We were dressed in the same brown overalls as the floating prisoner.
When I arrived at my chambers early the next morning I asked Cora to get me the Junior’s phone number. He picked up on the second ring.
‘Pedrie Wierda, hello,’ he said. It was a youngish voice, slightly shrill. He must be in his late twenties, I thought, maybe early thirties.
‘Can you talk?’ I asked after introducing myself. We addressed each other by surname, as is the custom among advocates, lending the conversation a formality it did not quite warrant and neither of us intended.
‘Ja.’ The answer came in the overrounded accent of a Pretoria Afrikaner.
‘I’ve been asked to lead you in the Labuschagne case, the man who killed those men at the reservoir.’
‘You mean the karate boys?’
If this was an attempt at humour I ignored it. ‘Yes. I need to talk to you but I want to make sure that no one other than you and I and our attorney will know that I am on the case.’
‘You don’t want to be associated with the case?’
I had been asking myself that question, and my answer to Wierda was probably not the whole truth.
‘No. It’s not that. I don’t want the prosecutors to prepare any surprises for us, which is what they will probably do if they find out that this is not going to be a typical pro Deo case.’
There was a long pause. I could not make out whether clients were being ushered out of his chambers or whether he was weighing up the options. Then his voice came back.
‘I can live with that. What do you want me to do?’ He was quite businesslike.
‘I’d like to meet Labuschagne, but I don’t want him to know I’ll be coming up to see him. I also don’t want the police to find out I have been there to see him. Do you know how we can achieve that?’
This time there was an even longer pause. I heard something tapping.
‘I think I could requisition him for a bail application,’ he said eventually. ‘The police would have to bring him to the Magistrates’ Court. Then we could see him in the cells.’
I had my doubts about his plan. ‘But won’t the investigating officer have to be notified that there will be a bail application?’
‘You are right,’ he said, ‘but I could arrange for the application to be heard late in the day. Then we could see him early, before the investigating officer arrives, and I could appear in the afternoon only to withdraw the application. They won’t suspect a thing.’
‘That sounds fine,’ I said. ‘How soon can you set this up? I am free for the rest of the week.’
He would not be rushed. ‘Before we go any further, why do you think he’d speak to you? He wouldn’t speak to me except to tell me he didn’t want to discuss anything with me. He wouldn’t apply for bail. He wouldn’t even meet his family. What will you do if he refuses to co-operate with you too?’
‘It seems to me that a man who is on trial for his life and refuses to say anything in his own defence is in dire need of help. If not necessarily legal counselling then some other kind of help. The purpose of the first meeting will simply be to find out what we can do to persuade him to open up, to us or to someone else. And if he refuses to talk to me, you and I are going to have to see the Judge President.’
‘What does the JP have to do with the case?’ Wierda was not afraid to ask questions, a good sign. He would be useful to have as a Junior.
I explained. ‘We are going to ask him either to release us from the case, or to invite us to appear as amici curiae. And that, by the way, will be the end of your pro Deo fee.’
He laughed. ‘Friends of the Court, eh? More like poor relatives.’
After a discussion about the best date for the bail application, we agreed to meet at his chambers in Pretoria once he had made the necessary arrangements.
Magistrates’ Court Holding Cells, Pretoria
6
The capital city glistened in the early morning light as we crossed at the corner of Pretorius and Schubart streets. Even though the sun had been up for more than two hours I found the air a little chilly when Wierda and I entered the cells below the Magistrates’ Court.
The cells were not designed to make their occupants feel welcome or comfortable. Maybe it was the damp. The walls and linoleum floor were matching shades of grey, the ceiling off-white. A table and four straight-backed wooden chairs were the only items of furniture in the cell doubling as a consulting room.
Wierda knew the cell warden. ‘Could we please see Leon Labuschagne?’ he asked.
The warden opened the cell and we sat down facing the door. They brought Labuschagne in. He was dishevelled and had black rings under his eyes, but he was not cuffed or shackled. He made no attempt to conceal his animosity as he looked at us across the table, still standing.
‘Sit down,’ said the cell warden. He obeyed immediately.
After the cell warden had left, Labuschagne fixed his attention on Wierda.
‘I’ve told you more than once that I don’t want you to defend me and I don’t want to talk to you.’ He turned slightly to face me. ‘And I don’t know who you are but I don’t want to see you either. Please – just – leave – me – alone.’
He was angry, I noted, but still said please.
I watched him closely. He sat with his elbows on the table facing Wierda. I wandered around the cell, feigning lack of interest and taking my time making an assessment of him. Our prospective client was about five foot ten, stocky with broad shoulders. He had thick wrists, a muscular neck and his eyes were set deep under heavy, bony ridges. Physical strength exuded from every pore. He struck me as the arch-typical Afrikaner, a Boer from farming stock, but not much more than a boy.
His gaze followed me as I paced the room but when I moved behind him he did not turn his head. When I entered his line of vision again he cast a brief look in my direction. His attitude said: who the hell are you? I ignored that. I wasn’t the one who was in trouble. I stopped next to Wierda’s chair.
Wierda introduced me by name. ‘Leon, this is Johann Weber. He is a senior advocate from Durban. He is willing to defend you.’
