Does it Hurt to Die (8 page)

There were three things that Andre van der Walt left Jannie de Villiers convinced of the fact that there was more to Jannie’s research that he had been able to find out. He was still no closer to establishing whether Jannie had Martyn Stein’s folder and whether the strategy of telling him that the terrorist attack was planned and executed by BOSS would produce the desired result. The strategy of scaring Jannie to the point where he might reveal where the folder was, if indeed he had it, and where he had hidden his genetic research was, he felt, a big gamble. In addition, he disliked gambling, as there was too much uncertainty about their outcomes.

However, Van der Walt knew the Black Watch committee that he reported to within BOSS needed a definite answer to at least the question of where the folder was. The information that they suspected Martyn Stein was getting ready to release and which Jannie might now have could undermine not only South Africa’s nuclear weapons programme but also further isolate and possibly paralyse the government. He also knew that if there were any doubt about de Villiers having the information and BOSS not being able to retrieve it, then they would recommend that he be killed in a similar fashion to Stein.

The Black Watch committee was due to meet in Van der Walt’s Johannesburg office at two o’clock. This was to provide feedback on the terrorist attack in Cape Town, the success or otherwise of the consultation with Jannie de Villiers, and to report any progress about recovery of the Stein folder.

The initial BOSS plan had been to secure five black criminals and provide them with small arms training and financial guarantees. The intent had always been to eliminate the terrorists/operatives following the attack, leaving no evidence linking the attack to the security services. An English-speaking church had been selected primarily because it would have limited numbers of Afrikaners present. It was critical that the attack would provoke a maximum response from the liberal English-speaking groups that were discussing integration and peaceful transition from segregation. Outside forces could also be partly blamed, with careful planting of evidence, and this would reinforce the idea that communist countries were plotting against South Africa for its resources and strategic position in Africa.

The black criminals responded well to training and had developed expertise in the use of small arms and explosives. One of them had obviously worked out that he may not survive and, so, early in the training, had fled with a number of weapons. Van der Walt had dispatched their only black agent, Galela, who effectively dealt with the runaway and recovered the small arms and documents. The rest of the training had proceeded relatively smoothly. They were given documents that identified them as members of the Pan African Congress, as well as communist party literature, both of which would deliberately be left in the escape vehicle. The Pan African Congress was chosen above all because it was an organisation that had threatened that for each white farmer there would be one bullet. The psychological impact they estimated on all white groups would therefore be emphatic.

St Andrew
’s Church in Cape Town was also chosen as a target because it had five points of access that could provide crossfire and hence kill many of the fifteen hundred who normally attended; therefore amplifying the public impact of the attack. Such an attack would be successful; a massacre would ensue and would permanently derail any thought amongst whites of integration. Van der Walt considered the major objectives had been accomplished, other than the reaction of the pastor of the church who, bizarrely, wanted to forgive everyone.

The overall impression from the media was as predicted, those blacks were not fit to govern and that this was terrorism sponsored partly by communist neighbours. The only thing they had not been able to control was the weather; on the night, the pouring rain caused four of the five doors to be locked, which allowed the terrorists only one point of access, limiting their ability to set up crossfire and maximise casualties. Then there was a reserve police officer in the congregation who started to fire back at the terrorists. They retreated when they should have kept shooting. They fled having killed twenty people and seriously injuring fifty—not the fifty considered essential to derailing the peace process.

That was part of the risk they knew that they took in using non-professionals; a risk accepted by the Black Watch committee. The only part the committee would be concerned about, he thought, was the two terrorists who had not yet been accounted for. He would get Galela to look into it.

He walked in and sat at his desk, which looked down on the courtyard, known amongst his officers as Galela’s cemetery. One of the cornerstones of BOSS’s success was its meticulous planning and the ruthless efficiency it brought to that planning through discipline. This was very much his making, and he was proud of what he had created. Vlakplaas, as his unit was fearfully known, was a counterinsurgency unit located on a small farm, from which it had taken its name—not far from where he had been brought up. It had grown to the extent where it was a fully fledged paramilitary organisation answerable only to himself, Jacob Strydom and the minister of police.

Vlakplaas’s success in eliminating opposition to the apartheid government had meant that not too many questions were asked as long as there was a steady flow of information and the elimination of prominent activists. He had ensured the unit reached its goals, with many of those captured also tortured and providing valuable information on other subversives’ intentions. Initially, they had buried most of those who died by digging up the floor of a large barn on the farm. However, the numbers grew quickly and they were forced to move out into the open. Such was their reputation by that stage that no one came within a ten-kilometre radius of the farm for fear that they might never return.

