numbers, then I get Bulelani's number, then I get J T Ferreira's number. J T Ferrerira, he's at First National Bank, because Bulelani and them were to phone this guy, Mac Maharaj's boss there, J T Ferreira, and say to him exactly what they said to me which is that there is no corruption against Mac.
. Now this comes to me much more clearly, at that stage there was this Mac Maharaj matter. Mac had not yet been fired, there was no talk of charging Mac although there was bad press.
POM. The report was coming out.
YS. Yes, Maharaj's report was going to come out. That's right. That is why I was trying to get J T Ferreira's number because they said to me they don't mind phoning J T Ferreira and saying it is their conclusion there is no corruption against Mac.
POM. This was even before the mediation had started?
YS. Correct. And they agreed to phone the press and tell them this and issue a press statement to this effect. The first thing high on the agenda on the press was that they were going to make a public statement on Mac to avoid any further ambiguity around Mac.
POM. So the bank could say – the bank's thing was that, Mac we've cleared you but there are still these charges looming from the Public Prosecutor, we've heard nothing from him so what do we do?
YS. So that is why this issue of Mac Maharaj had come up and that's why you notice immediately the Bulelani / J T Ferreira process started, and the process, like my notes, is that we're now kicking off. I've got hold of this guy, Cyril had agreed to be a mediator. Cyril started phoning Bulelani, they started to arrange meetings with one another and get this thing going around this mediation. This flows out of our discussion with them.
POM. I have statements from Cyril that he engaged in this process, statements from Ayob that he met with Bulelani and discussed these issues, statements from you that you engaged in conversations with Ivor Powell and Dirk Hartford. We had the Dirk Hartford statement. He was present at that meeting, right?
YS. Yes he was.
POM. If I can I will talk to him.
YS. Yes you must but he's in Thailand I'm told right now.
POM. He'll be back?
YS. Yes he'll be back here.
POM. So on that basis if I had to say to you as a lawyer, if I said when Bulelani Ngcuka took the stand and denied there had been any effort at mediation – ?
YS. It was a total lie. I've not the slightest doubt.
POM. I would be on sound, solid ground.
YS. Correct. There's a matter of fact that … Even those two of them were talking with each other. Cyril was talking to Bulelani.
POM. Cyril told me that.
YS. I mean what was he talking to Bulelani about if not flowing out of this mediation exercise?
POM. That's very good.
YS. So what else would that be about?
YS. There was a funeral, there was a mole in Griffiths' office.
POM. Griffiths was?
YS. Griffiths' office. And that is what I was trying to find out. Who was the mole in Griffiths Mxenge's office and Bulelani did his articles at Griffiths Mxenge's office.
POM. Now how do you know there was a mole there?
YS. That was told to me by Security Branch and I was trying to work out who was the mole.
POM. How many people were in the office?
POM. You had a meeting with?
YS. With Hentie Botha and that meeting I attended with a guy called Gary.
POM. Gary would have been?
YS. I don't know.
POM. What day was that?
YS. I've got a note here, diary note. My diary note says it was Friday, 5 September 2003, had a meeting with Gary. Now that meeting was with Gary and Hentie Botha. Now I've only got Gary written here, I wonder whether that was the date on which I met Hentie Botha. 5 September at ten o'clock in the morning. It could have been that day but I need to check it up. I'll look at the file notes and just see. Someone is telling me sketch into Bella's arresting officer or something. George Andrews and Hennie de Wet, Jan Gouws was conducting the investigation.
POM. That's GOUWS?
YS. Yes, Oscar Ndadi was a field worker, Askari, something was going on in Swaziland, two Askaris. Oscar going to assist, wanted to turn … couriers, identities three, Laurie Wasserman, Brandt … (unintelligible)
POM. Let's leave it where we are. You go back on that. When you were looking for – we have here an example of – you've got Archie Gumede who is, first of all we have the case of where there is no file at all, no file number on Bulelani, and then years later a file number appears and it's PNVA4/99.
