Killing for Profit: Exposing the Illegal Rhino Horn Trade (39 page)

But Malema is shrewder than that. With his brand of pseudo-communist rhetoric, he taps into the very real frustrations and anger of millions of black South Africans living in grinding poverty in appalling conditions that have changed little since the advent of democracy.

When cornered about his lifestyle, Malema resorts to bluster. Rhetoric, not facts, is his retort to criticism. Critics are labelled counter-revolutionaries, colonialists, racists and even – as in one memorable incident involving an unfortunate BBC hack – ‘bloody agents’. Once, when I interviewed him, he answered a question he didn’t like with an attack. ‘Let me tell you, my friend, I defeated you and your apartheid regime and I will conquer you again, once and for all!’ He then launched into a tirade against my forefathers, claiming he had ‘defeated’ them too. (Malema was thirteen when South Africa’s first democratic elections were held in 1994.)

At a hastily convened press conference in the lobby of the ANC’s headquarters in Luthuli House, Malema lashes out at the two Sunday newspapers, saying he takes ‘serious exception for being audited by media institutions through spreading of lies and rumour … that I have millions [of rands]. [I]t
puts both me and my family in danger as criminals might believe the lies and resort to criminal victimisation against myself and my family with the hope that I have money.’

But he doesn’t stop there. The following day, during an interview on state radio station SAfm, Malema drops his bombshell. He and other senior ANC figures loyal to Zuma are the targets of a vicious smear campaign by SARS. He claims he has been given an ‘intelligence dossier’ to prove it.

We have got a document of a list of people … who must be targeted. These people are still called Zuma people.

They [the unnamed intelligence agents who handed him the dossier] found this to be very unacceptable and they thought they needed to alert us. We had to take it to the police to verify it, and so far we are satisfied with the investigation … The preliminary report shows that this is an authentic document that deserves to be taken seriously. I told the president [Zuma], ‘I will give you that report before I take it anywhere else.’

There are still concerted efforts to try and discredit the leadership of the ANC and particularly those who are seen in the frontline in defence of President Zuma. We are dealing with a concoction, a mix masala of a political environment which is polluted, and people who have resorted to dirty tricks.

Malema continues his fight-back campaign on the radio station Metro FM, saying the document had been delivered to his office by ‘anonymous fellows’ and contains a ‘long list of our names. There were instructions to people in SARS to investigate [me] … deputy police minister Fikile Mbalula and [Zuma’s spokesman] Zizi Kodwa’.

That night, on national television, Malema goes further, saying the document was compiled by ‘very senior people in SARS, very senior management, some of them in cabinet today’. It is clearly a veiled reference to Gordhan.

SARS hits back. Spokesman Adrian Lackay tells the
Star
: ‘SARS has a proud record of integrity and applies the law with fairness, with impartiality and equally to the affairs of all taxpayers.’

In a story headlined: ‘Malema Spy Saga Grows – “Hit list” aimed at Zuma backers created by fired SARS man’, the newspaper reveals that Peega had approached them with the dossier in 2009. In an interview, he confirms that the document Malema is referring to is his. He maintains that he stands by the contents.

‘I’m not backing off. That’s why I want SARS to confront me in public to say this document is not authentic. I’m 200 per cent behind it.’ Peega says his trial for rhino poaching has been subjected to a number of postponements, adding that he had been part of a sting operation and was not a poacher.

In March, ANCYL spokesman Floyd Shivambu ups the ante when he tries to peddle a file containing personal information about the
City Press
journalist Dumisane Lubisi, who co-wrote the Malema exposé, to reporters. It includes illegally obtained information about Lubisi’s bank accounts and details of his salary, cars and property. In a statement, Shivambu accuses Lubisi of ‘tax fraud, money-laundering and tendering’. Once again it is an ill-founded smear, and nineteen political reporters lodge a formal complaint against Shivambu with the secretary-general of the ANC, citing his efforts to intimidate Lubisi. The Communication Workers Union also wades into the spat, saying it is ‘of the view that the conduct of comrade Floyd is a ghost resurrection of Hitler’s Nazi Germany propagandist Josef Goebbels’.

Lubisi’s next story reveals that ‘aggrieved former government employees’ are ‘spying on “enemies”’ of the Youth League and identifies ‘one of the key figures in this shadowy business’ as Michael Peega.

‘Peega is one of the people looking for confidential information about journalists and politicians who are critical of Malema’s lifestyle and activity … Peega and others apparently worked from plush offices of the Youth League’s investment company, Lembede Investment Holdings, and had laptops, 3G connections and money available to gather information.’ Peega dismisses the allegations as ‘bullshit’ and says: ‘I am currently unemployed and have not collected any intelligence information from anyone.’

A few days later, on 23 March 2010,
Business Day
publishes reports that
Peega once ‘moonlighted as a bodyguard’ for Mbalula when he was president of the Youth League.

The report cites affidavits lodged with police that outline details of Peega’s work for Mbalula. This included driving Mbalula, Malema and Kodwa to a luxury resort in Limpopo, and transporting the trio to the Durban July horse race in KwaZulu-Natal. Peega denied that he had ever worked for the Youth League, and Malema said that while he knew Peega, he did not employ him. Mbalula said he had ‘no comment at this stage’.

