Phosa is not a spy – court

Former top ANC executive Mathews Phosa was not the author of a spy report implicating Mpumalanga Premier David Mabuza as an apartheid spy, a Pretoria High Court judge has ruled.

Judge Bill Prinsloo yesterday dismissed Mabuza’s R10 million defamation claim and his demand for an apology from Phosa.

He also granted a punitive costs order against the premier for his “scurrilous and unjustified” allegations that Phosa not only concocted the spy report, but was himself an apartheid spy.

He said there was no credible evidence that Phosa had created the report and it was inherently improbable that he would have.

The spy report, which surfaced in the media in 2014, accused Mabuza of spying on the ANC’s top leaders, including President Jacob Zuma and on Phosa, for the apartheid police.

It suggested that his “espionage” had led to the killing of Mpumalanga activist Portia Shabangu, in Swaziland, in 1989.

Mabuza claimed Phosa had cooked up and distributed the spy report to harm his reputation and cost him his position as premier.

Phosa, a former ANC treasurer-general, flatly denied the allegations and said an anonymous person had dropped off the spy report in an unmarked envelope at his house.

He said he had confidentially sent the report to ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte, who in turn forwarded it to the ANC’s top six officials.

Judge Prinsloo rejected the evidence of Mabuza’s main witness, Phosa’s former house manager Jan Venter, who claimed he had witnessed his boss and a business partner concocting the spy report, which Phosa purportedly scribbled on a piece of paper.

He said it was difficult to overlook evidence that large amounts of money had been channelled to Venter through Mabuze’s attorney.

The extraordinary amount of detail in the report means Phosa would have had to exhibit phenomenal powers of recollection, the judge said.