Читать книгу The President's Keepers - Jacques Pauw - Страница 7

Two days after I arrived in Moscow, Paul Engelke agreed to see me. “Meet me at Arbatskaya station. It's close to Red Square. I will wait for you in the middle of the platform,” he said. It's near impossible to meet someone in a bar or restaurant because names are displayed in the Cyrillic alphabet and are impossible to decipher. When you ask for help, most people simply ignore you or shrug their shoulders.

Moscow metro stations are astonishing feats of engineering, construction and art. On the instructions of Joseph Stalin, their architects created a subterranean and opulent communist paradise. When I walked off the train, I was standing in one of the most beautiful of all Moscow metro stations: a baroque celebration of Stalinism with white arched ceilings, bronze chandeliers, ceramic bouquets of flowers, red marble decorations and glazed tiles.

I recognised Engelke from his Facebook profile picture, which shows him standing on Red Square. He stood a few metres away from me, glancing up and down the pinkish granite floor. Around seven million Muscovites use the metro every day – more than London and New York combined.

Engelke is a stocky man with genial features and a boyish expression. He rushed me out of Arbatskaya, across Red Square, past the GUM shopping palace and down a side street. Underfoot was slippery and I must have looked like a drunkard trying to skate for the first time. It's an art to negotiate the iced pavement and brown sludge, and Engelke had lived in Moscow for long enough to have mastered the art.

Minutes later we stopped at an underground bar and restaurant. Bouncers the size and shape of Lenin's mausoleum searched my bag before we were escorted downstairs. The restaurant was packed with Russia's new young and rich; brash and cocky, assured and refined. They were decked in designer attire from GUM and several had their own bodyguards scouring the establishment.

When communism died, it was replaced by something far more alluring: money. It is said that never had so much money flowed into a place in so short a time. This gave rise to the so-called oligarchs: businessmen, senior civil servants and army generals of the former Soviet republics who rapidly accumulated wealth during the era of Russian privatisation in the aftermath of the dissolution of the USSR in the 1990s. It looked as though it was their offspring that had gathered in the bar.

“Do you come here often?” I asked Engelke. A waitress with booty shorts that flaunted her endless legs drifted on high heels towards our table. She had a bottle of iced vodka in each hand.

“I've been here once to watch the rugby,” he said. “I think the owner is British and they show the rugby. But it's not really my kind of place.”

Fifty years old, Engelke was an advocate before joining the old South African Defence Force as a legal officer in 1992. He left ten years later as a colonel and the head of the School of Military Law. He was also a prosecutor at the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) before being recruited into the National Intelligence Agency (NIA).

He was initially an undercover agent and tasked to work on the Boeremag. This gang of Afrikaner separatist right-wingers had conspired to overthrow the ANC government and to reinstate a Boer-administered republic. Engelke was given a false identity and a cover as a member of an army commando (a Defence Force civil unit) who ostensibly had to investigate the high rate of farm murders. He soon made contact with Boeremag members and started gathering intelligence. He was in regular contact with former police death squad commander Colonel Eugene de Kock. After bombs exploded in Soweto in 2002, more than twenty right-wingers were arrested and charged with high treason and murder. More than a thousand kilograms of explosives were found in their possession.

Towards the end of 2015, Engelke left the State Security Agency (which is what the NIA became in 2009) as a senior law adviser. He had been offered a year-long contract to teach forensic law at the prestigious Moscow State University. He was getting divorced at the time and was looking for “something different”.

Engelke's sense of adventure had also paid off on a personal level: he was engaged to a Russian woman, about ten years younger and also recently divorced. He faced a most pressing predicament in that he had to ask for her hand. Her old man was a formidable retired army general in both the old and new Russia. I later met her; she was no “Russian bride” but educated and independent with an iron will. She spoke English fluently.

Engelke was hungry for news from home; about the dismal antics of the Springboks and whether Allister Coetzee was going to be sacked; the stellar performance of the Proteas against Australia; and the latest episode of state capture by Zuma and his cronies. He didn't know any other South Africans in Moscow and hadn't spoken Afrikaans in several months. He said he was homesick.

It was late at night and after several vodkas that I prodded Engelke about the SSA and Fraser. “With that man,” Engelke said and looked around him, “you don't mess. He's far too powerful.”

“Why is he so powerful?” I wanted to know.