The following week, police make a shocking announcement. Key evidence in Peega’s case, as well as R500 000 and a cellphone that was seized when he was arrested, had been stolen from a locked police safe in the Organised Crime Unit offices.

Over the next eighteen months there will be further revelations about Malema’s financial affairs. Then, in July 2011,
City Press
discloses that Malema is the sole trustee of a ‘secret family trust’. The newspaper reports that the trust, named after Malema’s five-year-old son, ‘may explain how he has been bankrolling his lavish lifestyle’. ‘Thousands of rands’ are paid into the trust account on a regular basis, unnamed sources are quoted as saying. Later it emerges that in 2010 alone, more than R3 million was deposited into the trust.

Malema calls yet another press conference. He says it is ‘nobody’s business’ where his money comes from. He is not answerable to the media, he says. ‘I’m answerable to law enforcement agencies. If SARS comes it is absolutely no problem. I will give them an answer. If the Hawks come, I’ll give them an answer.’

Amid a growing chorus of calls for the taxman to investigate Malema’s financial affairs, SARS spokesman Adrian Lackay says that the revenue service will consider doing so and that various allegations about the sources of Malema’s wealth amounted to ‘suspicious activity reports’, which, by law, have to be investigated.

22 August 2011

‘Poaching dockets go missing’, screams the front-page headline of the
Star
.

‘The rhino-poaching dockets against the man who penned ANC Youth League president Julius Malema’s explosive “intelligence” document last year appear to have vanished.

‘The
Star
understands that the National Prosecuting Authority has started an urgent investigation into their disappearance, while the man at the centre of the charges – Michael Peega – continues with his life …

‘On 6 August 2009, the case was assigned to a warrant officer at the Polokwane Organised Crime Unit … But no further entries are recorded on CAS, the police’s filing system.’ The case itself is withdrawn.

‘There was a rumour the dockets had been sold,’ the state prosecutor handling the case, Advocate Ansie Venter, tells me. ‘That was my fear too, but they were never sold.’ The investigating officer handling the case had resigned from the police, she says. The files were eventually found among a pile of other documents in a cupboard in his office. The exhibits stolen from the police safe have never been recovered. At the time of writing, the case against Peega had been placed back on the court roll and was set to proceed.

In May 2012, I give Malema a call on his cellphone. It has been a month since the ANC finally upheld a decision to expel him from the party. He had been accused of ‘sowing division’ within its ranks and bringing the party into disrepute. SARS has hit him with a reported R10-million tax bill. He tells
City Press
that his detractors have ‘unleashed all state agencies against me because they want to silence me’. He seems a little less combative than I remember. I ask him about his relationship with Peega.

‘I never received any information from him,’ Malema claims. I suggest that Peega is the most likely source for the ‘intelligence dossier’.

‘You can try any trick, you will never succeed with me,’ Malema responds. It is a familiar retort. He continues: ‘I knew him as helping Mr Mbalula, but never got anything from him. I don’t know this man. I don’t know what he does. I have no background on him, he never worked for me, he never gave me that information.’

There’s a pause. Then he adds: ‘Maybe he gave the information to other people and they gave it to me. I don’t know.’

Two mounds of earth under the dead limbs of a marula tree mark the spot where Dario Zitha and his friend, Maqombisi Mongwe, are buried. Spiny branches of sekelbos cover the graves as protection from scavengers. Strewn among the branches are some of the dead men’s possessions: Dario’s toothbrush, a used tube of Colgate toothpaste and a blue rucksack; Maqombisi’s empty wallet, a battered ashtray, and pieces of green, pink and blue chalk. A few compact discs – among them a compilation of Irish country music – glint in the sun. Scratches criss-cross the surfaces.

Dario, the eldest of five brothers, was thirty-eight when he died. He was his family’s ‘breadwinner’ and a father of three. Maqombisi was in his mid-thirties, also married, also described as a ‘breadwinner’. He loved music, they say.

A dirt road leads from the graveyard to Canhane, the tiny village south of Lake Massingir in Mozambique’s Gaza Province, where the two men spent their lives. The villagers say they left for ‘the bush’ one day in September 2011. A week later they were returned home in cheap pine coffins with rope handles. The men saw the pale corpses – drained of blood – and the gaping wounds left by the high-velocity bullets that had torn through them. Dario’s youngest brother, Batista, twenty-three, who had accompanied them, was under police guard in a South African hospital. He had been shot in the legs.

A brief statement, issued on 9 September 2011 by the corporate communications department of SANParks, provides a terse record of their deaths. ‘A joint operation consisting of … SANParks rangers and the South African National Defence Force, yesterday at [Houtboschrand], Kruger National Park, resulted in a shoot-out which led to two suspected poachers being
fatally wounded and the third wounded – under police guard in hospital [
sic
]. A member of the SANDF also sustained wounds to the leg and is currently receiving medical attention and is in a stable condition. Two rifles, an AK-47 and a .416 hunting rifle, were discovered at the scene. Investigations are currently under way.’

Rey Thakhuli, the SANParks general manager for ‘media, events and stakeholder relations’, is quoted in a news report as saying that ‘a sweep of the area revealed no animal carcasses or injured animals’.