New battle rages over Zuma spy tapes

Desperate attempts to stop details emerging of the secret tapes that led to the withdrawal of fraud charges against President Jacob Zuma were thwarted yesterday and explosive information about South Africa's spy world was exposed.

Special Investigating Unit head Willie Hofmeyr fought to prevent "classified" information contained in the Zuma spy tapes from being made public, and tried to have The Times barred from a labour dispute hearing.

But Bart Ford, a senior commissioner of the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, in Johannesburg, overruled Hofmeyr's plea, forcing him to disclose uncomfortable details of the case in which his former deputy, Faiek Davids, is suing for unfair dismissal.

"We are taken by surprise that the press is here. It [Hofmeyr's testimony] does have political implications. [The press] will restrict the freedom with which he will answer to the underlying context . some information is still classified," argued advocate Tim BruindersSC, who is representing Hofmeyr and the SIU.

Hofmeyr and Davids have been locked in a legal battle since Hofmeyr dismissed Davids in November on the basis of statements Davids had apparently made during intercepted telephone conversations with former Scorpions boss Leonard McCarthy.

Davids is said to have denigrated Hofmeyr during the conversations.

In April 2009, acting National Prosecuting Authority head Mokotedi Mpshe and Hofmeyr decided to drop corruption and fraud charges against Zuma, saving his political life and paving the way for him to become South Africa's president that year.

Mpshe had found that secret connivance between McCarthy and former NPA boss Bulelani Ngcuka in relation to the Zuma case amounted to an "intolerable abuse".

McCarthy's cellphone was bugged by police crime intelligence and the National Intelligence Agency after the leaking of the controversial Browse Mole report. The discredited report implicated Zuma in an alleged plot to overthrow former president Thabo Mbeki, and suggested Angola and Libya were funding Zuma.

For the first time since portions of the transcripts of the intercepted phone calls were declassified and released in April 2009, Hofmeyr's elaborate testimony yesterday offered a window into South Africa's murky world of spies.

It also lifted the veil of secrecy surrounding how the "Zuma tapes" were obtained and whether their authenticity was ever verified.

Hofmeyr admitted that the NPA had not been party to a court application for permission for the conversations to be bugged.

Instead, he said, he had accepted assurances that the recordings were obtained in an above-board manner.

Hofmeyr's testimony revealed how:

• He first heard of the tapes when Zuma's lawyer, Michael Hulley, contacted him some time in February 2009;

He and advocate Sibongile Mzinyathi were ordered by NPA executive members, including Mpshe, to travel to Durban to Hulley's office to listen to the tapes;

• Hulley did not disclose how he got hold of the tapes and did not provide them with copies;
• He, Hulley and Mzinyathi battled for six hours to play the tapes, which were stored on a memory stick and had been encrypted. They called in NPA computer experts and information technology specialists - none of whom could decipher the encrypted coding on the tapes;
• They eventually got to listen to about 12 tapes at the NPA's offices in Pretoria after Hulley arrived at their offices with a laptop that had been loaded with special software from security services;
• The tapes focused on recordings of conversations involving McCarthy. These appeared to show that McCarthy and others tainted Zuma's criminal investigation by manipulating when exactly the charges would be brought against him. This was to assist Mbeki in his bid to maintain control of the ANC.
• After listening to the tapes, Hofmeyr wrote to the police and NIA to obtain the intercepted recordings in a proper, formal and legal way. The police never responded as "relationships were strained between police and NPA at top level"; and
• The NIA eventually supplied him with copies of the tapes, but it did not have the specific tape with a recording of the conversation between McCarthy and Davids - the basis on which Hofmeyr fired his deputy.

But Hofmeyr yesterday again insisted that he had been confident that he had recognised Davids's voice the first time he listened to the tapes provided by Hulley.

"I know him intimately. We worked very closely. We also knew each other socially. I knew him extremely well," Hofmeyr said.

"I would be able to recognise his voice without a shadow of a doubt. I think he has a distinctive voice and he has a number of mannerisms."

Hofmeyr added that Davids was the only one who knew the details of a long conversation he and Davids had with Ngcuka at the East London airport, and that Davids told McCarthy what was said.

After listening to the recordings, Hofmeyr said he had lost confidence in Davids's ability to make independent and impartial operational decisions and believed that senior management could no longer work with him.

Hofmeyr said he called Davids to a meeting on April 2 2009 to discuss the tapes. "Essentially he did not deny that such a conversation could have taken place.

"He also said that at the time people had strong private views and that he was also entitled to have his private views on these issues."

Davids's advocate, Ronald Sutherland, questioned why Hofmeyr, without ever testing the veracity of the tapes, accepted that they were authentic.

"Even at a time when fabrication was in fashion . you took it as a fact that the tapes were original and not manipulated.

"I don't think anyone of us should be that trusting," he argued.

Sutherland also submitted that Hofmeyr, Mzinyathi and Hulley were the only ones who knew of the existence of the tapes.Hofmeyr said he took short notes while listening to the recordings as he did not want his notes to "fall into the wrong hands".

The hearing continues.