Call for fresh Shaik probe
2009-08-11 08:09
Durban – Questions have surfaced again about the "terminally ill" Schabir Shaik, after he was seen driving about in his black BMW on Monday.
Shaik was released five months ago on medical parole as someone who was "in the last phase of terminal illness".
But on Monday, DA councillor Dean Macpherson saw him behind the steering wheel of his BMW in Durban's Morningside suburb.
Macpherson, a ward councillor for Durban North, said the 52-year-old Shaik was wearing sunglasses.
His three-year-old son, Yasir, sat on the back seat.
At one stage, Shaik bought balloons for his child from a street vendor before driving home.
'Didn't look terminally ill'
Macpherson said he immediately recognised Shaik's car when he noticed it at 12:53 in Musgrave Road.
"I will never forget the black 7-series BMW with the registration number ND 9312 in which he arrived for court every day.
Macpherson started following Shaik and made a video recording on his Blackberry phone of how the BMW entered Shaik's yard.
"He (Shaik) didn't look to me like someone who was terminally ill," said Macpherson.
Shaik, who was sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2005 for fraud and corruption in which President Jacob Zuma was implicated, was released in March on medical parole after spending most of his two years and four months incarceration in hospitals.
Shaik's brother, Yunis, said in March that his heart was enlarged and that his chronic high blood pressure had affected his kidneys and brain, and that he had also lost about 50% of his vision.
"There is no medicine that can reverse that damage," Yunis Shaik said at the time.
Government has so far refused to review the controversial parole decision.
Other Shaik sightings
It was reported last month that Schabir Shaik had attended his wife Zuleikha's birthday party at a French restaurant in Umhlanga.
City Press also remarked in Siyahleba, its political column on Saturday, that Schabir Shaik was seen in his car at a fuel station close to his home on Friday, joking around with petrol attendants.
DA spokesperson for correctional services, James Selfe, asked Macpherson to make a sworn statement and to send the video to him with a view to a possible high court application to grant a review of Shabir Shaik's medical parole.
Yunis Shaik said on Monday he didn't feel Macpherson's allegations were something he wanted to comment on.