If I had a hammer …
‘WHAT do you use a hammer for, troep?’ barked old PJ, pointing his middle finger at Dick.
‘I’m not a fucking troop and don’t stick your stinking finger under my nose, you cunt,’ Sergeant Greyling growled under his breath as he rose to his feet. ‘To hit a nail in, Commandant,’ he said, sniggering at his good friend Paul seated next to him.
Paul was based at Doornkop military base outside Johannesburg and Dick was an intelligence officer at Wits Command before they became part of PW’s grandiose plan to crush the ANC’s struggle once and for all.
They knew PJ. He was a close friend and confidant of General Kat Liebenberg. If any dirty tricks had to be carried out in Johannesburg, PJ was the workhorse who almost always got the job. Ever ready to cause shit, he never had second thoughts when the opportunity arose to give the commies and draft dodgers a hiding.
The country was going up in flames; the world was crucifying South Africa, and PW refused to cross the Rubicon. Little did the nation know that apartheid was in its dying days; that the war had reached the last line of defence. And all because Pik had made PW the moer in and stolen his thunder before he could deliver his historic speech in support of peace and reconciliation.
‘No, you doos,’ bellowed PJ, the veins on his bald head turning purple as blood surged from his ruddy face, ‘it’s to smash the heads of ANC kaffirs back to where they came from, and that’s why you lot are here. With the Hammer Groups, we are going to make sure we restore peace in this country.’
For Dick and Paul, PJ’s words on that day in 1986 marked the start of a new life. It was a time of fun and many games, a period of lawlessness, unlimited funds and fast cars, and they cared less that they were punctuating history – a terrible history – in South Africa.
Still relatively wet behind the ears, they were ignorant about the events in the old South West and Angola that had served as precursors of the Hammer Groups.
In Namibia, the police counter-insurgency unit – the dreaded Koevoet – had slaughtered SWAPO’s soldiers. In 1978 the war had started turning ugly against the South African security forces on the Border. Then Colonel ‘Sterkhans’ Dreyer entered the fray against SWAPO in typically unorthodox police fashion, with his top secret Project Koevoet and the help of black ‘constables’.
It didn’t take him long to realise that Koevoet’s exceptional tracking abilities could be the nemesis of SWAPO insurgents. In the ten years of Koevoet’s existence, members were involved in 1 615 firelights and killed or captured 3 225 SWAPO soldiers.
Meanwhile, the conflict had spread from the arid battlefields of South West/Namibia to the densely populated shacks and townships of South Africa. It was in Ovamboland that Colonel Eugene de Kock went through his baptism of fire in the battle against enemies of the National Party government. He carried the knowledge and experience he gained there back to South Africa with him, and used it well when he took over from Dirk Coetzee as commander of the equally top secret Vlakplaas death squads. From August 1980, the special police unit C10 and its askaris began hunting down Umkhonto we Sizwe cadres – inside South Africa and across the borders. When Zimbabwe became independent, the South African Defence Force seized the chance to sign up members of the Selous Scouts to help fight the country’s war.
In April 1979, Project Barnacle was launched in utmost secrecy by Major General Fritz Loots, commander of Special Forces at the time. With the approval of defence minister General Magnus Malan, Barnacle initially conducted operations in support of covert Recce missions. Originally known as D40, the unit was responsible for ‘pseudo operations’ – infiltration of enemy ranks by spies who had been captured, ruthlessly tortured, threatened or paid to turn on their ‘terrie’ comrades. But according to top secret documents that had escaped the security force shredders that ran night and day in the run-up to democracy in the early 1990s, Barnacle’s primary role by the end of 1980 was ‘eliminations’. The unit was based at Renosterspruit, a farm near Broederstroom, and an estate agency, NKJM Estates, was set up as the front for its activities.
At just about the same time that Vlakplaas was being established, Barnacle was given the following mandate by the government on 12 December 1980:
‘The RSA is in a state of war … world opinion notwithstanding … certain tasks must be carried out in such a manner that they cannot be traced back to the SADF or compromise the government.’
That directive spelt out Barnacle’s tasks as eliminations, ambushes, information gathering, providing combat intelligence … and the carrying out of chemical operations. In April 1986, Barnacle became the Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB), with Joe Verster as the man in charge.