“He's very close to Zuma,” said Engelke as he leaned forward and dropped his voice. “I've got two children back home. If I talk to you I might never see them again.”

“What can you tell me about him?”

“I have to be very careful. I'm bound by an oath of secrecy. I'm afraid I cannot say much.”

“I understand,” I said and put my hand in the air to signal to the high-heeled and leggy waitress. “Why don't we have another vodka and discuss this?”

* * *

Towards the end of 2009, internal State Security Agency (SSA) auditors descended on the Route 21 office complex near Irene, south of Pretoria. The NIA had just been restructured by security minister Siyabonga Cwele and was now known as the SSA. The target of the auditors was the operational headquarters of the Principal Agent Network (PAN) programme, a top-secret state intelligence programme that had guzzled as much as a billion rand of taxpayers' money in just three years.

When the auditors arrived, expenditure files were stacked in the boardroom, at the ready for their scrutiny. What the auditors didn't know was that the boardroom was bugged and kitted out with concealed cameras. In the room next door, PAN agents and managers were surveying the auditors as they sifted through invoices, contracts, payment requests and much, much more.

The PAN agents had much to lose. For three years, they had almost carte blanche to throw public money at a range of gagged-up projects, which they named “Easimix” (concerned with the “old guard”), “Émigré” (concerned with immigrants), “Media Production” (the influence of the media), “Vodka” (Russian activities), “Pack” (Pakistani nationals), “Psycho” (“concerned with psychological assistance to PAN”), the ominous-sounding “Crims” (working on “political intelligence”), “Kwababisa” (Alexandra township mafia, Gauteng provincial government and corruption) and the ominous “SO” (political intelligence and organised crime).

The only project that was probably worth anything was “Mechanic”, because PAN had purchased 293 cars – ranging from BMWs, Audis and Golf GTIs to smaller sedans – for their 72 agents, which they stored in three warehouses across the country that had been leased for R24 million. They also leased and purchased properties for R48 million and imported three “technical surveillance vehicles” from the UK for more than R40 million. And this was just a drop in the ocean.

The auditors at Route 21 had hit upon enough discrepancies and scams to report back to their superiors that the PAN programme was riddled with wastage, corruption and nepotism and warranted a full-scale investigation. One of the reasons why the PAN spooks were caught with their pants on their knees was that they had done a dismal job at covering their tracks.

Sometime later, a disgruntled PAN agent handed the auditors CCTV camera footage of their audit. A PAN surveillance technician who had been instructed to plant cameras in the boardroom to monitor the audit installed them the previous night but forgot to switch them off after he'd tested the system. The footage showed how agents worked through the night in order to generate invoices and documentation for the audit the next day. They also shredded records they didn't want the auditors to see. Agents manufactured documents by copying and pasting signatures. In their haste to deceive the auditors and with the clock ticking away, they put documents in the wrong files, accidentally shredded some of the manufactured papers and got everything all mixed up.

The auditors found devastating evidence in the files and were at the PAN offices for four days. When they left to report back to their director-general, the lid had been lifted on corruption and wasteful expenditure that far exceeded the shenanigans at President Zuma's private homestead of Nkandla.

But this was, after all, the hazy world of smoke and mirrors that they call state security, where the Intelligence Act is manipulated to shield marauders and veil miscreants.

* * *

A few days after the audit, the SSA's head of domestic intelligence, Gibson Njenje, called a meeting of his legal advisers in his plush office at the agency's headquarters. The complex, known as Musanda, is top secret and the public is not allowed to know how many people work there or how much money those in pursuit of state security drain from the fiscus every year. To the public, all that is visible of Musanda – affectionately known as “the Farm” by those who have basked in her veiled glory – is a sprawl of buildings with an array of satellite ears that point skywards.

Among those who attended Njenje's meeting were the head of the agency's legal department, Kobus Meiring, and SSA advocate Paul Engelke. Meiring was an intelligence old-timer with an impeccable record and more than thirty years in the service. Engelke had vast experience as a prosecutor at the NPA, was an advocate in private practice and had served seven years at state intelligence. Both Meiring and Engelke had a top-secret clearance.

Njenje had only recently assumed leadership of the domestic branch of the SSA and was largely unaware of PAN, which resided under the Covert Support Unit (CSU) and ultimately under the director of operations. The first warning that public money was being shovelled into a black hole emerged when the CSU overspent its budget and PAN agents threatened the agency with legal action for not getting paid.

