Pretoria High Court, 2011
THE FIRST TIME I SAW Muzi Kunene in the flesh was when he entered a Pretoria court under heavy police guard, in chains. He had been brought directly from prison, where he was serving two years of a life sentence for kidnapping, murder and robbery, which had taken place subsequent to the email saga. He joined Billy Masetlha and Funi Madlala,1 the NIA cyber unit manager, on a charge of defrauding the National Intelligence Agency of R150,000 in an illegal payment. The charge had been brought by the NIA director general, Manala Manzini.
A well-built, middle-aged man, with a dark shiny dome, Kunene was dressed in a blue tailored suit without tie, complemented by a black silk shirt. Next to him, Masetlha and Madlala looked distinctly shabby as they embraced him. I could see Kunene in his past role as company director and man about town. His appearance was impressive and, without the manacles, one would have thought he was a well-to-do businessman.
As the former minister I had been called to give evidence about the email saga. This was a mere formality and, after a couple of hours of my answering to the prosecution, the defence barely directed questions at me.
While it was interesting to observe Masetlha and Madlala, who were not in custody, I was engrossed by Kunene, and my mind ran back to the gruesome press accounts of the abduction and cold-blooded murder of a luckless estate agent, Lynne Hume, at his hands, which had landed him in prison. By those accounts the man was a merciless killer who had shown no pity whatsoever for a young woman whom he had tricked and robbed and whom he was prepared to murder in order to wipe out his culpability. The kidnapping had taken place in 2007 at Kunene’s rented home in Ballito, KwaZulu-Natal, where Lynne Hume had been lured for the purpose of robbing her. She had then been spirited elsewhere to be executed in cold blood. Kunene had attempted to cover his tracks and had returned to his Gauteng home, which was the scene of the IG’s raid in 2005. With the investigators of Hume’s murder closing in on him, the media had speculated on his bizarre behaviour. Kunene had created a smokescreen, claiming that ANC members were out to eliminate him. The allegation emerged from wild cloak-and-dagger tales he recounted during a radio interview. On his way home, bleeding from a flesh wound to his hand, he claimed he had been followed by two men who had fired shots at him.
There was speculation at the time that he was unhinged and that the wound was self-inflicted. Investigations soon revealed that he had shot himself.
That shooting incident was followed within a week by an armed attack on his son Msebenzi. Kunene Junior was rushed to hospital bleeding from a gunshot wound to the head.2 Msebenzi Kunene subsequently gave evidence that his father had attempted to silence him because of what he knew about Lynne Hume’s murder.
Under the heading ‘Kunene gets life in jail’, newspapers subsequently reported: ‘IT consultant Muzi Kunene was sentenced in the Bloemfontein High Court to life imprisonment for the murder of Ballito estate agent Lynne Hume.’3 The court found that the accused had driven Hume from Ballito to a remote spot and shot her in the passenger seat of her white Volvo. The car was then set alight. Her body was burned beyond recognition.
In the course of the trial Kunene sought to defend himself by claiming, ‘I am a Zuma supporter. That’s why I’m being framed.’5
Kunene’s son, who was party to the murder, was granted indemnity in return for turning state witness against his father.
Referring to the conspiracy theory forwarded by Kunene, the court found that there was no truth in the allegations. Kunene tried to explain away images of himself escorting Lynne Hume from his home which were recorded on CCTV cameras. His story was that an impersonator disguised to look like him had carried out the crime, and that the police had created his double by having a former Koevoet4 soldier undergo plastic surgery to impersonate him. Kunene also forged an affidavit by a deceased police officer that described an elaborate conspiracy plan by police to frame him. The presiding judge rejected Kunene’s defence as a fabrication – the IT work on the policeman’s affidavit showed it to be full of clumsy errors.
Observing Kunene in the Pretoria court, two years into his life sentence, I mused over his relationship with Masetlha and his connection with Kgalema Motlanthe, on which the media had speculated. In fairness to Motlanthe, I draw attention to the following report from the Mail & Guardian of 25 November 2005. ‘A source within the Inspector General’s office told the Mail & Guardian this week that neither the office nor the police was investigating Motlanthe. “He is not part of our investigation and we do not think it is worthwhile questioning him about the e-mails,” the source said.
‘According to the source, the only link between Kunene and Motlanthe is the fact that they both hold shares in Pamodzi.5 “But this is not good enough to link Motlanthe to our investigations.”
‘It is believed that after he was arrested (on 1 December 2005), Kunene called Motlanthe, among other people, to arrange a lawyer for him. Motlanthe would neither confirm nor deny this when contacted … this week.
‘However, he acknowledged that he knew Kunene. Asked about his business ties with Kunene, Motlanthe said: “I am not a businessman. I do invest a little money that I saved in various companies. I just invest my savings. If I invest money in Standard Bank, I am not in business with whoever invests their money there.”’6
I believe Motlanthe was genuine in his fixation about the fake emails and must have been tricked. I do not believe in the corruption allegations floated about him in the media, which in time dissipated. I thought of him, then as now, as a principled, dignified and honest man. While he may have been misled, like so many at the time, into believing that Mbeki and people like me were working against him, I am of the view that he was genuine in his belief about the emails. In this respect it is important to highlight a point made in the inspector general’s report that Masetlha knowingly used the fabricated material to confuse the secretary general of the ANC, ‘whom he conceivably was also seeking to mislead’.7
I would accept that Motlanthe believed he was acting in defence of the ANC against a possible group of plotters. One might defend him by arguing that it was morally right to expose one’s own government when it resorted to fomenting plots against ‘the people’. In that case one has to be extremely careful of one’s facts. He bravely contested the post of president against Zuma at the ANC’s Mangaung national conference, and he has spoken out powerfully as a voice of principle and sanity against corruption in government. After the disclosures about Kunene, I asked him what he thought of the man, and he told me: ‘That man requires help.’