(NEWZIMBABWE) Roebuck riddle: sex, beatings and blackmail

Roebuck riddle: sex, beatings and blackmail
Unanswered questions ... Roebuck with the Masiwisa brothers
31/12/2011 00:00:00
by Adam Shand I smh.com.au

PETER Roebuck's "sons" were grateful for his generosity but have emerged to make allegations of sexual oppression and cruel beatings. Some friends of the cricket writer are skeptical about the claims – and the air of blackmail hangs over the saga – but even they admit they did not really know Roebuck.

The Shona people of Zimbabwe have a saying, "Rine manyanga hariputirwe", meaning the animal with horns cannot be wrapped.

Beneath the jovial veneer of Peter Roebuck, the cricket writer, philanthropist, coach and mentor, there lived a secret that only his African "family" knew. The Zimbabwean students who Roebuck was supporting had protected their "loved Dad" as he had protected and nurtured his "loved sons".

Unanswered questions hung in the air when the cricketing fraternity gathered in Sydney and Melbourne last week to remember a beloved colleague and to celebrate a legacy of philanthropy and social justice.

"This hurts. For those of us in the press and broadcasting boxes the hurt is acute," said Mike Coward, the president of the Cricket Media Association, in a speech at the Sydney Cricket Ground. "Of course, these questions will remain unanswered. How can you explain the inexplicable? ... But we do crave a more complete picture for we are deeply troubled by his death and the fact none of us could prevent it."

Coward voiced what nearly every person who "knew" Roebuck felt, that at best they only knew what small part of himself he was willing to reveal, and in the main, they didn't really know him at all.

The former Somerset captain, much admired for his forthright opinions on cricket, shared precious little of himself. Perhaps Roebuck feared that if he did, his friends might not understand. His reputation would suffer and that was more than he could bear. The self-loathing would be plain for all to see.

That moment may well have arrived in a hotel room on November 12 in Cape Town, South Africa, when police were poised to arrest the 55-year-old on charges of indecently assaulting a 26-year-old male, Zimbabwean university student Itai Gondo.

According to police reports, Roebuck had without warning jumped from the sixth-floor window to his death, despite being in the company of a police officer.
African son

His first African "son", Psychology Maziwisa, was devastated, but not surprised, to learn of his former mentor's suicide. Maziwisa, now a lawyer thanks to Roebuck's generosity, knew a different side to the Peter Roebuck story.

Six weeks after Roebuck's death, Maziwisa and some of Roebuck's "sons" – who initially defended his reputation as a loving father figure – have now described a disturbingly dysfunctional lifestyle within the walls of the houses they shared.

They talk of sexual misconduct, Roebuck's repeated beatings of them on their bare buttocks and of the decision of some to blackmail him as he tried to protect his public reputation as a champion of education and social justice.

Yet Maziwisa – one of his chief accusers – does not condemn him; rather, he describes Roebuck as "a special person" in his life.

Roebuck was not a sexual predator, he says, but a flawed person who strove to express a genuine love through his generosity but who could not acknowledge his own complex sexuality – a tragedy that led to his downfall.

That fall had begun back in October 1999 at St Joseph's orphanage in Harare, Zimbabwe, which housed 55 boys, orphans or children from destitute families.

Roebuck was visiting the boy who would become his first African son, a soon to be orphan. The 16-year old – Maziwisa – would also apparently become the love of his life.

Two days earlier, Roebuck had met the boy at the Harare Sports Club where he was covering a match between Zimbabwe and Australia for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. Maziwisa was the captain of the St Joseph's marimba band that was entertaining the crowd during the breaks. They got talking and Roebuck was touched by the story that "Captain Psychology", as he dubbed Maziwisa, had told.

Roebuck then visited St Joseph's and spent an hour talking with "Captain" and three of his friends. Maziwisa says Roebuck then asked the other boys to leave the room as he had some "private matters" to discuss with him. When they were alone, he says Roebuck stood up, pressed his back against the door and motioned for him to approach. When Roebuck embraced him, Maziwisa says he did not resist.

"To be honest, I got my first hug from Peter [in] my whole entire life. In African culture, a handshake is enough. You seldom hug if at all. This was very special to me," says Maziwisa.