The polite and reserved Njenje was an intelligence legend, albeit a controversial one. An Umkhonto we Sizwe veteran, he was appointed by President Thabo Mbeki as NIA head of operations but was then suspended, along with spy boss Billy Masetlha, in 2005. This followed an investigation by the inspector-general of intelligence, who found that Njenje had acted inappropriately after spying on Saki Macozoma, ANC National Executive Committee member and Mbeki confidant, as part of a political intelligence-gathering exercise called Project Avani. It included hoax e-mails designed to suggest a plot against Zuma to prevent him from running for the presidency.

Njenje initially tried to challenge the suspension, but resigned after reaching a settlement with intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils. When Zuma became president in 2009, it was payback time and he appointed Njenje as the director-general for domestic intelligence at the SSA. There was unhappiness in some government and ANC quarters about Njenje's appointment. He was prior to his official posting a founder member and director of Bosasa, a facilities management company that, according to a Special Investigating Unit report, was corruptly awarded multimillion-rand tenders by the prisons department.

Njenje told Meiring and Engelke that he wanted them to investigate the PAN programme as it might have gone rogue, misappropriated millions and even endangered the safety of the state. He said that security minister Siyabonga Cwele had given the go-ahead for a full investigation.

Engelke was appointed team leader and was joined by a senior auditor and a human resources official. They in turn reported to Meiring. The investigation was top secret and on a strictly “need-to-know” basis.

The PAN programme was the brainchild of Njenje's predecessor, the director-general Manala Manzini, and his deputy and national operations director, Arthur Fraser. Manzini was eager to expand and enhance the NIA's covert collection capacity. He shared this with Fraser, who concocted the PAN programme.

Fraser suggested that PAN employ NIA members who would resign or take severance packages, former NIA members, members from other government departments who would resign, and new recruits from the private sector. They submitted their plan to the minister of intelligence, Ronnie Kasrils, who agreed with the concept of the network as it was traditionally understood. A principal agent network is intelligence jargon for spy handlers (the principals) who engage, manage and deploy spies (agents) to perform specific services or functions on behalf of the agency. There was nothing cutting-edge about Fraser's proposal and it should simply have meant the employment of more spies and handlers.

As it later turned out, he may have had something completely different in mind: a parallel and detached intelligence network that operated independently of the NIA. In doing so, Meiring and Engelke later found, Fraser may have committed treason.

Jane Duncan says in her book The Rise of the Securocrats that intelligence services ballooned in the early 2000s under the ministerial direction of Lindiwe Sisulu, Kasrils's predecessor. She contended that NIA needed more resources and capabilities and should be expanded. This proliferation coincided with the issuing of a directive by the Presidency requiring an expansion of the NIA's mandate in 2003 to include political and economic intelligence. A host of new spies and agents were appointed.

The ministry of intelligence concluded in 2007 that there were no serious threats to the country's constitutional order, although organised crime remained a concern, as did the need to secure major events such as the upcoming 2010 World Cup. There was also no indication that South Africa was either a major target of or safe haven for terrorists or religious fanatics. Why, then, was there a need for a further expansion of the NIA? Was the PAN programme truly to the benefit of national security, or did its architects and proponents have ulterior motives?

* * *

One of the first breakthroughs the PAN investigators made was when they discovered that the signature of Ronnie Kasrils had been copied and pasted onto a document that gave birth to the programme. The document was co-signed by director-general Manala Manzini, operations director Arthur Fraser, Covert Support Unit (CSU) operations manager Prince Makhwathana, and CSU financial officer Martie Wallace. It authorised the PAN top structure to identify projects and targets of national interest, appoint assets (agents and spies), purchase cars, lease safe houses and incur whatever cost was necessary to get the venture off the ground.

When Engelke unearthed the document, he said to his co-investigators: “This is it. This was their passport to do whatever they wanted.”

Their first stop was Kasrils, who had resigned in September 2008. He has always been to his detractors a leftist rabble-rouser; to his devotees the archetypal counter-revolutionary. He confirmed that he hadn't signed the document. He also made it clear that he had only approved the concept of a PAN and did not authorise the implementation of the programme.