YS. And the head office file is S4/60791. Now that head office file number is correct. You would see this head office file number and if you look at the logic of it it shows that he was the sixty thousand seven hundred and ninety one person who was logged on state files. Now if you compare with Archie Gumede you will notice that Archie Gumede is only 1631.
POM. He's S4/1631.
YS. See the low number denomination that goes in sync there.
POM. His PNV4/1135 would suggest that they had a file on Bulelani before they had opened a file on him.
YS. Correct.
POM. So these numbers are inconsistent, they're internally inconsistent.
YS. Correct. If you understand – and perhaps I'm not being articulate and my eternal complaint as a lawyer –
POM. What I want you to do at some point is to write out a page for me, what I want to do with that page is I will put it up on the website. It will be like explaining the system and explaining the incongruities. But the thing is that when you went to the state and asked could you get hold of either of these files, they would neither confirm whether they had the files or if they had they wouldn't give them to you.
YS. Correct. Now, and I need to explain this to you, there are two filing systems, there is a regional file and there is a national file. The regional file will take the provincial name of the region so PN will be Port Natal, S will be the head office.
POM. S, say, is South Africa.
YS. Yes, all Ss stand for head office. These two numbers there will be local information kept and there will be national information kept. There is a relationship between your provincial number and your national number and that relationship is one based on the notion of number sequentialism, the relationship is also based on when you came to the notice of the state. To demonstrate this now, if you look at Archie Gumede, his provincial number is 113, his head office number is 1631. You will observe from both of them that that is a low number. So he, in other words, is an old activist, you see because as the struggle got going in the sixties and the seventies he attracted the attention of the state as early as 1960 or seventies. Now there in the struggle each new decade brought on board a new generation of activists. Now to show you this point about Cyril Ramaphosa, Cyril Ramaphosa has a number 2991, that's his provincial number.
POM. That's Port Natal, PN4/2991.
YS. And his state number is 33468. Now Bulelani Ngcuka, I mean Bulelani and Cyril Ramaphosa are all roughly in the same age category, they both got active more or less at the same time. Now you will notice Bulelani's provincial number and state number are high numbers. You see that? So it's not possible now for Bulelani's provincial number to be 99 while his state number is 60791.
POM. Cyril's is 33468.
YS. 33468, and you ought to bear in mind again that in Bulelani Ngcuka's case he had gone to jail in the early eighties as being a known sympathiser of the ANC. Do you understand now? So he was already in custody of the state, he was considered by the state to be a supporter of the ANC and so on and so forth, so how come no state file on him?
. Look, here is something, when he applies for a passport when he comes out of jail or even when he's applying for a passport before he goes into jail, 25/11/81, there's a report passed through on him that says from a safety point of view – basically from a safety point of view there's nothing on these people, Bulelani Ngcuka, 25/11/81. At that time he's sitting in police custody. See that? Here Makubela has been arrested on that date.
. Odd, odd, odd. So that's where the oddity of the matter couldn't be resolved. The report could definitely clarify the matter, absolutely nothing.
POM. So why did Hefer conclude that this was a sloppy investigation that could have, with a little more, that if Mo had even consulted available resources at the time he would have reached a different conclusion? He didn't study all these.
YS. As I'm saying, the English ought to have consulted with Hitler or Goering or somebody at the time when Germany and Britain were at war. Who exactly would you go and consult to confirm and corroborate a perception? Who? The Security Branch? Or were you going to go to the person and say to him there are some questions about you, can you just confirm this?
POM. Now were you ever able to raise – because Mac's proceedings of the Hefer Commission are very incomplete, I mean they're totally incomplete. Were you ever able to raise these issues, these inconsistencies: why was there a number like this, why was there a gap like this?
YS. That's why I ran to the Security Branch to try and get this explained.
POM. But you couldn't.
YS. But none of them would speak.
POM. OK, so you couldn't bring this up in the commission. Could you enter like that document and say to Hefer, these are some of the things we want you to examine?
YS. Mo raised that in his testimony.
POM. What did he say?
