The Madlanga commission’s chief evidence leader, Matthew Chaskalson, put it to controversial businessman Brown Mogotsi that his allegations that KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi and Zulu King Misuzulu kaZwelithini were US CIA agents sounded like a misdirection tactic.
But Mogotsi rejected this, saying: “No, it’s not the intention.”
Mogotsi told the Madlanga commission on Tuesday that Mkhwanazi and King Misuzulu had been recruited by the CIA.
In his statement, Mogotsi said he had obtained information from one of his sources that MisuZulu and Mkhwanazi were recruited by, and actively worked for, the American spy agency.
Mogotsi also told the commission that he had been told that both men were supposedly recruited to protect Western interests in South Africa. He explained that this claim was linked to a coal mine and export routes through the Richards Bay Coal Terminal. According to him, there were worries that the government might stop coal exports, some of which he said involved Israeli interests, especially after South Africa took Israel to the International Criminal Court.
However, on Wednesday, Chaskalson pointed out discrepancies in Mogotsi’s testimony, saying there was no coal mine in Richards Bay and that the coal terminal was owned by a consortium of more than 10 mining companies, each of which had their own export quota.
“And each of these, I think it’s either 13 or 15 mining companies, controls how that export quota is used, so they can decide to whom they want to export coal from Richards Bay.
“What I want to put to you is the notion that you advance in your statement and you refer to the off-take portion of this coal route-so the off-take portion of this coal route is owned by Israeli interests - that’s what triggered this investigation apparently. That notion is completely fanciful, because short of buying up all the export capacity of between 13 and 15 different mining companies, it’s not possible to own the off-take portion of the Richards Bay coal terminal,” he said.
However, Mogotsi said he had meant a mine in Mpumalanga and could not give a specific response to what Chaskalson had put to him.
Chaskalson put it to Mogotsi that there had never been any suggestion from the government that the coal terminal was going to be shut down.
“On the contrary, in the period you speak of, the government’s been investing hundreds of millions of rands in improving the rail link to Richards Bay,” Chaskalson said.
He also put it to Mogotsi that had he and his handler been genuinely investigating a CIA plot through Mkhwanazi to protect Israeli interests in the whole of the export, the offtake from the Richards Bay coal terminal, they would have been able to discover the facts that he has just put to him in five minutes on the internet.
“So you really wouldn’t have come up with a story which is self-evidently absurd,” he said.
However, Mogotsi argued that investigations do not work that way.
TimesLIVE
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