Former police spy Craig Williamson’s company, GMR, and Operation Longreach were designated the ‘blueprint’ for the CCB’s ‘business interests’. GMR was named after Giovanni Mario Ricci, an Italian sanctions-buster and very good friend of PW Botha – and later also of FW de Klerk. He was the money-man behind Williamson and the entire operation.
Testifying at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), the late General Joep Joubert, godfather of the CCB, described the organisation as: ‘A civilian strike force which neither the government nor the SADF would publicly acknowledge.’
When the CCB was set up, Dr Wouter Basson’s Project Coast, which conducted research and experiments in biological and chemical warfare, also began taking shape under the aegis of the defence force’s 7 Medical Battalion. As an extension of the CCB, a mini-CCB was established within the Johannesburg City Council that would later form part of the wide-ranging dirty tricks squad in the Transvaal.
Simultaneously, the defence force’s Directorate Covert Collection (DCC) and Directorate Special Tasks (DST) were frenetically providing support for RENAMO’s forces in Mozambique, Dr Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA forces in Angola, and giving clandestine military training to Inkatha’s impis in Natal.
Blissfully ignorant of all the intrigue and covert organisations that had preceded their activities, Dick and his buddies were preparing for the next phase of the government’s battle against the Swart Gevaar (black peril).
The Hammer Groups were deployed at strategic flashpoints across the country in 1986 in an effort to put down the steadily escalating insurrection by the ANC’s underground structures.
Dick was a little man with a scrawny neck and wire-rimmed spectacles who tended to giggle at his own jokes long before he delivered the punchline. But when it came to waging war against the Swart Gevaar, there was no time for jokes, and he had no compunction about pulling dirty tricks, or even the trigger, for volk and vaderland.
There were some who suspected that Dick was a closet moffie, hiding behind his macho image while rubbing shoulders with the tough guys who had traded the battlefields of Angola and northern Namibia for South Africa’s dusty streets and alleyways in a last-ditch attempt to keep the enemy beyond the portals.
Paul, by contrast, was a quiet family man whose job was to gather information about ANC activities in Soweto. He knew the bustling township like the back of his hand. He had deep pockets that were regularly replenished by Military Intelligence (MI), so that he could fill the begging bowls of his impimpis in exchange for news about anti-government plans hatched by their comrades in the underground.
There was nothing you could tell Dick about the activities of the End Conscription Campaign or the Five Freedoms Forum in Johannesburg. He knew what radical Wits academic Dr David Webster and his lover, Maggie Friedman, ate for breakfast, and even when and where they went over weekends or on public holidays to buy plants for their garden.
It was obvious that old PJ was excited about the government’s ruthless new top secret plans to give the ANC a mortal bloody nose. ‘Boys, you need to start realising that the bush war as we’ve known it all these years in South West and Angola is a thing of the past. The ANC is a bunch of scaredy-cats who only know how to hit and run.
‘All they’re good for is planting limpets in buildings, and when they take on our troops in the squatter camps, they just close their eyes, fire off a couple of bursts with AK47s and then those shits get the hell out of there and run like rabbits through the shacks,’ PJ summed up the Swart Gevaar smugly, running a hand over his bald head.
‘You all know how hard it is for our Casspirs to chase those bastards down the narrow lanes when their sharpshooters open fire on us. Some of you might even have seen how the wires they string across the roads can take a troop’s head off. Let’s not even talk about the few guys who’ve been flung out of armoured cars like rotten hides when the vehicles end up in the ditches dug across the streets at night.
‘So the government has come up with a new grand plan to pluck the ringleaders out of their nests and stifle this ANC rebellion.
‘Go balls out and you’ll see how the comrade kaffirs scramble all over the locations without their commissars, once we take their leaders out of the picture,’ PJ interpreted the government’s plans for a state of emergency for his troops. ‘That’s where you come into the picture.’ In his customary long-winded manner, PJ seemed finally to be getting to the point. The Hammer Groups would be the muscle, the iron fist, of Operation Xenon. They would be the faceless ones who made use of dirty tricks and, with the help of 32 Battalion and the askaris from Vlakplaas, tried to get the better of the comrades in the townships. ‘They are going to get a taste of their own medicine and they won’t know who or what has hit them,’ PJ explained with a humourless grin.