So when Roebuck passionately kissed the boy, Maziwisa says he again did not resist, despite the confusion it stirred in him. Word of this closed-door encounter spread through the orphanage quickly, says Maziwisa, and staff members became immediately suspicious of Roebuck.
Captain Psychology

"Matron said, 'Look I actually don't want to see this guy back here again, I think he just might corrupt our boys here'," says Maziwisa.
For Maziwisa, a benefactor like Roebuck doesn't turn up every day.

"I would actually cover things up. I said he's actually got a family, his wife [is] back in the UK. He's got three kids. Two are living with him in Australia, and one is with the wife, because people were convinced that Peter was gay. I stayed with that story throughout," says Maziwisa, acknowledging the lie.

Maziwisa is not homosexual, but says he accepted Roebuck's affection and sexual interest because he "had to look at the big picture".
His family was in ruins. His mother had died of an AIDS-related illness and his father would soon follow. Once a teacher, Maziwisa's father was begging on the streets for survival. He had placed his children in orphanages.

In early 2001, Roebuck set up a bank account in Harare to cover Maziwisa's fees, so he could study for his A-levels. In April the following year when the then 19-year-old's father died, Roebuck paid for the coffin and the funeral expenses. In time, Roebuck would also "adopt" and educate dozens of other young men, including Maziwisa's two biological brothers – one of whom would allegedly blackmail him after claiming his new "father" had sexually abused him.

Meanwhile, Roebuck's life in England was in turmoil. In October 2001, he pleaded guilty in a Devon court to charges of common assault after admitting he had caned three young South African cricketers he was coaching. Roebuck accepted a four-month suspended jail sentence but was largely unrepentant. "Obviously I misjudged the mood and that was my mistake and my responsibility and I accept that," he told the court.

He wrote in his autobiography Sometimes I Forgot to Laugh that he had to "pretend that consent was absent. Of course it was nonsense." Roebuck perhaps failed to understand the power imbalance between him and the impoverished young men whose lives he sought to lift.
The damage to his reputation drove Roebuck out of England.

Coward was among the friends who stood by him during this public humiliation. "I took him away after the court case and he said he never wanted to go through anything like that again," Coward recalls.

He, like other colleagues of Roebuck, is surprised by the latest allegations that he abused the young men he was helping to educate, and is mindful that his long-term friend is not here to defend or explain himself.

"He was so admired and respected ... We were unaware of any impropriety," says Coward. "This is what he obviously couldn't live with, all these very personal details being made public ... It's all just so desperately, desperately sad.

"The tragedy is we don't know who we knew. I mean, we thought he was estranged from his family, we thought his mother was dead ... yet now it seems he was probably in touch with them all these years. It's just staggering."

The ABC commentator Jim Maxwell says there would be many of Roebuck's past students from Sydney's elite Cranbrook School who would be shocked "by these claims ... and they would defend him to the hilt".

Maxwell, who first met Roebuck 30 years ago, says he was "taken aback" when he gave his statement to police shortly after his friend's suicide. The second question they asked was, "Did you know he was a homosexual?"

"I told the police that as far as I knew he wasn't. As to his defined sexual proclivity, what he felt ... he never expressed anything about that to me," Maxwell says.

Roebuck became an Australian citizen in the 1990s, spending half the year living at Bondi Beach. Yet increasingly he was drawn to South Africa.

Maziwisa says a poor man might accept corporal punishment as the price of an education yet it is not the same as giving consent. He says he had faced that dilemma when Roebuck had first abused him in 1999.

"I said to myself, 'I cannot judge this man based on this incident. The future is a lot brighter, it's just one incident ... I think it's wise to keep this to myself. It worked out to my advantage, because Peter paid for tuition, my varsity education," says Maziwisa.
Education

"Peter told me: 'I grew up as a lonely guy. I didn't have much love around me and this is my way of reliving my past of making things right, making that childhood thing that I did not experience'."

This alleged account of Roebuck's past will likely come as a cruel blow to his widowed mother and five remaining siblings, who have spoken of their great loss and their desire that he be remembered for his charity work. "Some lovely things have been written about Peter, but also some vile things. We want Peter's name to remain a good name," his sister Beatrice told journalists.

