Booysen a state star and also the villain
Former KwaZulu-Natal Hawks boss Johan Booysen is the state’s star witness in corruption cases against the ex-business partner of former president Jacob Zuma’s son Edward at the same time as the state pursues him for “managing” an allegedly murderous police squad.
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) is defending its decision to prosecute Booysen and 17 former members of the police’s Cato Manor Serious and Violent Crime Unit for racketeering, while using Booysen’s evidence as a key basis for the corruption cases against politically connected businessman Thoshan Panday.
KwaZulu-Natal prosecutions head Moipone Noko withdrew charges linked to Panday’s alleged involvement in a dodgy multimillion-rand World Cup police accommodation tender, but that decision was overturned by the NPA.
Panday is now fighting the decision that he should face trial in court. The state is also
pursuing another corruption case against Panday and colonel Navin Madhoe for attempting to bribe Booysen, the investigator in that case, to backdate a report linked to the World Cup investigation – a bribe that the police reportedly caught on camera as part of a sting operation.
Booysen maintains that the state’s attempts to link him to the much publicised case against the Cato Manor Unit, in which members stand accused of murdering 28 people and then falsely claiming that they were resisting arrest or shooting at officers, was motivated by a desire to protect the “untouchable” Panday.
Former NPA boss Shaun Abrahams has denied this in the court papers.
“I can only speak for the NPA when I say that Booysen has not been targeted in any way, nor have any attempts been made by the NPA to discredit him.”
The NPA has portrayed the Cato Manor unit’s members as state-sanctioned vigilantes who used the prevalent “shoot to kill” motto to assassinate so-called criminal suspects between 2008 and 2011, and says it has evidence that the unit’s members planted firearms on them to justify the killings.
Booysen maintains that there is no direct evidence that he was involved in the alleged incidents for which the unit’s members are now standing trial.
But that has not stopped the NPA from continuing to pursue Booysen for being an alleged “manager” in what the state alleges was a criminal “enterprise”, according to the definitions of the Prevention of Organised Crime Act — an “enterprise” allegedly based in the Cato Manor unit.
The unit’s members face 116 charges, including 28 of murder. The members implicated in these killings have claimed that the dead were suspects who had resisted arrest or tried to shoot at them, but Abrahams was not convinced.
In court papers filed before he was removed, Abrahams provides his reasons for issuing Poca (Proceeds of Crime Act) authorisations against Booysen and his co-accused.
These include:
● “The intrinsic unlikelihood of 28 people being killed by a single relatively small police unit, none being captured alive”.
● “The fact that in 26 of 28 cases there was no arrest or search warrants for those they shot dead”.
● “The ballistics reports which cast doubt on the claims that those shot dead by Cato Manor SVC were resisting arrest”.
● “The fact that no officers were harmed and police vehicles reported as damaged likewise cast some doubt upon the version of [the accused unit members]”.
Abrahams further says the state alleges that Booysen and officers Willem Olivier, Anton Lockem and Jan van Tonder were “co-managers” of a criminal enterprise, which “provided the accused with a continuity of structure, whereunder they conducted unlawful activities, with the purpose of, inter alia, assassinating criminal suspects for reward”.
According to Abrahams, someone who is alleged to be a manager of a criminal enterprise under Poca can be found guilty if it can be shown that they knew, or “ought reasonably to have known” that people associated with the enterprise were witting or unwitting participants in that enterprise’s affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity.
“Hence, Booysen and other unit commanders, charged as co-managers of the enterprise, could be criminally liable even if there were no evidence linking them to any individual offence”, says Abrahams.
Booysen remains adamant that there is no rational or legal basis for him to be charged with racketeering, and says this charge is motivated by the NPA’s need to connect him to alleged crimes he is not linked to.
Booysen and his co-accused have brought separate legal challenges to the decisions by former acting NPA head Nomgcobo Jiba and Abrahams to authorise their prosecution for racketeering.
The High Court in Durban last week ruled in favour of Jiba’s application to belatedly hand over nine volumes of evidence she says informed her decision to authorise the racketeering prosecutions of the unit’s members – a decision Booysen previously successfully challenged in court.
That means that this material, which includes ballistics reports and witness statements, will now form part of the documents considered by the court when it decides whether Jiba’s decision to authorise racketeering charges against the unit’s members was rational.
Booysen, meanwhile, says he will file his response to Abrahams’ affidavit in the coming days. However, he remains adamant that Abrahams’s decision to pursue racketeering charges against him was one built on dishonesty and incorrect information, and was manifestly irrational.