YS. He brushed all that aside. They never addressed that problem because no Security Branch person ever came to testify to explain the numbering system, how their files were kept, the order of it. No, Security Branch totally shut down and refused to answer any questions on that matter.
POM. The Nightingale can confirm – well he did, that this was the way they numbered their files. If he had gone on the stand he would have been able to say this doesn't make sense. I don't know what went on here but somebody left out a zero or somebody made a mistake or somebody did something but that number –
YS. Is patently wrong.
POM. PNV/99 just can't be.
YS. It can't be possible. Now he could have been one person but he wouldn't testify because it would have meant it would have blown his cover.
POM. Of course.
YS. So we chose, relative to what was going on, that we could never put him in the box because we didn't know how people will behave, whether it will give rise to trouble for him.
POM. If he had gone in –
YS. He could have given the state an awfully difficult time.
POM. What could he have said?
YS. He'd have confirmed that he gave us these reports, these reports are genuine reports, they come out of the state. He could have explained that this numbering system doesn't make sense, there's no logic to this thing. It goes contrary to the logic of reporting and that Bulelani was known in the Port Natal region, he was known, he was held in security custody under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act. He was sent to jail by a court of law for refusing to testify on account of his known sympathies to the ANC. All that would have been known and as a result of which, all of which, he would have got a file number. He'd have been a marked man in the region. You know what I mean? It's inconceivable they didn't give him a file number.
POM. So you had first of all the situation of where between 1981 and 1987 he had no file number, then in 1987 he appears with a low file number which suggests they had a file number on him all the time since the years before he was born.
YS. That's right.
POM. Would he have been able to testify that if Bulelani had applied for a passport that as a matter of course that would have been referred to the Intelligence Branch for verification, confirmation on whether or not he was suspect, had been detained, was in jail?
YS. Yes, yes, look here, I'll give an example, I'll come back to the Mo case. When you apply for a passport at that time, when you applied for a passport at that time this is what would have happened to you – look here. You will apply for a passport, I'm giving you now an example of someone. Whenever you apply for a passport this is what happens, this is a very dark, very old copy. The purpose of saying, and his wife's application, is to enable them to attend his young daughter's wedding in Toronto Canada on 5 May 1980 as well as to visit the elder daughter in the USA. They also intend visiting their family in India due to the recent death of his late grandfather's first cousin. These factors can however not be verified to determine the authenticity thereof. The wife of same, blah blah blah, has also left wing ideologies during the fifties and she was actively involved in the Civil Liberty Defence Committee. She also liased with individuals such as Fatima Meer. You see each of their state numbers. Fatima is a very old woman, so it's 369. Mkize 754. You see? Every single person that they say she has been in touch with who the state thought to be an enemy had a file number, blah blah blah. "She had not come to the attention of this office for many years and it would appear that she is not actively involved in politics any longer. It must be pointed out that both Singh and his wife made regular trips overseas, the last visit being as recent as December 1987. Recommendation: although a long history of political involvement and there is no evidence to suggest that they have abused their privileges in the past, we can find no reason to oppose the application. It is recommended." You see that? Now this is how they treat a known sympathiser.
POM. Who prepares that report?
YS. The Division where the guy stays in.
POM. The Division in the - ?
YS. The residence where he stays in. Let's say this is a guy from Natal, so this is a divisional report coming out of Natal.
POM. Natal, Passport or Home Affairs?
YS. Yes, if you apply for a passport –
POM. You go to Home Affairs. So where did they go to?
YS. Home Affairs then calls on the cops. Do you want to file a report? This guy made an application for a passport, do you want to file a report? Then the area in which, let's say if it's Natal, that area office then files the report and that is why you see in this case here the police are saying we have no report on Bulelani Ngcuka. This clearance has come from head office, you see that? They say we've got no report on this guy.
POM. And this is coming in 1981, November 1981.
YS. That's right. At that time he's being sought by the police, the Security Branch, they want to arrest him. "From a safety point we don't know of this chap."
POM. So the guy in Port Natal would have consulted with the – it would be routine that they would contact the cops and say do you have anything on this guy?
YS. Correct.