‘Make sure that all of you report to the Drill Hall with full kit at five o’clock tomorrow morning. Say koebaai to Mommy and the kids, because you’re going to the bush for a few days to get back into battle mode.’ PJ slowly but surely started winding up his diatribe. ‘You’ll find out more about Operation Xenon and be fully briefed about your duties in this secret operation.’
‘Commandant, who will we be reporting to when we get back?’ Dick asked as he slowly rose from his chair. He had worked for PJ on occasion in the past, and he knew all about the old bugger’s shenanigans.
‘To me, and we are going to shake up this town,’ PJ answered quickly. ‘No shit from any kaffir.’
As they left the lecture room, Dick reassured Paul about PJ, telling him the old man was okay. ‘Don’t worry, I know him. I’ll sort him out.’
It was still dark, and Johannesburg’s chilly early morning wind cut through their browns as Dick and Paul and another fifteen intelligence officers stood outside the Drill Hall, waiting for their transport. The sandbags around the historic old building and heavily armed troops patrolling the surrounding streets bore silent testimony to the low-intensity war raging in the country’s urban centres. The continuous drone of Ratels carrying fresh-faced national servicemen signalled the change of shift in traditionally white residential areas.
While white South Africa could sleep soundly at night, thanks to the safety buffer offered by the security forces, people in the townships had become accustomed to the regular sound of AK47 fire, quickly followed by the shrill screech of whistles as lookouts warned the comrades that soldiers were on the way.
By day, national servicemen and commandos entered the townships laden with assorted sweets and propaganda material in an effort to win the favour of the people. As armoured cars sped by, soldiers riding in them made a point of giving the thumbs-up to the local pop as part of the goodwill campaign. More often than not the children and youths responded with a smile, even while displaying the defiant swagger that typified their fuck-you attitude towards the oppressor.
The sweets and hearts-and-minds campaign made no impact. PW’s government resolutely refused to accept that this type of project had failed dismally for the Americans in Vietnam. Why on earth should it be any different in South Africa?
Somewhere deep inside the government’s fortified edifice there were boneheads who simply would not believe what history had written in a bloody trail of napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam. When it came to a genuine ideological struggle that the masses believed in unequivocally, nothing would change minds or win hearts.
‘And that’s why we are standing here on a bitterly cold morning waiting for a Samil truck to take us to Fontana,’ Dick bitched as he lit a cigarette. He was a solid, loyal soldier who hated the communists with a passion and saw no good coming from their plans for his country.
But he wasn’t stupid enough to think that what was envisaged under the state of emergency with Operation Xenon was anything but a final, desperate attempt to halt the popular uprising among South Africa’s masses. A futile bid to try to keep PW and his recalcitrant Broederbonders in power at all costs.
Like any good soldier, Dick was prepared to do his duty in the trenches. He hated the commies and their doctrines angered him, but the real enemy that had to be vanquished was the Swart Gevaar that Moscow and Fidel Castro were shamelessly exploiting. PW’s propaganda machine had ensured that Dick and all the other young soldiers in Angola were made aware of the Cuban and East German troops, and their Soviet advisors who controlled the war from Luanda. Gruesome accounts were dished up about chemical weapons used on the battlefield against UNITA’s army. Yet no questions were ever asked about the strange phenomenon of loud-mouthed CIA agents in civvies who hung around the front lines in Angola.
Dick’s thoughts were interrupted and the morning quiet ruptured as the Samil rumbled to a halt outside the Drill Hall, the driver hooting impatiently for his passengers to get their arses in gear and load their kitbags. A bantam of a two-pip lieutenant climbed out of the truck with the driver and started barking orders at the small group. Obviously, no one had told him that he wasn’t dealing with a bunch of rookies.
‘Morning, morning, I’m Lieutenant Charlie Viljoen from Fontana,’ the little man said smugly. ‘Today is the last time you’ll be wearing uniform. We spooks work in civvies so that we don’t attract attention.’
Charlie’s supercilious attitude made scant impression on the seasoned members of the group. He might be an officer, but he would find out soon enough that these veterans would not allow themselves to be fucked around by a lootie who had most likely never seen any action in the operational area.
Fontana was MI’s secret training base adjoining Wallmansthal, slightly north of Pretoria. It formed part of a sprawling complex of military farms including Murray Hill, where the parachute battalion was stationed. For years this had also been the most important mobilisation point for soldiers taking part in major military operations in South West and Angola.
