Pretoria - Arms deal critic Terry Crawford-Browne on Wednesday made more startling allegations in his testimony to the Seriti Commission of Inquiry into the arms deal – that when MK chief Chris Hani was assassinated in 1993, he was on the verge of exposing then MK commander Joe Modise’s corruption.
Crawford-Browne also testified that Modise had been fatally poisoned.
The previous day he testified that Winnie Madikizela-Mandela had been behind the leaking of confidential documents on arms deal corruption to the media.
Madikizela-Mandela’s personal assistant, Zodwa Zwane, told the Cape Times on Wednesday night that Madikizela-Mandela was not prepared to comment on the allegations as yet.
The ANC has rejected Crawford-Browne’s claims regarding the former first lady.
Crawford-Browne, a retired banker, said he was told by Bheki Jacobs six weeks before Modise died that he (Modise) was being poisoned, and that his death would be ascribed to cancer.
Crawford-Browne told the inquiry in Pretoria: “Mr Modise was known to have many enemies and it is also known there was considerable animosity between him and Mr Chris Hani dating from their times in exile.”
Bheki Jacobs, also known as Uranin Vladimir, Hassan Solomon and Hassan Osman, died in 2008 after a six-month battle with cancer.
Crawford-Browne said Jacobs was an ANC intelligence operative.
In 2003, Jacobs was arrested, and later exonerated, for allegedly plotting an assassination.
At the time, Jacobs reportedly believed his one-time comrade and later nemesis, Mo Shaik, to be behind the arrest.
“It has been alleged that Mr Janusz Walus (Hani’s assassin) was
ultimately employed by the British arms manufacturer BAE, perhaps by way of John Bredenkamp, the Zimbabwean who was the second-largest recipient of those BAE bribes,” he told the inquiry.
Blaming Clive Derby-Lewis for Hani’s murder was merely a red herring to blame white right-wing elements, diverting attention from the British arms industry.
Derby-Lewis was convicted of conspiring to kill Hani by providing the gun that Polish immigrant Walus used to kill him in the driveway of his home in Boksburg, on the East Rand, on April 10, 1993.
The 78-year-old former Conservative Party MP was initially sentenced to death, which was commuted to life imprisonment when the death penalty was abolished in 1995. He has been repeatedly denied parole.
On Wednesday, Crawford-Browne said Jacobs told him that an investigating team’s report was being doctored pending Modise’s death “so that dead men can tell no tales”.
On Tuesday, Crawford-Browne singled out ANC stalwart Madikizela-Mandela as one of the “concerned MPs” to have leaked documents on the 1999 arms deal.
But ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte said: “The ANC is outraged by reports that Terry Crawford-Browne has named ANC stalwart Comrade Winnie Madikizela-Mandela as one of the ‘concerned MPs’ who leaked to him information about the arms deal.
“The ANC disputes the allegations as lies. It is implausible that she would ‘leak’ any information to Crawford-Browne and act as a ‘concerned MP’.
“The ANC stands by Comrade Winnie Madikizela-Mandela on this matter.”
Cape Times