When the investigators confronted Manzini (then retired), he retorted that he had complete trust in his former operations director, Arthur Fraser. He looked at Engelke and added: “I don't like your tone, my boy. I will sort you out.”

In the end, all roads led back to Fraser. Little is known about him, but he was born on the Cape Flats, one of six children of a factory worker mother and a teacher father. The SSA website simply states that he “joined the ANC underground structures early in his life”, was an investigator at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed the immigration branch of the Department of Home Affairs, and has an honours degree in video and film production from London University. He is the brother of former cabinet minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi.

When the team confronted Fraser, he refused to offer any explanation but was surprised when shown the copy-and-paste attempt of Kasrils's signature and said he knew nothing about it. A few days later, he was suspended, after which he offered his resignation – certainly not the action of an innocent man. PAN was shut down and the SSA, which had replaced the NIA, was compelled to integrate the programme's agents into the agency. The manager of the CSU, Prince Makhwathana, and most of the PAN mangers were also suspended.

Njenje accepted Fraser's resignation. With Fraser being history, the investigators broke PAN open and bared a gluttony of depravity that permeated right to the top. One of the first to confess her connivance in wrongdoing was Martie Wallace, the financial officer at the CSU (Wallace was her “agent” name). She made an affidavit and said that both her brother and her husband were appointed as PAN agents. She admitted that she had taken R1.2 million in cash, bought a townhouse and registered the property in her brother's name. The property was then leased back to PAN – for R1.2 million!

With Wallace on board and singing, skeletons tumbled out. Several SSA officials had resigned and were reappointed as PAN agents at a much higher salary. One of them registered a company and got R18 million in cash to buy six upmarket properties – including in Waterkloof in Pretoria – and leased them back to PAN.

This practice was repeated several times across the country. An invoice for nearly R6 million was forged for a leased property and the money was then paid into a private bank account. The investigators found that agents had committed forgery, fraud and various offences in terms of the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act.

As far as the appointment of agents was concerned, the investigators found “wide-scale financial mismanagement, fruitless expenditure, nepotism and corruption”. Makhwathana had signed the employment contracts of the 72 PAN agents, although he did not have the authority to do so. The salary bill came to R33 million annually, which amounted to almost R40,000 per agent per month.

After PAN had purchased 293 vehicles for their 72 agents, they needed warehouses to store them. They entered into an agreement with a private company that belonged to Arthur Fraser's brother, Barry. PAN paid him R24 million for the rental of the warehouse. Some of cars had been unused for almost four years. There were other Fraser family members working for PAN. Arthur's son Lyle became the floor manager at the warehouse while his mother, Ms C.F. Fraser, was also a PAN agent. Both Barry Fraser and Ms Fraser were board members of a community-based organisation that dealt with conflict resolution at schools. PAN contributed R10 million towards the organisation although it had nothing to do with national security.

PAN imported state-of-the-art surveillance vans from the British-based Gamma Group for an amount of R45.7 million. Gamma is a high-tech manufacturer that counts the world's foremost intelligence agencies among its clients. Their surveillance vehicles contain equipment for the “video and audio processing of targets”, “grabber” surveillance machines and “command and control software”. Engelke found that the “correct supply chain management procedures” were not followed in their purchase. The vehicles were also registered in the name of the agency, which created the danger that should anyone check their number plates, their cover would be blown.

The investigators found that Fraser had told an NIA agent, John Galloway, to resign and start a security company to supply PAN with high-tech equipment. Galloway was paid R11 million while he was still an NIA employee and before the company was set up. This already amounted to fraud. He left the service in March 2008, set up G-Tech and was paid another R47 million. He conducted his business from home, had no employees and provided services that the investigators said were of “poor quality”. Galloway purchased within a span of 20 months property worth R11 million.

Wallace revealed to the investigators that enormous amounts of cash – up to R10 million at a time – were delivered to the PAN offices on a regular basis. Packets of money were wrapped in tinfoil and packed in bags. The investigators produced an internal audit report that revealed that there were discrepancies on temporary advances to the amount of R85 million. More than R200 million was unaccounted for.

Both Manzini and Fraser were fingered as having “forced” the chief financial officer of the NIA to release millions of rand to the Covert Support Unit by way of verbal approvals, which was in complete contradiction with the regulatory framework.

