FeedBook Excerpt: In a Different Time by Peter Harris
Of the two 2009 Sunday Times Literary Awards winners, we’ve seen an excerpt from one, Anne Landsman’s Fiction Prize winner, The Rowing Lesson (which you can read here).
The other, however – Peter Harris’ gripping account of the trial of the Delmas Four, In a Different Time, which won the Alan Paton Award – has heretofore gone unexcerpted on our network.
Clearly, this is a problem that requires rectification without delay. We are very pleased, then, to bring you one of the book’s key scenes, in which Harris and his colleagues lead the evidence of notorious apartheid operative Dirk Coetzee – in their clients’ defence:
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We meet Coetzee in the hall. He’s wearing a sporty checked jacket and looking pumped up, ready for the occasion. In the past few days, Dennis Kuny has spent a lot of time with him going over his evidence. Bheki and I have also spoken to him to get his motivation right. Fortunately, reviving his spirits wasn’t too difficult: all it took to get his blood up were a few reminders of how his erstwhile colleagues had turned on him. With Coetzee is his brother Ben who has come to London to be with him at this critical time and is a major stabilising influence.
I have to hand it to Dirk Coetzee, he’s a fighter. He shows no fear or apprehension. I’ve come to realise how resilient he’s been in dealing with his isolation, desperately alone, estranged from family, friends and country, and at the mercy of his former sworn enemies, the comrades of people he’s murdered. That he’s still alive is extraordinary, and contrary to all predictions, including mine. Nevertheless, despite the fraught situation, he’s prepared to testify against the police.
The man standing next to Coetzee in the foyer introduces himself to me as Billy Masetlha. Tall and slim, in a well-tailored dark suit, he speaks quietly and with authority. I’ve heard the name before and know that he holds a senior position in ANC Intelligence. Presumably he’s the person Zuma has asked to handle Coetzee in London. In addition to Masetlha, two other men stand close to Coetzee. Dennis Kuny comes out of the old art deco cinema where the hearing is in session, approaches Coetzee and takes him aside. I chat to Masetlha, Bheki and the other two men, discussing Coetzee’s state of mind and how his evidence will be regarded in London. Masetlha is friendly but non-committal.
When Coetzee walks into the hearing room, the press come rushing to ask questions and take photographs. I intervene. Coetzee cannot make any statements until after he has given his evidence. At the same time, the two large policemen who are in charge of security tell the photographers to take their pictures outside. Respectfully, they back off. It is time to start.
There is a hush as Coetzee walks to the witness stand. The police investigators stare at him. I wonder how they will provoke him. They know he’s volatile and will probably try to unsettle him before he gets into the box. As Coetzee draws level with (now) General Engelbrecht, he suddenly looks at him, and says in Afrikaans, ‘Ja, Krappies, how’s it going?’ Engelbrecht flushes, embarrassed by Coetzee’s easy familiarity, and mumbles something back. Coetzee smiles. Then Harms, dressed theatrically in his black judge’s robes, dramatically strides onto the stage from the dark folds of the drapes in the wings. ‘Enter Harms, left of tage,’ I say to Kuny, and we are off.
It takes a full day for Dennis Kuny to lead Coetzee through his evidence, incident by incident. Coetzee is good in the box. Avoiding bravado and making no cheap points, he comes across as sincere, although at times he is perhaps a little too confident. When he cannot remember a date or a detail about an issue, he admits this rather than inventing the answer or guessing. Once again I am drawn into his world of death and violence, a world without limits.
Whenever Coetzee gets to an incident in Swaziland, Harms quickly cuts in to tell him he must restrict himself to South Africa. Coetzee, clearly frustrated at being prevented from giving the full picture, does not hide his irritation. The policemen, a wall of shoulders and heads – no necks – slowly shake their heads at this errant son. They whisper like conspirators. Occasionally, Coetzee glances at them, showing no signs of discomfort or unease.
The key, however, is not how the police feel about Coetzee but how Harms feels about him. And the signs are not encouraging. Harms interjects a number of times, especially in the late afternoon when Coetzee is tired and has become a little blasé. When he clarifies an issue with Coetzee, the judge’s tone is negative. It’s subtle but it’s there, and I can feel it. Coetzee picks it up too. Initially he’s polite and courteous in his explanations, and then less so as his exasperation grows. I notice that the reporters are scribbling frantically. I can imagine Freek’s angle and make a mental note to get feedback on Freek’s coverage of Coetzee on the South African eight o’clock news.
At the end of the day, Coetzee steps down from the witness stand. He’s exhausted but seems satisfied that he’s able to tell his story. We shake his hand, pat him on the back, tell him he did well.
‘The judge doesn’t like me,’ is the first thing he says, squaring his shoulders. ‘I can sense it.’
We make light of it but we know it’s true.
The next morning Coetzee is cross-examined. Sam Maritz, one of the senior counsel for the police, puts the questions. Maritz is a quiet, fastidious man who generally keeps to himself, preferring not to socialise with his clients during the breaks. He’s a more than competent senior counsel. Often the State’s counsel don’t make the grade, but I know Maritz is a reasonable technician who is bound to conduct a sound cros examination.
I would’ve preferred ‘Goud’ Visser, but it was not to be.
Coetzee is confident, cutting a handsome figure as he turns to face his interrogator. Maritz, like a boxer in the first round, wastes no time in getting stuck in. Openly aggressive, he attacks Coetzee’s credibility. He tells him he’s a liar trying to save his own skin. A renegade policeman who cannot be believed, by his own admission a liar, a thief and a murderer.