Upon news of his death, the family sent a lawyer to South Africa to investigate because they do not believe he committed suicide.

After the court case in England, Roebuck bought a block of land in South Africa, half an hour out of Pietermaritzburg in the province of KwaZulu-Natal where he had white friends from cricketing circles. The block, fringed by farms and game reserves, commanded a spectacular view of the Umgeni River where it spilled into Albert Falls Dam. He built a rambling homestead that he named Straw Hat, a place where he could reinvent himself with Maziwisa by his side.

Though Roebuck had as many as 42 students under his wing at the time of his death, all his attention had at first been directed towards his "Captain".

Coward, who met Maziwisa several years ago in the company of Roebuck, says he doesn't know if Captain Psychology was "the love of Peter's life" but concedes his life certainly changed after he met the young man. Cricket was a passion that took Roebuck around the world; Maziwisa gave him an anchor.

By 2004, Roebuck was paying for Maziwisa to study law at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Pietermaritzburg and meeting all his living expenses.

Early on, they shared the house with a white South African couple. It was a stimulating, intellectual atmosphere around the dinner table. Roebuck is thought to have considered Captain Psychology as someone who could be moulded into the perfect weapon of dissent, a protégé in his fierce attacks on President Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe and the acolytes who ran cricket there.

Roebuck's interest in the boy was subtle, yet insistent, according to accounts by Maziwisa.

"If you were taking a shower, he would come in and talk to you. You were taking a shower and he's busy assessing you and that kind of thing. That was a little bit odd," Maziwisa says.

Then one day in 2005, he laid bare his feelings.

"He sat me beside him on the bed. He looked me in the eye. He said, 'Are you OK?' I said, 'I'm fine.' He asked, 'Are you eating well?'
By that time he had his hands in my pants, feeling my buttocks," remembers Maziwisa.

"He said, "Look Captain, I have got something to tell you. I hope you are comfortable with it. I have been meaning to tell you I love you.

He was hugging me and putting me by his chest, feeling me. I think that day he was ready to have sex with me, had I agreed, but I did not and told him so."
Rejection

Maziwisa rejected him, apologising for letting down his mentor. Roebuck was, according to Maziwisa, devastated and tears rolled down his face.

"His expectation was that I would just say OK, in return for his favours, despite my straightness, let's just do this as a means of compensation ... I just left him in the room, crying," says Maziwisa.

Maziwisa was now 22 and had fallen in love with Thandeka, a pretty law student from university. But there were his brothers, the quaintly named Immigration and Integrity, back in Harare, Zimbabwe, to consider. He says he knew Roebuck would accept them into their "family" and take care of them if he asked, such was his influence over the older man.

"I just said to myself, don't be selfish. Let me look at the bigger picture. As long as he is not compelling me to do anything with him, it's fine. I have told him, he has understood. Although he has cried, he will get over it."

Soon Straw Hat was home to more than a dozen young Zimbabwean men ranging from 18 to 22 years, all of whom had Maziwisa to thank for their good fortune.

"Always I would say to Peter don't do this for me, it's entirely up to you. I am recommending them to you because I feel I should assist them but I can't do this myself. I would invite people to come for a few days and they would end up staying for the duration," Maziwisa says.

In 2006, Roebuck was one of five founding directors of the LBW (Learning for a Better World) Trust, established to assist disadvantaged young people in developing countries to obtain a tertiary education. He retired as a director in 2008 but continued to support its initiatives. Separately, Roebuck was privately paying tuition and living expenses for 42 young Africans at the time of his death.

In 2010, the family had moved from Straw Hat into a 10-bedroom house next to the university in suburban Pietermaritzburg. Seventeen students were living there at the time of Roebuck's death.
Uncertainty

On the last weekend before Christmas, the remaining 10 or so prepared to leave Pietermaritzburg, possibly for the last time. Since Roebuck's death five weeks earlier, the future had been clouded in uncertainty. There was no will or instructions setting out what would happen.

Roebuck's few possessions were where he had left them. A crumpled straw hat perched on the piano in vigil as the students played pool nearby. On the mantelpiece, a pile of his favourite albums by Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, gathered dust atop a yellowing copy of Charles Dickens's Hard Times. Roebuck's loyal dog Copperhead sat grimly by the swimming pool, which was turning lime green, watching the gate as if his master would return at any moment.

