For a man who is perched on a hotbed of controversy, Vusi Pikoli is pretty cool. A quick thinker, a soft speaker and a stickler for punctuality, the suspended national director of public prosecutions calls me a minute before our scheduled interview on Wednesday morning in Midrand to announce his arrival.
In the interview, I battle, unsuccessfully to wrest some juice out of Pikoli's remarkable story about his suspension in September last year, just a few days before the arrest of Jackie Selebi, the national police commissioner.
Allegations that Selebi has close connections to an underground mafia involved in drug dealing and smuggling have kept the country riveted since its association with the murder of businessman Brett Kebble in September 2005.
Pikoli says his investigations into the nefarious activities of the underworld yielded unexpected information about Selebi. That is what led to his suspension two years later by then-president Thabo Mbeki, says Pikoli.
Mbeki also ordered a commission, led by Frene Ginwala, the former speaker of the National Assembly, to investigate whether Pikoli was "fit and proper" for office. A leak from the report, which was released to President Kgalema Motlanthe, and which is still under wraps, says that Ginwala found Pikoli fit for office but also found that he had compromised national security. Pikoli is not at liberty to discuss this hot potato.
At the time of our interview, he had not yet seen the contents of the report and is anyway bound by a legal process that may not be prejudiced; at risk is his own reputation.
At the commission hearings, Manala Manzini, the head of the national intelligence agency (NIA), accused the directorate of special operations (DSO or Scorpions) of having exceeded its mandate. It should have focused on prosecutions instead of political intelligence, he said. Manzini was referring to the Special Browse Mole Consolidated Report, which is the handiwork of the DSO and which alleges that the South African intelligence network was being infiltrated by Angolan intelligence operatives.
But as it happens, Pikoli was not the originator of the Browse report. He told the Ginwala commission that he learned about it only in March 2003, once the investigation had been completed.
He said he did not pay much attention to details of the work in progress that he saw. But in July 2003, when he read the final report, Pikoli told Leonard McCarthy, the head of the DSO, that the directorate should dissociate itself from the report; its content was "raw intelligence".
Also , Pikoli told the commission that he acted in good faith when asked to investigate the conspiracy to assassinate the Malawian president - that it was entirely legal and was not, as the government claimed, "an intelligence-gathering exercise".
Pikoli brusquely shrugs off the subject of national security but talks readily about his suspension, which he believes was an attempt to put a spoke in his investigation and arrest of Selebi.
Pikoli's submission contradicts the claims of Mbeki and Brigitte Mabandla, the then justice minister, that he had failed to keep them in the loop about his investigation. When he suspended Pikoli, Mbeki cited this allegation - among other reasons, including Pikoli's failure to report on his investigation and the fact that he had granted immunity to criminals through plea bargains. He also cited the activities of the Scorpions and Pikoli's breakdown of relations with Mabandla.
The correspondence between Pikoli and Mabandla reveals that he felt comfortable enough with Mabandla to write a letter in January 2006 about a power struggle with Menzi Simelane, the director general of justice.
Pikoli found this "annoying, undermining and totally unacceptable". Mabandla said: "He is new, he is young, I will talk to him."
By September 18 2007, events had taken a dire turn. A letter, which it has emerged was written by Simelane, on Mabandla's letterhead and signed by herself, ordered Pikoli to drop his investigation into Selebi.
But this order was "unlawful and a violation of both the Constitution and the NPA Act," says Pikoli. He says that the refusal to submit to Mabandla's order is, among other things, what led to his suspension.
- Did the minister read the letter before signing it and agree with its contents?
"I gave her the opportunity to tell me what had happened, but it is an opportunity lost."
- Did you do everything by the book?
"Some people think I am arrogant because I did not listen to the justice minister when she told me to stop investigating Selebi."
- Were you in shock when you were suspended?
"It came unexpectedly. It has not been easy."
- What was Mbeki's interest in protecting Selebi from investigations by the NPA?
