Just call him The Butler.
He was the fly on Brett Kebble’s extremely expensive wallpaper who heard his secrets . . .
As the butler in the Kebble household Andrew Minnaar (43) was around when meetings and parties were held, to the day the controversial businessman died in hail of bullets in his car on 27 September 2005. He came to observe how Kebble (41) played his manipulative games.
Like Princess Diana’s butler Paul Burrell he’s revealing his employer’s deepest secrets. His book about the late mining magnate will be called What the Butler Saw.
Andrew recently testified in the Johannesburg High Court at the trial of Glenn Agliotti, who among others is charged with Kebble’s murder.
We’re at a posh house in Inanda, Johannesburg, where he’s currently employed. He looks moneyed himself.
“Everything was a game to Kebble,” he says. “I don’t think he had a single real friend. He moved people around like pawns in a chess game of which he was the grand master.”
He was also “an arrogant bully, who couldn’t handle it when people didn’t agree with him. People didn’t work for him for long. He was extremely demanding.”
Kebble’s 6 240 m² Bishopscourt palace (he lived in Cape Town and commuted to Johannesburg) was refurbished at a cost of R89 million. “He was insanely rich. The wallpaper in the dining room cost R3 000 a metre.”
The garage was upgraded for 10 of Kebble’s cars – he had so many he sometimes lost track of them. “He once he stored a Ferrari in Clifton and forgot about it.”
His huge wine collection featured bottles worth up to R150 000 but in a business deal he would quibble about two cents.
His wife Ingrid and four children had to play second fiddle, Andrew says. “I never saw the family laughing and being happy together.”
Ingrid is “salt of the Earth”, he says. “Despite their wealth she tried hard to make sure the kids didn’t grow up spoilt brats.”
He will remember Kebble as being eccentric. “He wore only two pairs of black shoes, both from Edward Green. He never bought new ones, just sent those away to be resoled.
“The only one who knew Kebble was Kebble himself. It was all smoke and mirrors. He would smile to a person’s face and call him an idiot behind his back.”
Read the full article in the YOU of 26 August 2010