"This might be the last 'Merry Saturday'," said Justice Hakata, another of Roebuck's "sons". He was referring to the occasional times when Roebuck would relax his rigorous regime and throw on a barbecue dinner and drinks for the students and their friends.

In the coming days many were heading to Harare to work out their next move. Some had not been home to Zimbabwe for five years. Roebuck encouraged them to think of themselves as exiles from a brutal regime.

However, due to local employment rules, they could not work in South Africa despite their degrees, and they were reliant on their "loved Dad" for all their living expenses. Out of touch with Zimbabwe, they felt stateless and fearful of the future.

A few, like Hakata, planned to stay at the house for as long as possible. "Once I get out of the gate, I have nothing and nowhere to go. This was my family and Peter was my father," he said, quietly.

Roebuck had named the house Sunrise and painted it sky blue, hoping that this would be a fresh start. It wasn't. The power struggles and sexual politics that had poisoned the atmosphere at Straw Hat were brought into town.

At first, the 10 students gathered at the house were reluctant to speak, but as the evening wore on several took me aside to talk. They had maintained the line that there had been no abuse and that Roebuck could not possibly have done what he was accused of, much less committed suicide. They feared that telling the truth might show ingratitude.

But after reading the glowing tributes written by sportswriters who knew almost nothing of the other Peter Roebuck, they decided to break their silence.
Ingratitude

None could ever forget the savage beatings that Roebuck had delivered with a length of black plastic tubing upon their naked buttocks.
Several explained how, adopting a code once used by colonial authorities in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Roebuck would give miscreants a prescribed number of strokes for various offences to a maximum of 21.
"These were very serious beatings," recalls "Trymore", another housemate who asks for anonymity.

To add humiliation to injury, Roebuck would then insist on feeling the victim's buttocks to assess the damage. The young men said he often concluded the disturbing scene with a warm embrace.

When Roebuck was on cricket duty overseas, Maziwisa ran the house, controlling a debit card which gave him access to cash totalling 1500 South African rand per day. A privilege Maziwisa admits he sometimes abused by overspending.

Roebuck would ask Maziwisa for reports of misbehaviour or slackness. A week before his return, Roebuck would send an email detailing whom he planned to beat and how many strokes were coming.
From 2006, as the family rapidly grew, the beatings were more frequent, becoming part of the induction process at Straw Hat.

"If you are going to be part of this family I am going to have to beat you first, he would tell new guys," according to Maziwisa. "And [he'd say] you are going to have to accept it. That tells me you want to stay in the family. If you are going to chicken out, I'm sorry I can't help you."
Maziwisa says one of his favourite phrases was, "This is Africa. I'm raising lions not pussy cats."
But Captain Psychology was treated differently, only ever receiving three strokes at a time, with his trousers on.
"'Captain I have a lot of respect for you,' Roebuck would say.

"All these other guys I cane them on their naked buttocks, but I'll not do that to you, I respect you. You are my number one, I started with you," says Maziwisa.

In the eyes of Maziwisa, this was a precaution. "He knew that he had done stuff to me in 1999 and in 2005. If he was going to beat me on my naked buttocks he wasn't sure how I was going to take that ... so the best way to deal with that was to make me feel I was special," Maziwisa says.
After Roebuck's rejection by Maziwisa, some in the house say the writer had turned his romantic attention to others.
"He had carefully selected people, he had his people," says Trymore.
Suspicion

"And the guys involved would keep it secret because it allowed them to get closer to Peter and that was an advantage when it came to money. But we would see certain guys coming out of Peter's room late at night. It created a lot of suspicion.

"We would say as long as I'm OK, and things are going well, I will leave it as it is. After all, here was a father who was doing more for us than even our own biological fathers."

In 2007, Maziwisa left Straw Hat to live with Thandeka and their baby son. His brothers Immigration and Integrity had come down from Harare and were under Roebuck’s wing. The beatings and sexual harassment continued, even intensified, Maziwisa says, after his departure.