No one talked about Fontana. It didn’t exist. It had been home to Orlando Cristina, commander-in-chief of the RENAMO rebels in Mozambique, and his family during the planning phase of attacks on the neighbouring state’s FRELIMO government. But over the Easter weekend in 1983, Orlando was assassinated while he and his South African wife, Fran, were having sex for the last time prior to his departure on yet another of his protracted trips to Mozambique.
It was a hell of a thing. Orlando’s death was not confirmed until four days later, and he was buried in the utmost secrecy near Mabopane, north of Pretoria. His wife was told that he’d been shot dead by one of his own men and that the ‘problem’ had immediately been taken care of, but she was never to ask for details.
It would be nearly fifteen years before it emerged that Orlando’s alleged killer was Bonaventura Bomba, brother of a former FRELIMO fighter pilot, Lieutenant Adriano Bomba, who had defected to South Africa in his MiG jet. Shortly after Cristina died, both Bombas vanished. In due course, Adriano’s body was dumped on the Mozambican side of the border, and it was made to look as if he had been killed in a clash between FRELIMO and RENAMO. No one ever saw or heard from Bonaventura again. No one ever asked questions about the brothers’ fate. It was best not to ask about the incident in April 1983, or whatever the hell happened afterwards.
Every now and then it was whispered in the corridors at MI headquarters in the heart of Pretoria that Adriano Bomba had wanted to go back to Maputo. And that could not be allowed. He had to be silenced, because he knew too much about South Africa’s help and support for RENAMO. But no one ever dared suggest a motive for his brother slaying the most senior member of RENAMO at Fontana. Anyone and everyone who ought to have known something remained silent, as if nothing had ever happened.
But three years after the murders, when Dick and his buddies arrived at Fontana, the RENAMO rebel movement, like UNITA in Angola, was still very much an extension of the South African Defence Force.
Officially, on the day that PW and President Samora Machel signed the historic Nkomati Accord on the bank of the Komati River that forms the border between South Africa and Mozambique, RENAMO was getting no help whatsoever from South Africa. But the ink on the document was not yet dry before RENAMO soldiers were back in their billets at Fontana.
Some of the movement’s generals and, in emergencies, rebel soldiers themselves were regularly smuggled to Pretoria through the Kruger National Park. At 1 Military Hospital in Voortrekkerhoogte, Portuguese-speaking patients were treated in a special, secret wing. No one ever talked about them. Doing so could mean the difference between life and death – or a court-martial. Certain military doctors showed a special interest in the health and progress of these patients. The chemical and germ warfare experts regularly carried out tests on these soldiers. No one ever spoke about it.
Dick and his buddies were put on a crash course at Fontana and there was no time to fuck around. They never laid eyes on a single RENAMO soldier during their week of training. The rebels were housed separately on a different part of the base, and the guys only heard talk that this was where they operated from. At night they could watch a little television and down a few beers in the spooks’ mess, but they were confined to Fontana and not even allowed to travel to Pretoria for some fun.
The course was custom-made and, in addition to all the propaganda lectures about the dangers of the ANC and the SACP and their plans for South Africa if they took power, trainees were thoroughly schooled in interrogation techniques.
‘When we are done with you here, you will report for duty again to Commandant PJ van den Berg, senior staff officer intelligence at Wits Command,’ Colonel Mike Badenhorst told them towards the end of the course.
‘By next week, you’ll know what it’s like to twist a terrie’s balls until he talks. Forget about the tube that the cops use. It takes too long,’ was Badenhorst’s comment on the finer arts of interrogation. ‘There’s no time for gentlemen like James Bond to screw girls for info. And, by the way, make sure you stay away from black women,’ the colonel added in passing. ‘The enemy is breathing down our necks, and there is only one way to get information out of these jokers – the hard way. Grind them until they talk and pass on the info they supply to the Hammer Groups as soon as possible, so that they can fuck up the troublemakers on the ground,’ was his parting advice before the Samil set off back to Johannesburg.
And then the paw-paw hit the fan, because someone had the bright idea that cops and soldiers would work together. Oil and water do not mix, but somewhere in bloody Fort PW there was a myopic genius who had almost certainly never set foot in a military base or a cop shop.