When the investigators evaluated the projects, they found little of value. Two drug addicts were, for example, recruited to work on Project Émigré and spy on immigrants. They did nothing. Project Kagee was supposed to focus on “counter-terrorism”. PAN paid an informant R12 million for information that “could have been obtained through open sources”. The informant used his hard-earned dosh to buy a stake in a BMW dealership.

The investigators said the projects were badly planned, managed and conducted and were costly to the NIA because any agent could have gathered the information. None of the projects had individual authorisation, operational plans or budgets as required. They were often initiated on the verbal instruction of Fraser and wads of money were thrown at them.

The investigators did lifestyle audits of the PAN managers and found that several seemed to have won the Lotto. Their personal wealth had increased dramatically during the lifespan of PAN. One of the managers who lived in a townhouse upgraded to a three-storey mansion and bought his wife a Range Rover Evoque for almost a million rand.

One of the most damning findings of the PAN investigation was about Fraser himself. The investigators stated there was “an intention to create an alternative intelligence capacity”. Said the report: “An expensive communication system was put in place at Mr Fraser's private residence and he has been the sole recipient of information gathered by the PANs.”

PAN agents had sent their intelligence reports in an encrypted electronic format to Fraser's personal server instead of submitting them to the NIA mainframe where they could be checked, analysed and verified, and then disseminated and integrated into the agency's information management system.

The SSA removed the server from Fraser's house. When they analysed the device, they found 800 intel reports that he had failed to send to the agency's mainframe. The investigators said this was in contradiction of the internal regulatory framework and transgressed the Protection of Information Act. As a result, the investigators concluded, Fraser could probably be charged with treason. “It also gives clear indications of the intent to establish an alternative intelligence structure for purposes unknown.”

When Engelke challenged Fraser about the server, he refused to discuss it. Speculation was rife that Fraser was a double agent or that PAN had an ulterior motive: to keep the Western Cape in ANC hands.

Engelke and his team confronted one manager after the other, most of them in the presence of their lawyers. The manager of PAN's operational coordination unit, Graham Engel, allegedly said to Engelke: “Somebody is going to get hurt here, and that one is not me. Do you know who you are dealing with? This goes right to the top.”

When Paul Engelke and Kobus Meiring handed their report to Njenje, they concluded that there was “wide-scale financial mismanagement, fruitless expenditure, nepotism and corruption”. In their view, there was sufficient proof to prosecute Manzini, Fraser, Makhwathana, Wallace, Engel and ten other managers and agents for a host of alleged crimes.

* * *

Arthur Fraser was bulletproof. This was because he had probably saved Jacob Zuma from prosecution and thereby enabled the ANC leader to ascend to the highest office in the land. In the mid-2000s Zuma was fighting for his political survival and standing trial on 783 charges of fraud, racketeering and corruption. The case emanated from bribes that he had received from arms manufacturers during South Africa's controversial arms deal of the 1990s and 2000s. The money was paid to Zuma's financier and banker, Schabir Shaik, who in turn paid it over to JZ.

In 2005 Shaik was convicted of similar charges and sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment. This gave President Mbeki an excuse to fire Zuma as deputy president, thereby burying his ambitions for highest office. Zuma, in turn, was on his knees and holding on for dear life. The contest between the two was South Africa's Cold War: the political landscape was littered with skulduggery, hatchet jobs, sleights of hand and smear campaigns. Both sides were sneaking and snooping on one another.

In 1999 Mbeki and NPA boss Bulelani Ngcuka established a new, crack crime-fighting unit called the Directorate of Special Operations, widely known as the Scorpions, in the NPA. The Scorpions had to combat organised crime, taxi violence, politically motivated violence and drug-related crimes. There was from the outset bad blood and turf wars between the police and the Scorpions. The unit achieved a tremendous conviction rate but was accused of cherry-picking and pursuing only winnable cases. The Scorpions had a reputation for going after dodgy politicians and senior civil servants – like police commissioner Jackie Selebi and Jacob Zuma.

The Mbeki camp unleashed what should have been the killer blow. In May 2007, a top-secret report was leaked that purported to prove that Zuma's presidential ambitions were fuelled and funded by corrupt African leaders, among them Angola's Eduardo dos Santos and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi. Marked ‘top secret' and known as the Browse Mole report, it alleged that Zuma had travelled to Libya on at least three occasions to meet with senior Libyan figures. Browse Mole also alleged that the Zuma backers had met at the Great Lakes in April 2006 to discuss military intervention to unseat Thabo Mbeki. If true, the report implicated Zuma in treason.

