PE spy handler joins Ngcuka row

By Sam Mkokeli and Herald Correspondents

FORMER Port Elizabeth security policeman Karl Edwards denied last night that he was Bulelani Ngcuka’s handler and said the head of the Scorpions was never an apartheid spy.

The former police special branch lieutenant-colonel said Agent RS452 – who according to former transport minister Mac Maharaj was the agent number of the NDPP chief – was definitely not Mr Ngcuka.

Speaking to The Herald from his brother Lloyd’s house in Seaview last night, Mr Edwards said: “Agent RS452 is not Bulelani Ngcuka. I wasn’t his handler.”

City Press reported yesterday that Mr Ngcuka was a spy for the apartheid government, codename RS452, and that Mr Edwards was his handler.

“Those people (City Press) are spreading lies – he was not a spy. He is a good man.

“Agent RS452 was not him. That’s all I am prepared to say – you can draw your own conclusions,” Mr Edwards said.

Asked why he thought Mr Ngcuka was a “good man,” he said he thought he was doing a “good job” as the country’s top prosecutor.

“It’s got nothing to do with the spy allegations. He was not a spy.” He said he had never met Mr Ngcuka in person either.

National Directorate of Public Prosecutions spokesman Sipho Ngwema confirmed yesterday the agency had managed to determine that Agent RS452 was a white woman and a lawyer who was active in white left-wing circles and the United Democratic Front in the Eastern Cape.

An independent source confirmed this to the Herald last night, saying the woman worked in Port Elizabeth in the 1980s. Her name is known to The Herald.

Mr Edwards, also known as “Zach”, is a Rhodes University graduate, who joined the South African police in 1969 and was recruited to the National Intelligence Services.

When at Rhodes he became involved in student activities and penetrated the ANC and SACP with the intention of providing the government with “accurate information about the state of the revolutionary movement”.

Now working as a loss-control consultant, he recently investigated allegations of corruption in the Kouga municipality in Jeffreys Bay.

City Press also said it had evidence that Mr Ngcuka was granted a passport by the National Party government in 1981 despite being in detention on suspicion of high treason.

Mr Ngcuka’s office described this as an “administrative error” committed by the security branch and then home affairs officials.

Mr Ngcuka applied for a passport before he was detained in 1981 and the document was posted to him when he was in detention for about two weeks, Mr Ngwema said.

After his detention Mr Ngcuka was imprisoned for three years for refusing to testify against ANC member Patrick Maqubela and released in 1985.

Mr Ngwema said it would “have been very stupid” of the security police to keep Mr Ngcuka in prison if he had been one of their spies. He also pointed out that Col Edwards had been active in the Eastern Cape while Mr Ngcuka had been based in Durban and later Cape Town.

Commenting on allegations that Mr Ngcuka had spied on the National Association of Democratic Lawyers, Mr Ngwema said Mr Ngcuka had joined Nadel in 1987, long after the period he was alleged to have spied on the lawyers’ organisation.

Mr Ngcuka has dismissed allegations that he was a spy, saying the allegations were part of the smear campaign that had been waged against him since the Scorpions launched corruption investigations into prominent people, among them Deputy President Jacob Zuma.

DA justice spokesman Sheila Camerer said yesterday the no-holds-barred fight in the ANC looked likely to go down to the wire before a “horrified national audience” – unless President Thabo Mbeki quickly reconsidered his position on non-intervention in the matter.

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