POM. Now when that question came up in Hefer –
YS. Hefer totally ignored all of this. In fact the witness from Home Affairs said, no, we never kept any black list. We never kept any black list of people, we never used to blacklist people, which is a fucking lie because here you see a Security Branch report on another person, a detailed report, this was for a visit to see his daughter in Canada, they recount everything they know about him, his known contacts, his known sympathies, and they're making a recommendation. In the light of all of that they say, OK, fine, give him a passport.
POM. OK. I've got it.
YS. But in Bulelani's case they say nothing. Bulelani applies for a passport, fine, he gets the passport. Then he's now abroad, he's overseas, he applies for a renewal of his passport and here are his renewals.
POM. This is after he has been in jail?
YS. After he's been in jail. He's now in Geneva. The Security Branch report is coming in.
POM. Let me see how it works – when he is being sought, he has made an application for a passport. This guy Patrick is arrested, he's being sought in connection with that arrest. Meanwhile while he is being sought his passport application moves through the system and is approved. The passport is sent some place, but it's approved, I guess, to send a passport out to wherever. Meanwhile he's arrested. Right? He goes to jail. He comes out of jail. He has that passport that he applied for while he was being sought. That passport he has and he uses it to leave the country.
YS. Well he keeps it anyway. It's valid for five years. He then gets captured by the police in, say, December. He goes in to serve a three year term, he comes out of the cells, he uses that same passport to travel abroad. Whilst abroad that passport expires. He then applies for a renewal.
POM. In Geneva or wherever he is.
YS. Wherever he is.
POM. And it's approved.
YS. At the time whilst he's applying for renewals the Security Branch is receiving a report on him from various sources. They say they have met this guy, they think he's an ANC man, he's the head of Geneva, this is what he's doing. You know what I mean. And still he gets a passport issued to him. Look here, look at this date – 26/12/88, by then most certainly the state had a file on him and their file number was S4/60791. Do you agree?
POM. Yes.
YS. Now he applies for his renewal at that time.
POM. S4/60791.
YS. He gets his passport.
POM. So in the Hefer Commission was Joseph able to hand Mo a document like you showed me on the family Singh and say, 'Could you read that document to me? What is it?' And he could say, 'Oh well, it's something prepared on the same family when they applied for a passport.' Then say to the passport official, 'You say they don't keep lists, could you explain how this report was prepared?'
YS. Remember we took the view we don't have the duty to prove that Bulelani was a spy.
POM. But Mac wanted to do that.
YS. But I didn't want that to happen, I didn't want that to happen. I sought to fight the case simply on the basis of saying they conducted an investigation, then this is the investigation that they conducted. These are the reports that form the basis of their opinion. We didn't contend and seek to point out that Bulelani IS a spy but just that the base of information we then had suggested that.
POM. Because all these gaps were unexplained and in that case on the basis of how we make decisions, it was how we make decisions. It's what we did and we forwarded that report to Lusaka and Lusaka said we've read the report and we agree. Bingo.
YS. Correct. So that was the nature of the case and I was just trying to show to the court this is what was gathered, this came to this conclusion. We're not saying he was a spy but we are saying we conducted an investigation. We are saying we arrived at a conclusion, right or wrong, then that suggested –
POM. But at that point Mbeki had changed the terms of reference to say you have to prove he was a spy?
YS. Correct. Only if you prove definitively he was a spy then already – We said we cannot do that, that's an onerous condition you place on us, we can't do that.
POM. So if I was to summarise our conversation, and I will put some of this in writing later, you'll have to write the footnote. I have to put something up showing people that just as you went through with me, an example to show the inconsistencies that arose that led to you guys in 1988 arriving at a reasonable conclusion given the circumstances of the time, the information you had on him simply didn't make sense, something was wrong with it.
YS. Correct.
POM. And in that case you say – watch out for this guy, something's going on.
YS. Correct.