"I do not know why the former president did what he did."
- Was Mbeki close to Selebi?
"Yes."
- Were you close to Selebi?
"We go back to 1980, in exile in Lesotho; when I told him he was to be investigated, we both ended up in tears.
"In June 1999, when I was acting director-general in the department of justice, I was involved in the formation of the new unit, the DSO, to deal with organised crime.
"We were involved in attempting to reduce the high levels of crime and developed a very close working relationship which became even closer when I was appointed national director of public prosecutions."
- Were you ever close to Mbeki?
"No, I was not in Lusaka when he was there and did not interact on a one-on-one level with him. We did so only later."
- Do you think you will be reinstated?
"If the president wants me back in my job, I'll go back. I cannot pretend that nothing has happened, though. I will have to make a fresh assessment. I could have resigned when I was asked to, and taken a handsome package. I am receiving my full salary but I feel like a thief."
- You could think of it as payment for bearing the burden of injustice.
"There is no adequate compensation."
Pikoli is not vindictive, but his experience qualifies him for a place in the coalition of the walking wounded, the fallout from Mbeki's repressive regime. If he was down in the dumps, this is no longer the case. Some of South Africa's top players are lining up with lucrative offers.
Tokyo Sexwale's approach with an in-house senior legal counsel for the Mvelaphanda Group is "interesting", says Pikoli. He recently received an award from the International Association of Prosecutors for his defence of prosecutorial independence.
"If politicians mess with the prosecutorial independence, they mess with the law in this country. I may be knocking the last nail into my coffin, but I have to say it." Pikoli's uncompromising stand is not new; he is no victim and he says he has suffered worse setbacks than this suspension.
He testified at the truth and reconciliation commission about Sizwe Kondile, a close friend with whom he had grown up in New Brighton in Port Elizabeth. In 1981, Kondile was abducted in Lesotho, detained in a police station in Jeffreys Bay in the Eastern Cape and taken to Komatipoort near the Mozambique border where he was shot and burned while his killers enjoyed a braai and a beer.
Pikoli is still outraged by a claim by the four senior Eastern Cape policemen who applied for amnesty for Kondile's death, that Kondile had been a spy.
"I can't imagine anything worse happening to a person. It strengthens my conviction about doing the right thing. You can't hide truth forever. The lie has a very short life span.
"My daughter, who was born on January 26 1986, died 10 months later. Her grandmother had taken her back home so we could not bury her. We called her Sandina Siyalithath'ilizwe . At this time I had this hope, I was optimistic about the future."
Pikoli's mother, Nonthando Pikoli, worked hard as a shop assistant and later as a legal typist and home economics instructor to ensure that Pikoli, who was born in March 1958, rose above the station of messenger, the lifetime work of his father, Zalisile Pikoli. Advocate Vusumzi Patrick "Vusi" Pikoli holds three degrees, a BA in law and an LLB from the University of Lesotho and a Masters in law from the University of Zimbabwe. His mother died last year.
"She developed a heart complaint in 2005 when I got the job of national director. She said it was dangerous; after what happened to Bulelani Ncguka in 2004."
Ngcuka, Pikoli's predecessor, accused of having spied under apartheid, was forced to resign in 2004 but was vindicated by the Hefer Commission.
- Were you not worried when you took over Ngcuka's job that you might suffer a similar fate?
"I never applied for the position. I had to do the job as expected. I did not talk to Bulelani about work. I always said that there should be no outside influence in my work and particularly no executive interference."
- You have said repeatedly that there was no political interference in the decision to prosecute Jacob Zuma.
"That's right. It was my decision to prosecute Zuma following the evidence of the investigation team and the lead prosecutor. I said this is a job that has to be done. No way should I want to lie about any person. I went to tell him myself."
- Did you feel vindicated by Mbeki's removal from office?
"I don't think it was correct. There is a proper procedure for the removal of a president of a country. People need to look at a constitutional process and not a political process."