It was a bit of an overstatement, but I did not correct Wierda.
I spoke for the first time. ‘Mr Labuschagne, I did not come here to ask you to speak to me. I came here to tell you something.’
He did not respond. I waited patiently for eye contact before I continued.
‘I have been asked to defend you. I don’t particularly want to do it.’
‘Well, why don’t you go home?’
I met his stare. ‘Good question. You haven’t exactly made us feel welcome. The fact is that I have the freedom to go where I want to when I want to. You, on the other hand, have no choices. If I leave right now, my life will continue exactly as before.’
It was not true; it could not be. Walking away from a difficult and unpopular case meant breaking a cardinal rule of ethics in the advocate’s profession. So I was stuck with his case, though he did not know that. I was also stuck with it in another sense: afterwards I’d never be the same again. Every client takes up permanent residence in his lawyer’s mind, like a brooding ghost, to remind you of past battles, the vicissitudes of life and the mistakes you inevitably make while defending your clients.
There was just a hint of a sigh as he took his elbows off the table and crossed his arms. His gaze was defiant and distrustful, but something was missing. What was it? Where had I seen that emptiness before? I thought about it while I continued to hold his gaze.
I waited for a response but there was none. ‘So why am I here?’ I asked.
Answering my own question I delivered a sermon. ‘I am here because I have been asked to defend you and cannot refuse. I am here because your case is so bad that nothing I do can make it worse. I am here because no one else wants to touch your case. I am trapped in this case as much as you are. Even if you tell me that you don’t want to see me anywhere near the case, I am still going to have to appear as
a Friend of the Court. It will be my job to help the Judge by testing the evidence against you and by arguing legal points and points of evidence in your favour. It is not easy to do a case as amicus curiae, but if you don’t get your own lawyer, that is what I am going to have to do.’
When there was still no response I turned to Wierda. ‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘We’ve done our duty. Let’s go.’ I picked up my writing pad and pen. Neither had been used.
I walked to the cell door. I motioned to the warder to let us out.
At the door I turned. Labuschagne was facing the other way and I addressed his back. ‘I see that you were a warder in the Prison Service. You should know then what is in store for you if you continue on this path, keeping to yourself, shutting out your family and refusing to have a lawyer defend you. Talk to the warders this afternoon when you get back to prison. Ask them what happens over at Death Row. They will tell you that it is a place from which no one has ever escaped. Hell, even suicide is a luxury available to no one.’
I turned to Wierda. ‘Let’s go,’ I said again.
The cell warden put the key in the lock and the tumblers gnashed under his hand. I stepped out into the corridor and turned to wait for Wierda. He was still standing at the table, shoving papers into his battered briefcase.
‘Listen,’ he said looking down at Labuschagne. ‘I have had enough of this crap. You’re going to have to talk whether you like it or not. But you had better pray that it is not too late when you finally get a grip and start talking to us.’
Labuschagne lowered his head into his hands and covered his eyes.
‘Come on,’ I said to Wierda. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ I could tell Lawyers for Human Rights that we had tried and that the man had rejected our offer of assistance.
‘No,’ he said, still looking down at Labuschagne, ‘not before I have given him a piece of my mind. I have done a shitload of work on his case and I am not just going to walk away from it.’ He was leaning forward with his knuckles on the table.
‘Listen, Leon, you may feel sorry for yourself now, but you’ll be feeling a lot sorrier when you get the death sentence, man. And that just because you are too stubborn to talk? I have done enough work on your case to know that something has gone wrong and that it will be difficult to explain that, but I also know that unless you talk there will be no explanation, and no explanation means death. Or life imprisonment, but I think it will be the death sentence because without an explanation nothing can save you, not even your youth.’
When there was still no reaction from Labuschagne, Wierda adopted a softer tone. ‘I’ve met your parents and your sister. They told me everything they know about you. They want to help you, even though you’ve rejected their attempts to see you. They can’t understand how things have come to this, but they miss you and they want to help.’
I thought I saw a slight shift in the angle of Labuschagne’s shoulders.
‘I spoke to your wife and your in-laws,’ Wierda said.
This time there was an immediate reaction from Labuschagne. When his hands came away from his face I saw streaks of tears on his cheeks, but he quickly closed his hands over his eyes again.
Wierda was relentless. ‘I went to see your wife and your in-laws at their house. I saw your daughter. Your wife wouldn’t speak to me while her father was there, but at the door she asked me what was going to happen to you.’
Labuschagne was crying behind his hands now, no longer able to stop the flow of the tears or mask the rasping sobs. He cried from deep inside of him.
Wierda knocked on the table, emphasising every word. ‘What must I tell her? You tell me, what I must tell your wife is going to happen to you?’
No response. ‘When did you last see your daughter?’ Wierda then demanded. ‘Six months ago, huh? Well, she has started walking, and you know what? Soon she will be saying her first words. But if you don’t start talking soon, you will never hear her speak. Even if you get away with life imprisonment you won’t see her again. If you ever come out of jail alive, it will be too late and your daughter will have grown up and will probably have married, with a daughter of her own.’