"He was taking advantage of the situation, there’s no question. I sat down with him and said this whole thing has to stop, the beatings and the hugging etc because one day this whole thing might get messy,’’ says Maziwisa.
But Maziwisa claims that Roebuck didn’t listen, suggesting that he was jealous.

In 2009, Maziwisa says his brother, Immigration wrote a letter accusing Roebuck of sexual assault. He drew up a list of 12 charges including allegations that Roebuck had molested him while he slept. Maziwisa says his brother also had photographic evidence of injuries Roebuck had inflicted during a 21-stroke hiding.

Maziwisa says the wounds were so severe that he felt compelled to photograph them and had considered seeking medical help for his brother. He now claims he no longer has the photographs.
Immigration threatened to take the letter to Roebuck’s employers, including The Sydney Morning Herald and the South-African Natal Witness newspaper. In a panic, Roebuck summoned Maziwisa to Straw Hat.

He says Roebuck told him: "The moment he does that I am finished Captain. This thing will be big news in the papers tomorrow morning. As far as I can see there is no reason for me to live any more. If he wants to do it, let him do it. I will take myself to Albert Falls and throw myself off. He was red in the face and his hair was standing up."

Maziwisa promised to talk Immigration out of showing the letter but said his brother should have a small sum in compensation to leave quietly. Roebuck at first refused, asking Maziwisa whether he would remain loyal to him if police laid charges against him.
"Should that day come, I am afraid I will testify against you," Maziwisa says he told him.
Shattered

Roebuck was shattered by this declaration, Maziwisa says, and reluctantly agreed to what he describes as a payment of a "few thousand rand". Roebuck read the allegations to the rest of the family. He warned that if he went down, the rest of the family would suffer also.

Under pressure from his peers, Immigration recanted but several housemates and a close friend and neighbour, Adrienne Anderson, confirm the payment was made nonetheless.

And in private, Immigration’s blackmailing did not cease, Trymore says. He estimates Roebuck paid Immigration a total of R75,000 in three amounts. Maziwisa dismisses this as a gross exaggeration.

Whatever the sum of money, the power balance in the house had dramatically shifted. The four men and Ms Anderson also say that another housemate had extracted money from Roebuck to buy his silence in 2010.
White friends in Pietermaritzburg were aware of the payments but refused to believe the allegations, according to Maziwisa.

"Maybe they thought it was a black against white thing, that there was a history of black people wanting to take advantage of situations.
They gave him the kind of advice he needed to hear," he says.

Anderson, a neighbour during the Straw Hat years and among Roebuck’s closest friends – but who admits ‘‘I didn’t really know him’’ – says she did question why Roebuck would pay Immigration if the allegations were false.
"Peter told me, ‘He’s my son, how can I send him out on the street with nothing’," says Anderson.

She says Roebuck asked her to mediate a meeting between Maziwisa, Immigration and himself at which Roebuck claimed that Immigration’s assault allegations had come after a substantial amount of money had disappeared from his bank account over a three-year period.

According to Anderson, Roebuck said "the abuse allegations had been used as a means of dissuading [Roebuck] from pursuing any action over the missing money".

Anderson says Roebuck did not discuss personal matters with her, but did confide that he suspected Maziwisa had been "skimming off the top" amounts from his bank account for some time.
Roebuck also spoke to Jim Maxwell about his financial concerns.
Blackmail

"He was always talking about how they were spending too much, that he was struggling to keep them under control ... he was very, very worried about it because he was absent for long periods and they had access to his accounts," Maxwell recalls.
"He certainly felt under pressure, but he never mentioned that he was being blackmailed."

Another South African friend of Roebuck’s, who declined to be named, questions Maziwisa’s motives in making the abuse allegations.

"I am not aware of these rumours," the friend says. "All I am aware of is that Psychology and Peter had a history of discord, especially after the former stole from Peter [over] a protracted period ... so I’ll take whatever [he has] got to offer with a pinch of salt."

Maziwisa denies that he stole from Roebuck but concedes that he did "get carried away" with the debit card in 2006 while his mentor was away.

He also concedes that the man who had spent so much giving him and his "brothers" their greatest opportunity in life, had reached a critical decision last year.

Just months before his death, Maziwisa says Roebuck told him that he would rather take his own life than face further blackmail from his sons.
"He told me, ‘I have made peace with my God,’" says Maziwisa.

