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LIVE | Louis Liebenberg: ‘I am a product of apartheid’
Liebenberg, his wife Dezzi and seven others face 42 charges linked to an alleged diamond scam.
Louis Liebenberg appears in the Bronkhorstspruit Magistrates Court on 15 November. Picture: Gallo Images
After a dramatic appearance in court on Thursday during his wife’s bail application, diamond dealer Louis Liebenberg is expected to apply for bail in the Bronkhorstspruit Regional Court on Monday.
A source close to the case told The Citizen on Monday that Liebenberg has decided to represent himself.
Liebenberg, Dezzi, and seven others stand trial on 42 charges of fraud, theft, racketeering, and money laundering.
They were arrested by the Hawks on 22 October at the Tonino restaurant at the Benoni Country Club. By the next day, nine suspects had been arrested.
The group is accused of running a scam involving unpolished diamonds and fraud.
12:30
Liebenberg says he’s not licensed to deal in diamonds
12:15 Liebenberg says he is well experienced in the diamond industry. “However, I do not deal in diamonds. I do not hold the licenses, but I employ people who are licenses do deal.”
He now talks about his experience working in the diamond industry in Africa.
‘I cried for days’
12:00 He now talks about his travels in Africa and says Africa should be one. “There shouldn’t be borders and separation.
He says he travelled in the back of a police van with a Zimbabwean man on Monday morning. “Foreigners do not feel welcome in South Africa, but do not have the means to get back to their own countries.”
While traveling through Africa, Liebenberg says he saw a lot of hardship and cried for days. “I realised then that my calling was for the people of Africa.”
Liebenberg talks about his travels
11:45 According to Liebenberg, he has travelled extensively since the age of 16. At that stage he was a member of the Transvaal Youth Choir and travelled overseas with the choir. At the same age he travelled overseas to discover the world.
“At that age I haven’t seen a naked woman because my father was a pastor.”
Liebenberg says he wants to make a difference
11:35 Liebenberg states his date of birth. “That makes me 60 years old. And that makes me a person who has gone through a lot in this country, and I realised that I have to make a difference in this country. I’m a South African citizen; I’ve been that since birth.”
He says he has a valid South African passport which he uses as his identity document (ID). “My ID document was taken by the liquidators as they took my clothing, my underpants, my wife’s perfume and her clothing.
He now talks about how the contracts on their rental properties were cancelled.
‘I am a product of apartheid’
11:25 Liebenberg says at first Tariomix was about buying and selling. He hired 129 people from groups of unemployed zama-zamas. “We wanted to find a solution to a problem – the access to mineral wealth that ordinary people need desperately. The Europeans took the mineral wealth from ordinary people.”
He says the Afrikaner cannot continue in the old ways of apartheid. “Yes, I am a product of apartheid. I have been caught using the k-word, but I’ve also been called the k-word.”
Liebenberg questions liquodators actions
11:15 Liebenberg says that the State would argue that he hurt a lot of people in the process.
“In fact, that was the first words that Colonel Danie Bruwer told me when he arrested me. My first reaction was that I have helped thousands of people that you don’t talk about.
“In fact, when the liquidators started attacking my company Tariomix in a very evil way, they’ve never answered the question about why they started recruiting Joint Venture (JV) partners at least two months before the date of liquidation. Eight months later the Master of the Supreme Court refuses to call those liquidators to book.
“What we’ve seen since was balaklavas, guns, pointed at staff members and, since my incarceration, the destruction at the mines in Namakwaland and Koingnaas.
Liebenberg testifies on his background
11:00: Liebenberg testifies that his wife left him in 2000. They were divorced in 2002.
He says he is a direct descendent of Kratoa. “She is the first Khoi-San woman we really know about and who was the translator for Jan van Riebeeck in 1662.
“I can feel the link with the Khoi-San daily. It’s interesting, because when you look at me, you would say I am German-Jew. But the fact of the matter is, that a lot of Afrikaans people, a lot of the Boere (and there’s a big difference between the two), come from that background. All of us have some Khoi and San in us.
That made such an emotional appeal on me as a nine-year-old as I was standing at the harbour in Port Nolloth and I saw the diamond boats going to sea. But I saw something else at the time. I saw alcoholism, I saw unemployment in Namakwaland. I’ve seen a father grappling with the fact that South Africa is polarised as it is right now. And I don’t think we’ve done very well as a nation in the past 30 years to try and sort that out.
I have committed myself to the journey of bringing reconciliation between people. Not tokenism as the Government of National Unity (GNU) is doing. What I’m doing is on a personal level, on a local level, on an economic level to try and uplift people.”
10:57 Liebenberg testifies under oath
NOW READ: Magistrate in Liebenberg case steps down, Louis disrupts court
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