When former national police commissioner Jackie Selebi appears before Judge Meyer Joffe on July 14 for the passing of sentence following his conviction on corruption charges, he will presumably have discussed with his legal counsel what approach is in his best interest.

His options are to remain silent or to present evidence  in mitigation of his offence, ether on his own  behalf or through the leader of the defence team, Jaap Cilliers, SC, or, finally, to choose the "Samson option" by, metaphorically speaking,  collapsing the legal and political edifice.

The "Samson option" would involve presenting himself as a victim who was caught up in a maelstrom of corruption generated by the multi-million rand arms deal and a general culture of corruption born of past deprivation and the intoxicating experience of being in power after decades of oppression.

That, however, would be a highly risky gambit for him to embark on, as it is more likely to irritate and anger the judge than to invoke his understanding and sympathy, particularly as, again metaphorically speaking, he might be injured by the falling debris.

Thus Selebi is far more likely to instruct his lawyers to present the case for mitigation of sentence to the court and to petition the judge for permission to appeal against his conviction and sentence unless, of course, the sentence is unexpectedly light.

The anti-corruption law provides for a mandatory sentence of imprisonment for 15 years for those found guilty of corruption where the amount involved is more than R500 000 -  which was the case in Selebi's trial - unless there are "substantial and compelling" mitigating factors.

The judge is unlikely to look with sympathy on a national police commissioner who was chosen to lead the fight against crime but who pleads in mitigation of sentence that his corrupt action were induced by the ubiquity of corruption in South Africa today. 

On the contrary: he is likely to see the failure of the police chief to strenuously lead the fight against corruption as a dereliction of duty and an aggravating rather than a mitigating factor. The prosecution authorities certainly thought so, as they charged Selebi with defeating he ends of justice.

Judge Joffe's finding that Selebi was guilty of corruption but not of defeating the ends of justice offers the former national police commissioner a glimmer of hope that he or his defence team may succeed in persuading the judge that there are mitigating factors that need to taken into account.

The ameliorating factors in Selebi's career are located primarily in his service to the African National Congress and his role as an anti-apartheid campaigner in the 1980s and the 1990s.

Highlights in his life before he was appointed to serve as South Africa's first black national commissioner of police includes his service as the president of the ANC Youth League, his distinguished career as South Africa's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, and later as the director-general of the department of foreign affairs.

Of the highlights in his career, before his appointment as national commissioner of police, the recognition according to him as a defender of human rights during his ambassadorial role at Geneva is perhaps his finest moment, though he later rose to become the president of Interpol (with the help of a lavish dinner party funded by his benefactor and alleged corrupter Glen Agliotti,)

But soon after his appointment as national police commissioner the public caught a glimpse of the swaggering bully who co-existed within his psyche with the crusader for human rights, when he berated a young policewoman for not recognising him during a surprise night visit to a police station.

Though Selebi is unlikely to be inspired by the vision of Sampson collapsing the pillars of a temple to destroy his enemies, it is fascinating to cogitate on what this option might mean in contemporary South Africa. It might entail damaging testimony on the lives of some of the major figures in the ANC, particular of the wheeler-dealing during the multi-billion arms death in South Africa in the late 1990s.

Selebi served as director-general of foreign affairs during the late 1990s when South Africa was besieged by arms companies seeking to win a share of the lucrative contracts to help Africa's newest democracy update the allegedly obsolete weaponry inherited from the apartheid regime.

It is hard to believe that Selebi, as director-general of foreign affairs, would not have heard whispers of the inducements that were offered by foreign arms dealers to secure the help of well placed South Africa to win contracts to provide sophisticated weapons to the South African National Defence Force.

If, as Andrew Feinstein reports in book After the Party, he was told by a high-ranking ANC official that the ANC's 1999 election campaign was funded by money that emanated from arms companies seeking to sell weapons to South Africa, it is unlikely that Selebi was not aware of the benefits that accrued to the ANC from the transactions.

As the national commissioner of police, it is reasonable to suppose that he was aware of how R11-million of the R15-million that was made available to the ANC from PetroSA via a pro-ANC financial baron ahead of the 2004 national election long before the scandal was exposed in the Mail & Guardian.

As the chief of police in September 2005, the month in which Brett Kebble, the fast talking and high living entrepreneur who dispense millions of rands to ANC connected people, Selebi may know more about the killing of Kebble than most, including Agliotti, who was the state's star witness in his trial.

As most senior police officers who served under Selebi would report to him and thus widen his knowledge of what was happening on the crime front and on the political battlefield even if he - for reasons of his own - did little or nothing about it.

It is equally important to realise that prisoners are sometimes capable of influencing development in the outside world from their prison cells. Think of Nelson Mandela, who conducted peace negotiations with the P W Botha administration from, initially at least, his place of incarceration. Think, too, of Almond Nofomela, the former Askari who blew the whistle on the police murder squads from death row and thereby set in motion the chain of events that led to the settlement negotiations that preceded the watershed election of 1994 and the birth of democracy in South Africa.

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