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The court sent a strong message across on Friday when it jailed Fredrick Wilhelm August Lutzkie, the South African who violated our airspace and immigration laws a staggering 14 times in 33 days.
He admitted to flying into and out of the country without registering with the Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe and immigration officials. For committing the crimes about once every two days, Lutzkie, 52, was sentenced to seven years in prison, but will serve an effective three-and-a-half years.
We believe he didn’t see this coming. He possibly thought that his co-operation with authorities, albeit belated, could elicit a lenient punishment from the courts. Since the news broke on May 20 of his helicopter crash 15 days earlier at Doddieburn Ranch in Gwanda, he appeared willing to engage us here atChronicle as well as government.
To that end, he flew straight into jail, literally, on Monday last week after landing at Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo International Airport in Bulawayo. He was promptly arrested by waiting detectives, dragged before the Harare Magistrates’ Court and on Friday, he was beginning his three-and-a-half-year stint behind bars.
For a person of his documented brash character and history of always having it his way, his willingness to engage, his voluntary return and pleading guilty to his crimes, were least expected.
We suspect he personally thought his crimes were minor thus he could get away with a fine. He didn’t suspect that authorities regarded his crimes with the seriousness they deserved. His legal advisors could have misdirected him too, hence his unforced return.
If he had been a common border jumper who walked from a South African village into Zimbabwe and back, we believe he would have gone with a lighter sentence, but a sophisticated man, with a reputation for crime, violating our airspace and crashing a plane in a suspicious location and concealing it, skipping the border aboard yet another plane and reporting his mischief later, he drew the necessary high-level attention to himself. He should have realised that governments become concerned when their airspace is violated.
But here was a man, effectively an untouchable back home, who publicly threatened a lawyer representing his business rival in court and got away with it, drove a needle into the backside of another lawyer, crashed a plane in 2012 and is accused of bribery, corruption and double deals in South Africa.
Harare magistrate, Vakayi Chikwekwe and law enforcement agents sent home a strong message in their handling of Lutzkie.
They told the world that the rule of law is alive in Zimbabwe even on the wealthy who ordinarily go scot-free in some jurisdictions. It reminds us of Simon Mann, the British mercenary who was jailed here for four years in 2004 after his arrest on his way to staging a military coup in Equatorial Guinea. His principal, Mark Thatcher, reached a deal with the South African government and was never really sanctioned. It could have been different if he had been here.
On Lutzkie, the court emphasised to the world that while one can breach our airspace here and there, if they are caught, they face the music. We take our territorial integrity seriously and those who violate it are punished.
He reportedly has multi-million dollar investments at Doddieburn Ranch and other safari interests on other properties.
In this regard, the court pointed out that while we are a country that is open to foreign investment, we take exception to questionable investment coming in unrecorded at night aboard private planes with no real returns to the national economy.
In sending Lutzkie away for 42 months, we feel the court also sent a strong message to deter would-be offenders.
Prosecuting Michael Reza said: “Up to now, we don’t know the motive behind his other several visits and it boggles the mind why he came in and out of the country without authority. There’s nothing that can stop the court from presuming that he could have been smuggling precious stones or even weapons.”
Chikwekwe agreed: “Lutzkie is a real stranger and danger to this country. He smuggled money into the country and set up businesses without the knowledge of the relevant authorities. A person who smuggles cash and invests in a country Nicodemously can also smuggle it out of the country.”
He was convicted for immigration and aviation violations, not allegations of smuggling and unprocedural investments because evidence to this effect was not advanced. Like his aviation crimes, economic crimes are also serious. Perhaps investigators will continue probing his shadowy investments on the ranch and elsewhere to clearly understand the extent and nature of his work in Zimbabwe.
While we laud the law enforcers for their tough action, we are unhappy with its reactive nature. Hopefully this case has taught them to be more proactive next time.
Online Reporter
Bongani Ndlovu