Whispering now, Wierda said, ‘What do you want me to tell your wife to tell your daughter when your little girl is old enough to ask, Where is my Daddy? You tell me, what shall I tell her?’
The cell warden motioned that I should get back into the cell and he locked it behind me.
I sat down at the table and watched our client cry.
Eventually Wierda asked, ‘Come on, Leon, are you going to talk to us or do you want us to leave? We need an answer and we need it now.’
Wierda sat down next to me. We waited for the sobbing to subside.
I was near to giving up for good when a faint voice spoke through the last sobs.
‘I don’t know what to say.’
Wierda and I exchanged glances and I gave him the nod to take the lead. ‘If you tell us what you know, we can try together to make sense of everything that happened,’ he suggested.
‘The place is called Maximum.’
I pounced immediately. ‘What do you know about Maximum?’
‘I worked there,’ he said.
‘You were working in Maximum when this happened?’
He nodded. This came as quite a surprise. I would have thought that he was too young to work there. Surely they wouldn’t have mere boys working in that environment?
I took a moment to consider the importance of the new information. It could be entirely irrelevant, I thought, but we had to find out. We managed to keep him talking for an hour. Wierda and I spoke from different hearts. His was the softer and kinder, mine that of the cynic. I let Wierda do the bulk of the probing.
Finally, we spoke about bail, which Labuschagne declined. ‘I am okay where I am,’ he said. His handshake was firm, but he held on to my hand just a fraction too long. I was glad to hear the steel door being unlocked to let me out.
I shivered involuntarily when the cell door clanged again behind me as it was locked.
Wierda left to make arrangements for the bail application to be withdrawn, as we had planned, and I made my way to the exit. Once outside I found that the day had improved considerably while we were working. I waited on the steps of the court until Wierda rejoined me. I paused for a moment at the top. The sun had warmed the air. There was an expanse of clear blue sky above the city, which had in the meantime swung into the beat of the day. Attorneys carrying their robes passed each other on the steps of the court.
I felt like an outsider here and did not enjoy the prospect of spending weeks in Pretoria, fighting opponents I did not know before judges who did not know me.
‘Shall we go for a coffee or shall we go straight to chambers?’ Wierda asked as we reached the street.
‘I’m sure you’ll be able to find us some coffee at chambers.’
As we were crossing the street I said, ‘At times you were a bit rough on him in there, weren’t you?’
Wierda snorted. ’If we had stuck with your aloofness you would be in the business class lounge by now.’
It was not an unattractive proposition.
‘What did his wife have to say?’ I asked.
‘She wouldn’t talk to me.’ Wierda half turned to look at me. ‘Actually, she was not allowed to talk to me. Her father was hovering over her all the time. He said they didn’t want to be dragged into the matter.’
Pretoria had turned its back on Labuschagne. The city was ashamed, I thought. Quite understandable, given the circumstances. The killing had made the city’s inhabitants look like a bunch of redneck racists, and they took their revenge on Labuschagne by refusing to become involved in his defence.
I asked Wierda if he knew the reason for the father-in-law’s hostility.
‘How would you feel if your daughter was dragged into something like this?’ he asked. ‘First he made her pregnant when she was still at school, then he treated her badly, and now this.’
I wor
ked out the dates. Their child was a year old. They must have got married immediately after they had finished school. I could understand the father-in-law’s anger, his daughter made pregnant, and that while still a schoolgirl.
‘What do you mean he treated her badly?’ I asked.
It turned out that her father had obtained a restraining order against Labuschagne. There were allegations of drinking and abuse. The case that had started out badly took a turn for the worse.
‘It may not be as bad as that,’ said Wierda, reading my thoughts. ‘I think she will talk to us if we can get her away from her father.’
‘What’s her name?’ I asked. I was irritated.
‘Magda. We can always serve a subpoena on her,’ Wierda suggested.
‘You want to call a witness who refuses to speak to you, do you?’ I was being sarcastic.
Wierda responded in kind. ‘Well, I don’t see too many names of potential defence witnesses on the List of Witnesses.’
When I looked up he was smiling. He was testing me, but I was not about to silence him.
We walked the rest of the way to his chambers near the Palace of Justice. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘there is a lot of work here and as we speak we have no witnesses and no defence to speak of.’
He nodded. ‘I can see that.’
We needed witnesses. Most of all, we needed a defence. But to have a defence you need evidence. And evidence comes from witnesses. Circle complete. We needed witnesses.
As we crossed Church Square we walked past the burghers guarding President Kruger’s statue. The rifles they held at the ready gave me an idea. I mulled it over as we walked on.
‘Where are we going to get witnesses in this town?’ I asked Wierda.
He thought for a while. ‘I’ll start at the prison to see if they can throw any light on his behaviour,’ he said. ‘And we are going to need a psychologist or a psychiatrist if we are going to advance any defence relating to his state of mind.’
I agreed and asked Wierda to make enquiries at the University of Pretoria. We made our way through the throngs of pedestrians. We were at the lifts when Wierda spoke again. ‘I think he is in a state of denial, happy to be in limbo as an awaiting trial prisoner. He doesn’t have to face up to what he has done while he is in that condition.’
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