POM. One, we have that. Two, we can show that the report went to, I talked to our friend here, that the report went to – he was the conduit for it going to Lusaka. Three, I have Zuma confirming receipt and agreement with the report. So I can state conclusively this report was seen and approved and signed off on by the ANC in 1988/89, this was their conclusion, not just Mo's conclusion. It was the conclusion of intelligence of the ANC, not Mo's individual conclusion. Two, I can show that mediation attempts were made.
YS. Under way.
POM. A hundred percent correct and to deny this is simply to go on the stand and say efforts at mediation were not made was either lying or he was saying – or would only say afterwards, well I would interpret mediation not in the way they were interpreting it. I would interpret mediation was where we all sat around the table and discussed the issues and that never actually took place. He'd use language to get out of it. That's what I want to get at. So I'll send you the chapter, OK, and you go through it with a fine comb, like a lawyer, and say, no, no, no, here you've got to find something else, fill in that gap, and I will use – and Mo had me talk to the Nightingale once and if necessary I will go back to him and say I want to talk to him again to verify the sequencing number. I think he already did that, I can go back and look at my interview with him because he went through the system. He wasn't very articulate. Mo went through it with me but our friend wasn't, the Nightingale wasn't the most articulate of people.
YS. Listen, don't leave this here. Take this away, you give it back to me before you go back, and remember, the problem I have, the mistake I often make and I'm giving away my documents, either Julie comes because she wants something, give it, you come I give it. Now I'm counting on all of you to act most responsibly because I'm now coming down to the point, I'm literally giving away everything, I've got nothing else. This is my actual court file. In this year, this logic I'm putting to you, is set out in excruciating detail in writing where I show exactly the investigation of Bulelani, the reports, the inconsistency of the numbering system, why it appeared to us to be inconsistent, why we think it's complete rubbish. We've set it all out here.
POM. Now these things were never put in full before Hefer? He got a copy of this?
YS. We put it before Hefer. He ignored all of this because the problem was the state refused to come and testify, refused to make their records available. So having been snubbed by the state refusing to divulge anything –
POM. So when Mo and Mac, when Mac went to see Mbeki on the day that they announced the prima facie thing against Zuma, what file did he take with him?
YS. This, this document.
POM. This whole document?
YS. Not in this format but he took the document itself. The Branch report. It's here.
POM. Oh this report here. OK.
YS. Now I know it appears to you to be a huge problem but if you want to understand our contention in the way in which we understand it with that degree of clarity and sharpness, just read these pages here and then you'll understand exactly what we mean. And the way it is set out in such a clear, logical way will tell you the date, the document, the report, in front of the significant facts. You say so-and-so filed a report, the significant facts of the report was code number for … was PN647. This is the report that mentioned BN, Bulelani Ngcuka. We met that source on that date. We thought BN was based in Geneva, the ANC representative in Geneva. … there's no file on Bulelani. Attention is drawn to the fact that the report from Port Natal, an area where he was well known to the Branch. At the time the report was filed Colonel Viljoen was the supervisor and the report is signed under his name. During the Patrick Makubela case Viljoen served as the investigator and was then a Captain in the Security Branch.
POM. Is he alive, dead?
YS. He's dead now I think. This is a report signed by Viljoen. Viljoen was the guy who served as the primary investigating officer in that Makubela case and he is saying he's got no report, got no file on Bulelani Ngcuka. Look here at all the investigating officers, blah blah blah, you'll see the name Viljoen. Let's turn, I'll come to that page.
POM. What would have been the report that Mo sent to Lusaka?
YS. All these reports. OK, this also makes it clear.
POM. All of this would have been sent?
YS. Not this here, all of the Security Branch documents.
POM. Did he gather anything else other than Security Branch documents?
YS. Mo?
POM. Yes.
YS. Well he got documents on passport application.
POM. Would he have sent that – he could only in fact rely on the Security Branch reports. What else would he have to go on?
YS. And subsequent or secondary investigation into the passport.
POM. Into the passport, so he had an investigation into that?
YS. Yes and if he touched base with any activist to get clarity on Bulelani Ngcuka, what they had to say on the matter, this and that. Those were the type of things he would have sent.
