Of Cops & Robbers (35 page)

The killings conducted by the Icing Unit are loosely, very loosely, based on real events.

The murders of Dr Robert Smit and his wife Jean-Cora occurred on 22 November 1977 in their rented house in Springs, outside Johannesburg. Both were shot. Jean-Cora was also stabbed fourteen times with a stiletto. Smit was due to stand for the ruling National Party in a coming by-election. Speculation has it that he had information about bullion held in foreign banks and planned to go public with this information which would have been damaging to some senior members of his party. Because of this it is believed the government contracted the hit. The letters RAU TEM were sprayed on the couple’s kitchen wall. No one knows what or if these letters have any meaning.

The murderer(s) were not caught. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission into apartheid crimes investigated the incident during the mid-1990s and concluded that it was politically motivated. During that investigation the Smit’s daughter received death threats and was offered money to keep quiet.

In 2006 three security branch men were fingered as responsible for the hit. One, Phil Freeman, committed suicide in Cape Town in 1990. A second, Dries Verwey, was found dead in Port Elizabeth. He had been shot in the left side of his head. Although it looked like a suicide he was right-handed and investigators believed that he’d been killed. The third man, known only by the initials RA, lives in Australia. No application has been made to extradite him.

The killing of the three men on a farm alludes to the murders perpetrated by a death squad under the command of Eugene de Kock – nicknamed Prime Evil – that operated on Vlakplaas, a farm near Pretoria during the 1980s. In 1996 De Kock was sentenced to two hundred and twelve years in prison for crimes against humanity. The eighty-nine charges included six counts of murder, as well as conspiracy to murder, attempted murder, assault, kidnapping, illegal possession of firearms, and fraud. De Kock is serving his sentence in the C Max section of the Pretoria Central Prison.

A unit known as the Civil Cooperation Bureau, a government-sponsored hit squad, conducted killing missions in the countries around South Africa, including Swaziland, during the latter years of National Party rule. In his testimony to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, General Magnus Malan stated: “During my term of office as Head of the South African Defence Force and as Minister of Defence instructions to members of the South African Defence Force were clear: destroy the terrorists, their bases and their capabilities. This was also government policy. As a professional soldier, I issued orders and later as Minister of Defence I authorised orders which led to the death of innocent civilians in cross-fire.”

The incident on the mountain pass in the Eastern Cape where the Icing Unit intercepts a car refers to the assassination of the Cradock Four: Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sparrow Mkonto and Sicelo Mhlauli. On the night of 27 June 1985, security forces set up a roadblock to intercept their car. They were murdered and their burnt bodies found later near Port Elizabeth.

The assassination of the character Amina Kahn was based on the murder in Paris of Dulcie September in 1987. She had established a strong anti-apartheid lobby that argued for sanctions and disinvestment and had become a threat to the apartheid state. In March of that year she was shot five times from behind with a silenced rifle as she opened the ANC offices. In 2011 the state denied September’s family access to documents related to her.

The character of Dr Gold was somewhat based on State President Nico Diederichs in that during his tenure as finance minister he moved South Africa’s gold holdings from London to Zurich. Allegedly he was paid a small commission on any gold sales. Speculation had it that the bullion was regarded as an emergency war fund should the Nationalist government be forced into exile. Because of his involvement Diederichs was referred to as Dr Gold.

There is a brief reference to the Numbers gangs through the character, Seven. The Numbers gangs (the 26s, 27s, and 28s) have been a feature of South African prisons for more than a hundred years and owe their origins to Jan Note who had been unfairly incarcerated for stealing a horse. The injustice of his jail term led him to found the Regiment of the Hills – a formally structured gang for men who had fallen foul of the law. By the 1920s their influence extended throughout the prison system.

A Human Rights Watch book on conditions in South African prisons states: ‘Each of the gangs has an elaborate quasi-military command structure, involving up to thirty different ranks; each rank has specific hierarchical duties, and internal discipline is strictly maintained. Promotion, particularly to the higher ranks, may be obtained by committing acts of violence on persons outside the gang. The gangs themselves are distinguished according to their aims and activities: the 28s are regarded as the senior gang, and are distinguished primarily by their organised system of “vyfies” [literally little wives] or coerced homosexual partners; the 26s are associated with cunning, obtaining money and often goods by means of fraud and theft; the 27s protect and enforce the codes of the 28s and 26s and are symbolized by blood.’ - Africa Watch Prison Project,
Prison Conditions in South
Africa
, Human Rights Watch, New York, 1994.

Two informative books on the Numbers gangs are:

The Small Matter of a Horse
by Charles van Onselen (Ravan Press, Johannesburg, 1984)

The Number
by Jonny Steinberg (Jonathan Ball Publishers, Cape Town, 2006)

See also an interview on YouTube by the British journalist Ross Kemp with John Mongrel, the highest ranking member of the 28s:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q27xtHbgXcU

During the war that was fought along the border between Angola and Namibia during the late 1970s and through the 1980s, the rhino and elephant populations in the region were decimated. UNITA troops which were supported by South African forces, ‘traded rhino horn and ivory for weapons with South African Defence Force senior personnel, thereby contributing to the almost complete annihilation of rhino in southern Angola,’ according to authors Richard Emslie and Martin Brooks. In an IUCN survey they write: ‘It also appears that authorities in the former apartheid regime in South Africa turned a blind eye to ivory and horn smuggling from the rest of Africa through South Africa, as the smugglers provided valuable military intelligence.’ Emslie, Richard and Brooks, Martin (editors),
African Rhino: Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan
, IUCN Publications, Cambridge, 1999

As far as I can tell the last Miss Landmine beauty pageant was held in Angola in 2008.
http://miss-landmine.org/

Some Jim Neversink songs:

Zooming out of Life:
http://www.myspace.com/music/player?sid=65692724&ac=now

Western World:
https://soundcloud.com/jim-neversink/01-western-world

Always Dreaming of You:
https://soundcloud.com/jim-neversink/12-always-dreaming-of-you

PAYBACK
KILLER COUNTRY
BLACK HEART