Cape Town - The informant who told Public Protector Thuli Madonsela she was the target of an alleged hit has admitted threatening to harm Madonsela’s predecessor.
Eleven years ago the informant, Sylvano Hendricks, a transgender woman who calls herself Queenie, phoned then-public protector Lawrence Mushwana and threatened him.
“I made the bomb scare directly and sent him a message,” she admitted this week.
Hendricks said she had been angry with Mushwana, now head of the SA Human Rights Commission, because he had dismissed information she provided which she claimed could have prevented the 2003 murder of Gauteng socialite Hazel Crane.
At the time, a local tabloid reported the informant had sent a message to Mushwana saying: “Lawrence, your time is running out. There is a bomb in your building – tick-tock.”
It reported Hendricks had been sentenced to 12 years behind bars for various crimes, including the threat.
This week HRC spokesman Isaac Mangena said Mushwana recalled several mild threats, but not one involving a bomb.
Mushwana did however recall a threat made by someone in an Eastern Cape prison at the time Hendricks was in an Eastern Cape jail.
The information she supplied to the Public Protector’s Office was deemed baseless.
In her most recent public protector dealings, Hendricks sent a message to Madonsela on April 1 saying a gang boss had been paid R740 000 to have her killed. Madonsela took the warning seriously.
Hendricks, who has links to the 26s and 28s gangs and who has also passed on information to Community Safety MEC Dan Plato, now finds herself at the centre of an intensifying row.
On Wednesday, provincial ANC members lodged a criminal complaint against Plato because of the “dubious sources” they believed he was using to write affidavits to smear, in particular, deputy police commissioner for detectives Major-General Jeremy Vearey.
Plato welcomed the ANC’s actions, saying the affidavits could now be interrogated.
Hendricks is one of three who passed on information to Plato and who made affidavits implicating Vearey. The credibility of the three has been questioned by some police.
This week Hendricks, an ANC member, warned fellow members that if they attacked her integrity she would take them on.
“There are people that want my downfall because I know too much. They aren’t even gangsters, it’s people in the ANC,” she said.
After Hendricks cancelled several appointments, she met Weekend Argus on Friday, accompanied by a man she said was her bodyguard.
She said the ANC action against Plato showed ANC members were trying to protect each other.
Hendricks admitted driving luxury vehicles and said she was politically well-connected.
Asked how she made her money, she said: “I’m a big gangster, just with good make-up.”
Some of Hendricks’s previous brushes with the Public Protector’s Office are detailed in the 2006 report of the Jali Commission into alleged incidents of corruption and violence in the Correctional Services Department. The inquiry started in 2001.
The report says she approached commission investigators while behind bars, alleging department members were involved in crimes, including money laundering.
“These investigations were pursued by the investigators at length, over a number of days, and once again there was no evidence to corroborate the allegations.”
The Jali Commission report said the Public Protector’s Office inquired about Hendricks in 2002, when Mushwana was in office.
It emerged Hendricks approached his office with the same allegations she made to the commission investigators, and wanted to be placed in witness protection.
Hendricks, who on her Facebook page posted photographs of herself with Madonsela, cancelled at least five face-to-face interviews with Weekend Argus over three weeks, citing safety fears.
Despite these fears, during that time she posted several photographs of herself at social events on Facebook.
On Wednesday, when she cancelled another interview, she claimed there had been at least three attempts on her life, orchestrated by those on whom she had blown the whistle. She said she had had a heart attack as a result of a spiked drink in April.
In December 2007 she was in a car accident that left her temporarily partially paralysed, and which she believed was an effort to kill her.
A tabloid article in 2005 said Hendricks made money in jail by performing sexual acts on other inmates.
The article quoted a probation officer saying she lived a luxury life funded by crime.
It said she first became involved in crime at age 16 when she left school. Police officer friends in Worcester had her steal a cheque from her stepfather which they cashed, and spent the money.
The article said Hendricks had at different times posed as a judge, undercover agent and a member of an elite police unit, and had admitted to being good at deceiving people.
Plato’s informants:
Informant 1
Sylvano Hendricks, who goes by the name Queenie, 35, has links to the 26s and 28s gangs. She identifies and dresses as a woman and sometimes performs as a drag queen.
She has been blowing the whistle on alleged crimes for more than a decade and last month warned Public Protector Thuli Madonsela a gang boss had been paid R740 00 to plan Madonsela’s murder.
In an affidavit, dated February 26, Queenie claimed top cop Jeremy Vearey was working with this gang boss.
In a leaked voice recording Hendricks could be heard doing an about-turn, claiming not to know about this affidavit.
Informant 2
Pierre Theron has had dealings with Plato since 2012.
In an affidavit dated October, Theron claimed, among other things, Vearey had accepted R6 million from Czech fugitive and prisoner Radovan Krejcir.
In a previous affidavit, dated January 2013, Theron claimed between July 2012 and January 2013 Plato had paid him R20 900 for information.
Informant 3
Pierre Mark Wyngaardt. Three years ago Plato provided some journalists with a seemingly explosive affidavit by Wyngaardt in which he claimed Vearey was working with some of the province’s most notorious gang bosses.
Senior ANC members were also named.
But the National Prosecuting Authority did not take the information seriously.
Last month a sound clip was leaked to Weekend Argus. In it, a man who is apparently Wyngaardt, chats to Plato and they discuss a meeting at which Vearey was present.
At one point he tells Plato: “It can’t be used by the media just immediately, do you understand, minister?”
Weekend Argus