No scalpel here, Maritz wields an axe and Coetzee reacts accordingly. Maritz focuses on the illegal diamond dealing and the murder of the diamond dealer from Lesotho to show that in this incident, and by implication in others, Coetzee was not acting under orders but indulging in a frolic of his own. In other words, he was motivated by his own criminal objectives and greed. Coetzee snaps back defensively that by that stage he was so far on the other side of the law that he decided to embark on a ‘private enterprise’ of his own. An honest answer, but it doesn’t make him look good.
Harms shakes his head, unimpressed. At this display of disapproval from the judge, Maritz goes in harder. He tells Coetzee that he disgusts him with his lies and his lack of remorse for what he’s done. Coetzee returns the blow, saying he’s disgusted by Maritz because he defends dishonest policemen. Finding himself in a corner, Coetzee forgets all the advice we gave him about keeping his cool. Maritz, on a roll now, sensing that Harms is with him, and not even looking at Coetzee but at the judge, accuses Coetzee of implicating his former colleagues in his own illegal acts.
Actually, Coetzee is unashamed of his actions. Although he spars with Maritz, he is almost indifferent to the electric effect of his words on those at the hearing. I remember how I reacted when he first told me his story in Lusaka. Now you can feel the chill in the room as he describes violent death as blithely as a chef listing ingredients. Maritz uses this matter-of-fact recounting to accuse Coetzee sarcastically of being unrepentant. Coetzee comes back that he killed because he was in a war and was mostly acting under orders. Listening to his story, I have to remind myself of all the corroboration from other sources, from Nofomela, Tshikalanga and the evidence our investigators collated. As outrageous as his version is, I know it is the truth.
Unfortunately, Harms appears to attach little worth to the corroboration. He sees Coetzee as a renegade. After a while, he joins Maritz in attacking Coetzee, throwing in cynical comments, being clever. Amongst lawyers it is accepted that judges like you to laugh at their jokes. We do this politely even when the judge’s jokes are bad. But here only one side laughs, because Harms is going too far. This commission is about the alleged activities of hit squads and there is enough evidence for it to be taken seriously, yet the judge sees it as an opportunity to show off. At other times Harms forgets himself, plunging into a cross-examination of his own for long periods and berating Coetzee for not remembering details. During these interventions, Maritz looks on smugly. Coetzee feels beleaguered, sometimes simply shaking his head at the onslaught. There is little we can do to protect him. We have to wait our turn in re-examination.
The cross-examination of Coetzee goes on for three days.
Coetzee’s grilling by Maritz, the judge, McNally and Roberts is intense. At one point Les Roberts fastens on a letter Coetzee wrote to his family hoping that he’d be appointed chief investigator in our ‘Nuremberg Trials’. The security police had intercepted the letter which details the thoughts of a lonely man grappling with his isolation and new reality.
In Lusaka, he’d often said that if he could only get back to South Africa and have a team to help him, he would find out who was responsible for bombing various buildings and murdering resistance activists. ‘I could do it in days,’ he would say. ‘I know how they operate, I know how they think, I know where they go to rest after the hits and I know who to go to for the evidence.’ I believed him. I’d never met anyone like him before, and certainly no policeman with his record and expertise had ever been available to us. He was totally convincing.
But this is a different situation. Here he is taunted.
‘You see yourself as the chief investigator in what you call South Africa’s own Nuremberg Trial,’ says Roberts, a quiet man who has found confidence in London.
‘I said that could happen in the future if the truth doesn’t come out at this stage,’ retorts Coetzee.
‘And at the end of this Nuremberg procedure which you think is a possibility, after you have flushed everybody out, are you going to turn yourself in so that you can be prosecuted along with the rest?’ asks Roberts sarcastically.
‘That’s right,’ says Coetzee. ‘Accused number one.’ Roberts smiles. ‘That makes about as much sense as if at the original Nuremberg, they’d made Rudolf Hess the chief investigator.’
Mocking laughter from the policemen and their lawyers. Harms joins in. Coetzee bows his head, humiliated and confused. It’s a disaster, but Coetzee doesn’t give up. At one point, I think he is going to step out of the witness box, curse Harms foully and walk out to vanish into the ANC.
To his credit, he doesn’t. That he sticks to his story, does not break down and keeps on repeating it, irritates Harms intensely. Eventually the judge loses control and responds loudly, ‘That’s a lot of crap.’ There is silence and then everyone laughs. Even Coetzee smiles ruefully and shakes his head at the judge’s conduct. From the studied way he looks at Harms, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s imagining how he’d spend the time with the learned judge if they were alone in a remote place.
During the break at the end of the session, Victoria Brittain of the Guardian and a journalist from The Times approach me, intrigued by the judge’s behaviour. ‘So tell me,’ says Victoria, ‘is it common practice for South African judges to swear at witnesses and tell them they are talking “crap”?’
‘No,’ I say, ‘I think this is a first for all of us.’
Her question makes me realise once more that the commission is a farce. Here we are trading insults in an art deco cinema beneath Trafalgar Square. How can you take it seriously when even the actions of the judge
are beyond the pale? I am furious. I think of the sacrifices people have made and of the work that has been done to reveal the atrocities. For what? For this circus? Selfishly, I consider how much useless work I have put into this. And yet below the farce are deadly serious circumstances: a police force that is out of control. What will they do when they see Coetzee regarded as a lunatic with deranged fantasies? What will they be capable of when they feel vindicated?
I should have walked out of this commission a long time ago. In truth, I’m furious at Harms, at myself for participating and for having had hopes, again.
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Book details
- In a Different Time: The inside story of the Delmas Four by Peter Harris
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EAN: 9781415200490
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