‘How the fuck are we going to work with the police?’ Dick asked when PJ and Co. laid out their plans back at the Drill Hall.
‘Sorry, boys, orders are orders and I just do what I’m told,’ PJ responded, his face showing clearly that he, too, was having a hard time swallowing the new strategy to combat the ANC’s revolutionary plans for South Africa.
Almost as if by telepathy, a similar conversation took place in the Security Branch at John Vorster Square, with Brigadier Biko Goosen asking ‘how in God’s name’ he was supposed to get his men to cooperate with a bunch of snot-nosed intelligence pongos. ‘The bastards react to rumour and gossip that they buy from their information pimps. My security guys work on hard facts,’ said old Brig Biko in despair. The askaris operated in the heart of the whore and knew precisely what the enemy was plotting.
Nevertheless, the seventeen intelligence officers were deployed at police stations countrywide in areas designated ‘hot spots’ in the war on terrorism. Operation Xenon was officially under way. Dick was deployed to the Protea police station in Soweto. It was the toughest of the lot. Winnie Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu were just two of the many thorns in the side of the security forces. The Regina Mundi Church was the bastion and symbol of freedom for the masses, and it was from there that the uprising was controlled and directed.
It soon became clear that the safari-suited security police brigade was not happy about working with unblooded soldiers, let alone having to share information with the defence force about suspected agitators and terrorists. The police Security Branch regarded its national network of informers within the ANC as the holiest of holies. The Security Branch had operated as a force within the police for years. Not even ordinary detectives or uniformed cops were privy to the inner workings of the so-called Special Branch.
It was unthinkable that orders had come down from the highest echelon of government that young Military Intelligence officers were to be given access to the tough, ultra-secret world of the security police. And to crown it all, extremely valuable information had to be shared with the soldiers. Operation Xenon had been devised by members of the State Security Council, who were supposed to know how to fight a war, but almost from the start it was an exercise in futility, a stillborn idea destined for the funeral pyre.
Good soldier that he was, Dick spent the first week in his office at Protea getting the paperwork out of the way and studying profiles of key suspects among the enemy leaders. It had been drilled into them at Fontana that interrogations should be conducted swiftly, efficiently and without any feeling or sympathy for the detainees, so that follow-up operations could take place swiftly in order to put down the township riots and unrest.
It wasn’t easy, but he had managed to start working with the cops. The special powers accorded to the security forces by the state of emergency allowed them to detain suspects at will for an indeterminate time without bringing any charges against them. Most of the detainees were held at Diepkloof Prison – commonly known as Sun City – south of Johannesburg.
Sergeant Julius Venter was an old hand in Soweto’s Security Branch. He was one of the first to try to halt the seething mass of schoolchildren who went on the march in 1976. He stood and watched as youngsters ran down the dusty streets carrying Hector Pietersen’s bloodied body.
Dick got on reasonably well with Venter. After all, they were on the same team and had to make the best of a bad thing. Old Julius wasn’t too full of shit and believed in doing his job properly. He was a skilled interrogator, and countless suspects had pissed themselves when he took his tube out of his attaché case. He had no faith in the wet-bag-over-the-head technique, and once he dug his knees into your back and stretched the specially cut piece of inner tubing over your nose and mouth, it was over for most and soon you were singing like a canary.
It was sheer hell lying there, stark naked, on a cold concrete cell floor, blindfolded and with your hands tied behind your back, while that piece of tubing was stretched as taut as a condom over King Dong’s prick, so that not a wisp of air reached your nose or mouth. You couldn’t scream; it felt as if your lungs were being ripped apart. Your only instinct was to know, just one more time, the ecstasy of taking a deep breath. Your ears rang with the deep voice of your tormentor asking if you were ready to talk.
It was impossible to describe the excruciating terror and suffering of the torture. There was no point begging for a reprieve. You couldn’t, anyway, while the tube covered your face. When it was removed, there was no time to talk as you tried desperately to pump as much oxygen as possible into your lungs. Any pretence at heroics was stifled in that bare, soulless interrogation room, where you were alone and lonely and entirely at your captor’s mercy.