Mbeki agreed to institute an investigation into the report and appointed Arthur Fraser, who was then operations head of the NIA. The Mail & Guardian said that Fraser's initial investigation into Browse Mole was widely regarded in the NPA as “flimsy and one-sided”, and one of its key conclusions, that a Scorpions special investigator was responsible for the leak, was never substantiated. A second probe by the Special Investigating Unit cleared the investigator.

Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence found that the report was a hoax and drawn up by the Scorpions in a bid to discredit Zuma. The committee said it was “extremely inflammatory” and “very dangerous” for South Africa's national interests.

The revelations in the report had backfired. Jacob Zuma's political career was finally saved by the very report that was designed to destroy him. Zuma supporters argued that it was evident that there was a political conspiracy against him and therefore the charges against him were also fabricated. As Martin Plaut said in his book Who Rules South Africa?, it was proof that “somewhere in the bowels of the security apparatus, somebody was watching Zuma's back”.

That “somebody” could well have been Arthur Fraser. During Fraser's investigation into the Browse Mole report, the NIA tapped the phones of several high-ranking officials mentioned in the report, including those of Ngcuka and Leonard McCarthy, the Scorpions boss. On the tapes, they discussed when would be the most politically damaging time to charge Zuma. Fraser had unearthed what amounted to gold for Zuma.

What is astonishing about these recordings is that they were, according to the inspector-general of intelligence, legally made, but the intelligence minister knew nothing about them. Ronnie Kasrils said afterwards: “The NIA were obliged to report this to me as minister. They never did. I knew nothing about it.”

But the Zuma camp did know about the tapes. Enter Moe Shaik, a man who has been integral to getting Zuma off the hook and into the Union Buildings. Shaik has been many things: he served under Zuma as an underground MK operative, was an ANC negotiator during the talks of the early 1990s, an ambassador to Algeria, and an intelligence and foreign affairs ministerial adviser. When his brother Schabir went to prison, Moe took charge of his businesses.

Moe Shaik was involved in the Zuma camp's own dirty tricks campaign. Two weeks after the state had announced that the NPA was about to hurl Schabir Shaik before a judge, Moe Shaik identified prosecutions boss Bulelani Ngcuka as apartheid spy RS452. He later said he'd made the allegations in order “to defend the honour of the deputy president of this country” – Jacob Zuma.

Moe Shaik's revelations were later exposed as a smear campaign when Eastern Cape human rights lawyer Vanessa Brereton admitted that she was agent RS452. Shaik had, however, guaranteed himself a plum position in the future Zuma administration.

When Shaik heard that Fraser had stumbled upon evidence that could help Zuma in his corruption trial, he went to see him to persuade him to part with the tapes. The two already knew each other by then. Shaik, today an executive at the Development Bank of Southern Africa, confirmed the meeting with Fraser to me. I asked him what he told Fraser. This was his response: “I told him to do the right thing. I said to him that you are sitting on these things and that it is in the national interest.”

“And what did you tell him to do with it?”

“I told him to do the right thing and give the tapes to the National Prosecuting Authority.”

“And did he?”

“As far as I know, yes.”

There were two sets of tapes at the time: those of the police's crime intelligence unit and the NIA. I asked Shaik about the police spy tapes. “I don't know about the crime intelligence tapes. I don't think they were of good quality and NIA had more tapes.”

The NIA tapes reportedly found their way to the deputy national director of the NPA, Willie Hofmeyr, who was a key defender of the conspiracy theory and a central character in the decision to withdraw the charges against Zuma. Again, Fraser failed to inform the intelligence minister.

The Mail & Guardian said they had evidence that Fraser also handed tapes to Zuma's attorney, Michael Hulley, although he has denied the allegation. According to the newspaper: “Fraser did a political flip-flop and handed the NIA recordings to Zuma's legal team. We understand Fraser felt the need to ingratiate himself with the new administration of Zuma and handed the NIA tapes over.”

In April 2009, the new NPA boss Mokotedi Mpshe said the evidence on the tapes amounted to an “intolerable abuse” and abandoned the case against Zuma. Zuma's road to the presidency – barring a small legal predicament or two – was now paved in gold.