Once Celebrated, Since Disgraced - Dines Gihwala To Pay Up Big Time

DEAR READER, this story begiNs way back in 1998, but listen patiently and keep in mind: the sting is in the tail.

- Martin Welz

It was in that year that Cape Flats attorney Dines Gihwala was made an acting Judge of the Western Cape High Court on the recommendation of then Minister of Justice Dullah Omar. This was, Noseweek reported at the time, after Gihwala, a one-time political opponent of his, had made a donation of R50,000 to ANC funds, and persuaded the Hindu Association of Rylands Estate to throw a festive bash in honour of the new minister – in an election year.

May 1999: Noseweek revealed the improper involvement of Dines Gihwala, then BEE chairman of megaAfrikaner law firm Hofmeyr Van der Merwe (later Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr) in the cases of hundreds of Macassar residents with claims against the chemical giant AECI, resulting from a sulphur fire that broke out at the company’s premises.

Hofmeyrs were AECI’s attorneys, defending the company against all the claims brought by the Macassar residents when Gihwala secretly managed to gain access to – and control of – the claimants’ attorney’s files – more than 600 of them – creating an obviously serious conflict of interest.

In August 2000 Noseweek reported how, back in 1988, Cape Town attorneys Faizal Noor and Dines Gihwala had decided it would be a good idea to go abroad to raise money for the poor and oppressed of South Africa.

This represented a remarkable and praiseworthy conversion, as neither man had previously shown any concern for the lot of the poor and oppressed.

They travelled to London (where they stayed at the five-star Dorchester Hotel, and called on the luminaries of the Regent’s Park Mosque for introductions to rich Arabs), then flew to New York by Concorde. There they saw various well-connected people to whom they promised 25% commission on any money they could raise for this cause. How much money they raised and what causes benefited, no-one was ever told.