Just when you begin to pat the Hawks on the back for their early morning Saxonwold Gupta raid, they’re back on their bullshit.

Yesterday afternoon Hawks officers raided the house of Jacques Pauw, now a household name after penning ‘The President’s Keepers’.

Pauw lives in Riebeek Kasteel, located 80 kilometres north-east of Cape Town, and says that three officers arrived to poke their noses in his business.

Here’s Huff Post:

“They are from the Hawks’ crime against the state unit. They came here with a search warrant and gave me some time to send it to my lawyer first,” he said.

Pauw said he was cooperating with the officers who had followed procedure.

“They said they were looking for secret state security files as part of their investigation.”

Pauw said there wasn’t anything like that lying around in his house.

His wife Sam Rogers added: “They are going through our restaurant files and CVs of locals who applied for jobs and old copies of Getaway [the travel magazine].”

Look, Getaway is a top notch magazine, but if the Hawks are such fans they should just subscribe themselves.

Anyway, here’s the footage:

Is anyone else completely underwhelmed by the Hawks here? So a raid means you click around on someone’s desktop for a while, before leafing through their books?

Looks more like a father trying to find out if his teenage son has been on any naughty sites, while mom rifles through his books looking for some remnants of a joint.

According to Pauw’s lawyer, Willem de Klerk, the Hawks did obtain a search and seizure warrant to conduct searches at his home:

“I can confirm that there is a legitimate warrant for search and seizure against Pauw. The warrant relates to supposed secret documents in the possession of the author. Pauw is giving his full co-operation to the police.”

The case relates to a docket opened by the State Security Agency (SSA) at the Lyttleton police station in Pretoria.

Hawks spokesperson Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi confirmed the search and seizures being carried out at Pauw’s house.

“The warrant was granted by a magistrate in Malmesbury in Cape Town. It is a very complicated process and it was only granted to us today,” he said.

Much like how the Hawks dragged their heels on the Gupta raid, meaning that they found little of actual substance when they eventually pulled the trigger, so too did they botch this one.

Here’s Pauw quoted on the Mail & Guardian:

“There were no secret documents in my office. Did they really think I would keep my documentation in my office? Because I’ve expected raids like this for some time.”

Pauw said that the raid was “extremely short-sighted”.

“I don’t know where the order came from, but I can assure you it was not a good idea [to search a journalist’s home],” he said.

I don’t know which is more worrying – the fact that the Hawks carried out the raid in the first place, or the fact that they seem so inept at finding the evidence they’re after.

[sources:huffpost&mg]