In the wake of the online newspaper exposé, Jake Willemse, the minister for rural development and land reform, was placed under house arrest pending police enquiries. Parliament was due to launch its own investigation.

Josiah Motlantshe, whose name made numerous appearances in what was already being dubbed the ‘Lesedi Papers’, was thought to have flown straight from Dubai to one of his homes abroad, in Florida. A statement on his behalf said there was no question of his running, he was simply attending to business and would return to South Africa in due course. The statement came from a PR firm in London, one that had made its name looking after the interests of a British businessman accused of breaking arms embargoes to several countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In the absence of her husband, Priscilla Motlantshe became the focus of press attention. Finally, she agreed to face the journalists, reading a handwritten statement outside the front door of the family’s Houghton home.

‘My heart is sore. I have lost the two men in my life. My marriage to Josiah is over. He is not the man I met so many years ago in Soweto. He fought like a lion for our freedom, but now he has forgotten those days. I never thought of a future without him – that is what I face now. But as I prepare for this I know I am not alone. I carry inside me,’ at this point she held her clenched fist against her chest, ‘the memory of my beloved Lesedi. No mother wants her son to oppose his father but Lesedi did the right thing. You see, I believe that the true spirit of the father lived on in his son.’

Sharmi Meer, Dudu ‘Two-Boy’ Modise, Kagiso Rapabane and François Nel, who had been arrested on the Botswana border, were all charged under terrorism legislation, some of it dating back to the apartheid years. Sharmi Meer refused to name her accomplices in the Lesedi murder and it was assumed she could not escape a lengthy jail sentence. As for the other three, after the revelations of the Lesedi Papers, public opinion was on their side. There was even talk of a presidential pardon. It was a gesture urged on the president by supporters who believed such a move might help to ease the pressure for the role of the Office of the President to be included in the forthcoming parliamentary inquiry.