POM. OK, that's – I understand. What if I give it back to you, just to read it because I'll be at the thing tonight, if I take it with me. Patricia is coming back at the beginning of the week and she'll take it back with her and deliver it to you.
YS. I don't mind.
POM. You'll get it back, OK.
YS. Provided you make sure I get it back because now if this goes … a contemporaneous note, you know what I mean.
POM. Your notes refer, this is we're talking about the meeting with Ivor Powell and Dirk Hartford.
YS. I'm saying Dirk arranged this, Ivor gives me his number, Ivor raises issues, the issues that Ivor raises are media, all these leaks. He then gives a proposal.
POM. The leaks on?
YS. Coming out in the newspaper.
POM. The leaks about Bulelani being a spy?
YS. No, no, the Mac Maharaj –
POM. Leaks. OK.
YS. Nothing came out about Bulelani being a spy there.
POM. It's all before the report got to you. I got the timing wrong.
YS. What was coming out was these leaks on Mac Maharaj that so destroyed his career and on the Schabir matter and all that, I put that up for discussion. Then there was a proposal. The proposal says, right, there's all these parties here, let's get an independent party. We turn the page, right now, nothing simple. He's talking to me, I'm making notes, Mac no corruption, Schabir close, no guilt plea, if it does we will sit back, IP – I don't know, machinery switched on, understandably, blah blah blah. Schabir, these are the charges. JZ responds, you must do it like that. Zarina, this is how they'll deal with the matter. We'll get Cyril Ramaphosa, he'll be the mediator.
POM. Then you go on to –
YS. That's how Bulelani had discussions with people.
POM. Bulelani would ring Ferreira.
YS. Correct.
POM. And say there were no charges against Mac, so Mac would keep his goddamn job.
YS. I'm not bullshitting anybody. I go to the meeting, I hear what he says, I'm making some notes along the way. I know they are incomplete, they're not perfect. They're just memory cues I'm using whilst the discussion is going on.
POM. But they reflect exactly what Ayob said happened with him when they had a face to face meeting with Bulelani.
YS. Yes. They said right, you want to take it up with Cyril, they will talk. Let's take it up and talk the matter through. In fact the pressing thing I was trying to press them on was I wanted them to issue a statement, a public statement that Mac Maharaj is not guilty, according to their investigation they find no evidence that Mac Maharaj is guilty of corruption. I wanted them to say that because then that would have saved Mac Maharaj's job. That's all. Then the rest of the matter we could continue with and settle in detail. They said to us, well get one of us to phone their man, the media liaison officer and he will issue such a statement.
POM. They asked you to ring him and say what?
YS. To talk to their man and he will issue a statement to the effect that –
POM. Now were you to say (a) we've talked to Ivor Powell and Ivor Powell told us to call you and that you would issue a statement saying –
YS. Yes, and we even got the media guy to phone them.
POM. Who was this?
YS. Abrahamje, Yusuf Abrahamje from 702, and he phoned them at the time – hey, what's going down?
POM. Is he around?
YS. Are you going to issue a statement about Mac Maharaj? And then this guy, the media spokesperson at that time, what was his name, he was a big star in the media.
POM. Was he the spokesperson?
YS. He was the spokesperson.
POM. Bulelani's spin doctor.
YS. That's right.
POM. Yes! He was good, man.
YS. He refused to answer anything, he refused to say - no, no, I can make no comment on the matter. Then we said OK, it's not clear but maybe Cyril will take this matter up and I said I'll put the media issue first around the mediation, put this need to issue a statement on Mac, prioritise it as an urgent thing. It never happened. So beyond a shadow of doubt that sequence in my mind is clear.
POM. Good.
YS. And I didn't ask for this meeting. I didn't ask Ivor Powell, he's like a Scorpion guy. He asked to meet me. His proposal was to use a middle person. We threw about names, we agree on Cyril, I take the responsibility to phone Cyril to see if he's happy to do the job. Cyril says he's happy. I say, "Cyril, phone this guy."
POM. What's the name of - ?
YS. Yusuf Abrahamje.