"I’m not going to let people do this to me. If people come to me seeking money from reliving the past I’m not going to have that. I can go any time."

The death knell for their relationship sounded when Maziwisa went to work for Mugabe’s regime in Harare as a political adviser.
Roebuck despised the man who was responsible for the misery so many of his students had suffered.
As Coward recalls, Roebuck was devastated by this betrayal. It sparked a dramatic falling out that left him bereft.
"Nothing would have broken Roebuck’s heart quicker or harder than that," Coward says.
After the split, Roebuck would no longer have Maziwisa to guide him in the selection of new family members.

Itai Gondo was not an orphan, nor a penniless refugee. He just wanted help with his tuition fees. At 26 he was beyond Roebuck’s age limit of accepting new men into the house. Sunrise housemate Petros Tani, 23, had introduced Gondo to Roebuck, suggesting in a Facebook message that the student drop his age.

"Tell him that you are 21 and you are doing your first year ... if you tell him you are older than that you are out. Communicate with him as your father ...

"Your focus needs not to be on financial support but neediness as of a father and a family. The rest will then come,” Tani wrote.
But Gondo refused to deceive Roebuck.

"He has asked my age and honestly I feel I would rather be honest and transparent from the get-go with him about my age. As a man of faith I wouldn’t want that heavy on my conscience. Roebuck is a father figure and deserves the respect expected to be given as a father figure as that stipulated in the Bible," Gondo responded to Tani on Facebook.
Newlands

The following evening Roebuck met Gondo in his hotel room at the Southern Sun Hotel in Newlands, Cape Town. Gondo alleges that he and Roebuck had spent two hours talking before the conversation turned to sex. At some point, Roebuck went into the bathroom, allegedly emerging naked whereupon he pinned Gondo on the bed and sexually assaulted him.

The following day, Tani says Roebuck asked him on Facebook, in exchanges seen by this reporter, if there had been any word from Gondo, who had now removed his profile.

Tani: "Finally I spoke with Itai ... he said he is no longer interested in your assistance and that’s why he removed himself on Facebook."

Roebuck: "Oh well, not too sure what he said. He was a bit strange but he needs a lot of help. He needs to call me or other way round. Sometimes things go wrong the first time but you have got to fight back. He’s basically a good person. Am trying to put him in touch with Ruswa and think he can help him."
Tani: "Dad, do you have any idea why he does not need your help anymore?"

Roebuck: "Not really, it was a strange meeting but am only here one more full day and he has many skills e.g. repairing laptops ... "

Tani: "Anyway Dad my advice would be to forget about him. We cannot force him because he doesn’t need anything to do with you or us. Worse off he doesn’t need any contact with anyone."

Roebuck: "Oh he’s depressed. Isn’t that dangerous? Think he needs to uplift his life. Sometimes I go a bit far in first meetings. I suppose outsiders not used to it but his life is important whereas our relationship is not. It’s his future."

The next evening, Gondo sent a message on Facebook to Roebuck. Gondo: "You have greatly humiliated me, and I feel very violated, disgusted with myself, your acts were of the purest, sickest kind."

Roebuck showed he was under pressure in a message to Tani: "Itai has sent me a nasty message and am sick about it. I will try to call him but not sure it’s any use. I’m upset, don’t tell anyone or they will worry."

About 9pm on November 12, Gondo rang Tani demanding to know where Roebuck was, declaring he would have him charged with sexual assault. Tani says he tried hard to talk Gondo out of it, saying they would all suffer.
But Gondo wasn’t interested in the "bigger picture".
A short time later, Roebuck apparently took his own life.

South African police spokesman Vish Naidoo says the body has been released to the family. The results of an inquest may not be known for up to two years, but Colonel Naidoo says police maintain there is no evidence of foul play.

Earlier, Roebuck had posted a message on Facebook which underscored the tragedy. "We have a wonderful family and am proud of it,2 he wrote. "Am not perfect but think the good outweighs the bad."

Psychology Maziwisa contacted The Sun-Herald requesting that none of his quotes be published. He had earlier agreed to a formal recorded interview, despite being told that, in keeping with its policy, Fairfax would not pay him for it.