Louis Liebenberg during his bail application after his legal representative withdrew from the case at Bronkhorstspruit Magistrates’ Court in November 2024. (Photo: Gallo Images / B Beeld / Deaan Vivier) 
That fraud accused Louis Liebenberg and his wife, Dezzi, are spending the holiday – and perhaps much of 2025 – behind bars for an alleged R4-billion diamond scam says a lot about our Moegoe of the Year. And us.
Liebenberg is a “God-fearing” grifter who found on social media a public pulpit from his shower and lavatory, convincing thousands of “investors” (the bulk of them gullible Afrikaners) to buy into his Ponzi scheme.
It’s a classic saga, reproduced over the aeons and across the globe. The history of corruption is a snake eating its own tail.
This sorry episode exposed again just how gullible people are when “fantastic” returns are promised in an anarcho-capitalist world. It revealed how doling out cash to politicians and government officials greases the potholed road to wealth, prestige and power. It revealed that law enforcement takes time.
South Africa’s space-time is nonlinear. It took five years in this instance; but 15 or more when we turn to our other protagonist in this story, former president Jacob Zuma.
It was Zuma’s hem that Liebenberg wished to touch, Msholozi’s ring he wished to kiss.
Zuma was the not-so-dark horse on which Liebenberg bet to provide his “volk” (people) with a Promised Homeland, a Freudian ruse the grifter thought up to bag this very volk. If you can snag that epigenetic fear of “integration”, you’ve found your tribe.
Why live together when black people don’t use toilet paper and prefer defecating in public, said Liebenberg to his followers.
Life between black and white was not compatible, and Zuma understood this. Apparently. (Lolsies)
Liebenberg, himself appearing to be using a toilet and toilet paper to defecate while broadcasting a sermon, sought to prove just how superior a species he is.
We learned that he could talk kak and wipe his arse at the same time.
Someone should honour Liebenberg by printing his face on rolls of TP. (Business tip – take it or leave it.)
The Port Nolloth-born conman, over the years, admitted to giving Zuma, who moved through his terms of office with criminal charges trailing like a sillage of cheap toilet spray, more than R10-million.
This was for various necessities including an attack on democracy and the judiciary: funding Zuma’s attempt to silence state prosecutor Billy Downer and journalist Karyn Maughan in the almost two-decade-long arms deal corruption trial.
Liebenberg was an indiscriminate superspreader, however, cosying up to a range of Afrikaans celebrities and personalities who all now claim a lack of knowledge.
That it took the Directorate of Priority Crime Investigation five years to stop Liebenberg and his collaborators from operating also says much about law enforcement having to wade through the financial treacle of his business Tariomix, trading as Forever Diamonds and Gold.
A substantially diminished Liebenberg – physically, with his cotton shirts now billowing like a Demis Roussos kaftan, combined with his ranting from the dock of the Bronkhorstspruit magistrate’s court – has revealed himself as the batshit-crazy manipulator he has always been.
It is little surprise that he sought birds of a feather, drawn by the carcasses littered across the desert of State Capture that still have meat left. It’s crowded out there.
United in grifting and lawlessness, giddy with immunity, able to whisper into the ear of the gods, Liebenberg and his cohorts spread their reach and their gospel like an STD.
Afrikaners like Carl Niehaus draw derision and scorn for their Class A arselicking of whoever is feeding at the trough. And their Class A grifting.
But who is fooling who here is a knot the courts must unravel.
Seven other accused are facing 42 charges alongside Liebenberg and his wife. They include his former lawyer and various co-directors and assistants.
While the others have all been let out on bail, Liebenberg and his wife, who were arrested while dining at a restaurant, are behind bars. Barking “Viva Msholozi” and “Viva MK” and raising his fist each time he was dragged back to the cells below the court, Liebenberg is a worthy winner of this year’s Moegoe of the Year award.
Louis, your statuette will soon be in the post. We just need your prison number. DM
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.