The first time Dick witnessed Julius conducting one of these sessions, he had to keep reminding himself that if the enemy had him in the same situation, they would show no mercy. ‘This is war and there’s no time to be a sissy,’ his mind kept on repeating as Julius went through the motions methodically, like a robot, so as to ‘persuade’ the black youth that it would be healthier for him to betray his struggle comrades and come clean.
Afterwards, when the teenager had collapsed from exhaustion and lay in a heap on the cell floor, his spirit broken, Dick excused himself and went to the toilet to throw up. In his mind’s eye he could still see the tears streaming down the youngster’s cheeks. His big brown eyes had stared vacantly into the abyss as he blurted out the information that would set off a chain reaction that night when the Hammer Groups descended on his mates and stomped on their balls to extract more information in order to crush the underground rebellion.
Sonnyboy Radebe had just signed his own death warrant and would be branded an impimpi among his own people for the rest of his days. No one would ever know how bravely he had resisted at first; how hard he had tried to do the honourable thing and remain silent.
But no one who had not been through it could ever understand how lonely – unutterably lonely – it was to try to withstand that pain. No one would ever understand. Just ask Julius Venter. He had looked those youngsters in the eye and seen how empty and desolate they were. Fucked up forever, with the mark of Cain on their brows.
It was a bright, moonlit night when Dick pulled up at the Protea police station and parked one of the military’s specially modified Kombis. To the casual observer it looked no different to any minibus taxi that plied the route between Johannesburg and Soweto day and night. The only difference was that the windows were curtained against prying eyes. At the arse end, under the engine cover, various hidden talents had been added in the form of a fiery V8 engine. It was designed for a quick getaway if the paw-paw hit the fan during Operation Hammer’s clandestine activities.
Tonight it was Dick’s turn to make the nocturnal rounds of Soweto’s unlit streets in search of agitators who slipped from house to house under cover of darkness to whip up support or intimidate people into joining the struggle.
Residents of the townships lived in fear. They were afraid of the night because, between the security forces and the young lions who stoked the fire of revolution, they didn’t get much sleep. Youths fleeing from soldiers in hot pursuit invariably sought refuge in the nearest houses. Provide it, or be labelled a sell-out.
Offer shelter, and the soldiers were next – brazenly kicking in the doors of your home and rampaging through the rooms in search of fugitives. It was a vicious circle that had been turning for years.
By day the adults, tired and drained, had to brave the bumpy road to work and back and face the ubiquitous roadblocks, then try to get some sleep at night with terror in their hearts and one eye open. In little more than an instant you could become the morning newspaper’s front-page photo, a smouldering corpse with a blazing tyre around your neck.
It was another one of those nights when the troops were going to rattle Soweto in search of the little shit-stirrers who had managed so far to escape the security net and hadn’t yet seen the inside of Diepkloof or the cells at Protea. Julius had extracted valuable information about suspect ringleaders from Sonnyboy during his interrogation, and now it had to be followed up without delay. A list of names and addresses tucked into his shirt pocket, Dick waited for the muscle that would accompany him on his journey through the streets of Soweto. They spoke Portuguese, and there was no love lost between them and the ANC’s foot soldiers.
The men of 32 Battalion had first faced the ANC’s Umkhonto we Sizwe soldiers down the barrel of a gun at Malangue, and they had nothing but scorn for the South Africans’ capabilities as fighters. As ‘payback’ for their accommodation on Angolan soil, the ANC had been forced to place MK’s troops at the MPLA government’s disposal in the war against Savimbi and his UNITA army or PW’s boys.
MK had made little impression on Colonel Jan Breytenbach’s Buffalo Soldiers, and now, to crown it all, a long way from the land of their birth, they had to go up against this lot in dirty, dusty streets between shacks in a totally unfamiliar combat theatre that had no battle lines.
In any event, it was a cowardly enemy that wouldn’t stand its ground and put up a fight, said Staff Sergeant Agostinho Fernandes to Dick as they waited for his troops to arrive. Shortly afterwards, five of them climbed out of a Casspir, toting AK47s. Dressed in denims and T-shirts, they could easily pass for residents of Soweto, as long as they kept their mouths shut, because few people on the street would understand their Portuguese, and it would be a dead giveaway. Hence Dick’s presence, to make sure that 32 Battalion’s cover was not blown.
