Selebi: A life of myths and legends January 25 2015 at 08:19 am INDEPENDENT MEDIA Perhaps the seeds of Jackie Selebi’s downfall were laid long ago, when he was still Reverend Khumalo, writes Karima Brown. Johannesburg - In South Africa we have a cultural practice which requires us not to speak ill of the dead. This is why the man who had Jackie Selebi charged with corruption, which led to his conviction and jailing, had this to say on hearing about his passing: “I think we should acknowledge the contribution he has made to our struggle for liberation and learn from the mistakes he made that led to his arrest and conviction for fraud.” Sage words from former head of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) Vusi Pikoli who had the difficult responsibility back then to not allow his filial bond with a comrade to stand in the way of his pursuit to uphold the law of the land. Back in 2010 when Selebi was first found guilty of fraud I wrote a piece for the Business Day, which tried to go some way to answer this question: How does a man go from being a Soweto school teacher, revolutionary, top diplomat, presidential confidant and national police commissioner to a common criminal? In trying to answer this, I asked people who knew and worked with him during his years in exile and then in post-apartheid South Africa, how a man with such a background ended up being taken down by gangster-turned-snitch Glenn Agliotti. I concluded a pop-psychology answer could be that Selebi fell victim to one too many personas he learned to cultivate during his days as an underground operative, a man who had to “live his legend” (cultivated cover) to mask his real work for the ANC. Selebi dedicated his youth to the cause of freeing South Africa, which is why ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe correctly said: “We remember him as a firm contributor to our struggle for freedom. Jackie Selebi never had a youth, he spent his youth in exile and was instrumental in the formation of the South African Youth Congress (Sayco) while in exile, and when the youth league was relaunched internally, he handled the handover peacefully.” But to only remember his contribution and not focus on why he had fallen victim to the sins of incumbency, would be an injustice to the very idealism which drove Selebi and many others like him who joined the liberation struggle to fight for freedom. As a former youth activist, I met Selebi in Lusaka in pursuit of my mandate to drum up support for Sayco on the international front. At the time the youth organisation faced terrible repression, which saw the entire leadership under the late Peter Mokaba arrested and detained. Selebi’s persona then was Reverend Khumalo, whom I had to make contact with in Lusaka en route to Europe and America. He was meant to bring our documents to the airport which would allow us to continue our journey without any hassles from the authorities, especially since my two comrades and I had entered Zambia without the required papers. We waited at the airport for several hours before Reverend Khumalo rocked up, dishevelled and disinterested, having exposed us to the danger of being arrested on the spot for travelling without documents by abandoning us at the airport for hours. Needless to say, I was far from impressed. Sadly, as the events of 2010 unfolded, this would not be the last time he would fall short of the expectations I had of him. A former Umkhonto weSizwe operative who served with Selebi in a refashioned police service told me one reason revolutionaries often lose their moral compass is “unfettered power”. “You must remember, as the national commissioner he was all-powerful. He could deal with his enemies, he could engage individual ministers, including the president at the time. Why do you think no one was alarmed when he was hanging out with people such as Agliotti? He was untouchable, because there was no one watching him.” Of course Selebi didn’t just wield power when he became part of the new democratic state in 1994. Nor was “unfettered power” necessarily a post-1994 phenomenon. A cursory study of the ANC in exile confirms there were abuses of power by senior ANC officials even then, debunking the notion that access to state power post-1994 is the main cause of Selebi’s dramatic change. “You must remember that in exile, one depended on the ANC for everything. Travel, study, food rations, everything,” a former cadre said. “And given that Jackie was the head of the youth section, he would be well versed on how to work the system and how to abuse it, if you get my meaning.” Perhaps the seeds of Selebi’s downfall were laid long before then, when he was still Reverend Khumalo. Or perhaps even while he was Doobi Gray, the well-loved history teacher at Musi High in Pimville, Soweto, in the early 1970s. Selebi’s earlier life was a lot more illustrious, with an almost guaranteed future of greatness. As a fiery youth leader operating from the frontline states during the heady days of exile, Selebi was an important player. He hailed from a group of people who joined the ANC at a time when its prospects were the bleakest. He was working for the ANC underground before the 1976 uprisings, playing a very significant role tirelessly building – even if it was very rudimentary – structures of the ANC which would later play a pivotal role in linking leaders such as President Jacob Zuma and others freshly released from Robben Island with the many youngsters who wanted to leave the country and swell the ranks of the ANC in exile. Selebi ascended the ranks quickly and became the leader of the ANC youth section, a position which allowed him to travel abroad, in many ways a harbinger of things to come when he became an influential figure in the ANC’s expanding diplomatic presence. His rapid rise in the youth section brought him into contact with Mbeki and was the basis of a relationship that defined both men in later years. But in 2010, with Mbeki departed from the national scene and no longer able to protect his old friend and confidant, Selebi’s downfall was played out graphically over two days as Judge Meyer Joffe read his judgment sealing his fate. During the ruling, Judge Joffe said Selebi and Agliotti “were strangers to the truth”, ironic if one thinks back to 2004 when Selebi, during his inaugural speech as police commissioner, told the country the fight against corruption was a necessity because “crime had to be fought with clean hands”. At that moment in Judge Joffe’s court, the legends of Doobi Gray and Reverend Khumalo collided with the reality of the flawed figure of Selebi. A life of many myths and legends had merely come full circle. May they all rest in peace. * Karima Brown is Independent Medias Group Executive Editor. Sunday Independent
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 10:27:06 +0000
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