Dick drove, Agostinho sitting next to him in the front seat as they moved away from Protea in the direction of the Regina Mundi Church to see if anything was going on. The streets were deserted; most people locked themselves in their houses at sunset, fearful of that unexpected knock or hard kick against the door. The Kombi cruised slowly around the church twice, the passengers scouring the surroundings through the lace curtains for signs of anything suspicious.
From the church, the melodious sound of the choir floated on the still night air and Dick, deciding that nothing ungodly could be brewing in the midst of those sweet voices, began driving towards Kliptown and a few of the addresses Julius had choked out of Sonnyboy. Not one of them checked out. ‘Christ, the little bastard was bullshitting us,’ Dick hissed, taking care not to mention the word kaffir in front of his 32 Battalion companions. ‘Sonnyboy took us for a ride and tomorrow I am personally going to drag him out of Diepkloof and fuck him up,’ Dick told Agostinho in English. It was now clear to him that the ANC was not so stupid after all, and made sure that its supporters spewed a load of crap when they were caught, so as to win time.
That little turd wasn’t nearly as dumb as I thought, Dick mumbled under his breath in Afrikaans, knowing that Agostinho wouldn’t understand the language. He’d had to give up a good time at the Diplomat Hotel in Hillbrow with a couple of fine and willing girls to go out and chase terries tonight, and now it was all in vain.
They would cruise around the problem areas and look for troublemakers until about midnight, Dick told Agostinho and his troops. The night was already a fuck-up, but they might as well try to find some excitement.
‘Sarge, slow down,’ said one of Agostinho’s men from the back of the Kombi as they saw a young woman walking along the road alone. Dick was still reducing speed when he heard the sliding door being opened softly. The next minute, from the corner of his eye, he saw two soldiers grab the girl in passing and yank her into the Kombi.
Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. The terrified girl, who couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old, didn’t make a sound. Obviously she had grown up in the lawless atmosphere of Soweto, and knew that the slightest noise could mean you’d be found the next morning, your throat slit, in the long grass at Avalon cemetery.
It was deathly quiet in the Kombi. Dick drove on while Agostinho gazed intently at the windscreen, apparently with nothing to say. All at once, the unnatural silence in the back of the Kombi became too much for Dick, and he glanced around. In the moonlight he could see the sheen of the girl’s legs, her skirt pulled up to her waist. Between her thighs, his denims rumpled around his knees, a soldier’s buttocks moved rhythmically as he raped the girl. Two of the others had her arms pinned down. No one bothered to hold a hand over her mouth, since she evidently knew that if she opened it, she’d die – that was the law of survival in Soweto.
Dick turned his head back quickly and accelerated. He could picture the desperate plea in the girl’s eyes; the image burnt into his brain. It was as if her eyes were trying to scream, help me! help me, I want to stay alive! It went on until all five had violated her. Agostinho sat silently, pretending that nothing was happening. He took no part in this orgy of rape.
Stunned, Dick drove around the deserted streets of Soweto. He knew he would have to keep this to himself. No one would believe him and no one would come to the Protea police station the next morning to report a gang rape in the back of a Kombi. That would be suicide. She would have to live with this for the rest of her life. Neither Dick nor her rapists even knew her name. No one had said a word to her.
Afterwards, Dick wondered if she had still been a virgin when he’d slowed down for the abduction, or if she already had children. Was she married? What would she tell her friends when they found her the following morning, psychologically scarred and distraught? When all five men had finished with her, she just sat on the Kombi’s floor. She tugged her skirt down tightly over her skinny knees and sat there, waiting for the end – a knife against her throat or the dull explosion of an AK47 blowing her head to pieces.
Dick tried to find the place where she’d been plucked off the road, driving in approximately the right direction. Approaching the pick-up point, he told the soldiers to make a plan. He slowed down again and they pushed her out onto the road. None of them knew where she had been going when the soldiers grabbed her without warning. Perhaps she’d been on her way to church, or a shop to buy medicine for her baby. There was no way of knowing. Nor would she ever know who her attackers were. Men who had journeyed thousands of kilometres to take part in a war that didn’t concern them in the least.
That was Dick’s last activity in Soweto as part of Operation Xenon. A few days later, the entire operation was called off by the generals as a major fuck-up, and he was on the way back to Johannesburg to work for his ‘boss’, old PJ.
Magnus had issued orders that all military agents were to be withdrawn from police stations throughout the country.