Vlakplaas had become less constrained about where torture was carried out as they grew in stature, often bringing captured activists back to the BOSS building in John Vorster Square. The intention was to provide live training for new operatives and to see whether they had the stomach for interrogation and torture. Activists were not infrequently thrown out the seventh-floor window if they were not cooperative, thereby giving the name Galela’s cemetery to the gardens beneath. It was Galela who had instigated the practice, almost by accident, leaving a suspected African National Congress sympathiser hanging out the window for so long that he fell to his death in the courtyard. His screams and news of the death reached other prisoners, whose cooperation increased immensely.

Van der Walt’s thoughts were interrupted when Sergeant Adams knocked at the door. He trusted Adams. He was one of the few English speakers who really understood the threat from the blacks and who knew that for South Africa to survive it would have to remain white. Adams was in charge of one of the Vlakplaas interrogation units and started to explain in Afrikaans something that he wanted to discuss with Van der Walt.

‘
Speak in English, Adams. That’s your native language isn’t it?’

‘
Sir, we’re holding a black nineteen-year-old male who has a bullet wound to the left arm. He’s claiming that we sent him to do the attack in Cape Town.’

‘
Where was he found?’

‘
In Port Elizabeth, by Galela.’

‘
Is he interrogating the prisoner?’

‘
Yes, sir.’

‘
Tell that black bastard not to touch the prisoner, and organise for him to be brought here from the farm.’

Rambo Galela was recruited to the Vlakplaas unit in the early nineteen eighties. A borderline psychopath, he loved killing and had been very successful in dismantling training camps that the African National Congress had tried to establish in Tanzania and Angola. Everyone in the bureau knew of him. Van der Walt had known that the unit would be successful only if they had black operatives as highly trained in counter insurgency as the white operatives. The idea of black operatives was an issue that almost raised as much passion with his superior officers as the
‘one man one vote’ suggestion. It touched the very capstone of white superiority. Blacks, he was repeatedly told, could not fight as well as whites, they could not think as fast and they could not understand discipline.

Nevertheless, when attempts had been made to attack the camps in Angola with conventional troops—an attack that had caused a political furore over infringing the sovereignty rights of South West Africa—permission was given to consider an alternative. That had not meant instant approval, as there were many in the cabinet and the Broederbond who were vehemently opposed to any black being sanctioned with a licence to kill. The opposition was such that Vlakplaas was nearly dismantled. It was only the combined influence of General Coetzee, head of special operations, and the minister of police, Hennie Botha, with the argument that whites could not infiltrate black organisations, that the threat of a rogue black agent had eventually been overcome.

Finding a black man to kill another black man, let alone more efficiently than a white man, was the biggest hurdle. Galela had been one of the few black police officers who could even be considered. A psychopath whose total disregard for authority had seen him in trouble more than once was a high recommendation. Van der Walt appreciated some of the difficulties he would face but felt that Galela’s value was that his only allegiance was to himself, and the satisfaction that he could find through killing was sufficient to keep him under control. Talking with those who had worked with Galela, he was convinced that it was unlikely that he would become a rogue agent.

He remembered one of the police officers he interviewed about Galela saying
, ‘Ag, man. The only reason we gave him a uniform is that the blacks figured out that he was working for us. He was the unofficial police officer in Soweto. He killed those we thought were subversives and we supplied him with guns and ammunition. We couldn’t go in there, but Galela could. It made sense!’

Another police officer had said
, ‘Look, man, this is one black who likes killing and who can count bodies beyond the number of fingers on his hand. He didn’t want to leave Soweto, but the African National Congress had had enough and increased its firepower. When they killed those other Kaffir police, he was smart enough to come to us for protection. We put him in administration in Durban and gave him another name, but he was like a caged animal—an animal that had tasted blood and wanted more. He set up a protection racket for the Indian shopkeepers. The blacks wouldn’t rob them because Galela would hunt them down. It was like Soweto all over again, except it was Durban. The Indians loved him; he was the best protection they’d ever had.’

When Van der Walt first met Galela, he showed him not the slightest respect. Despite the fact that Van der Walt was his superior officer, he was left with the feeling that Galela believed that his was the presence that counted. It was this presence that Van der Walt, despite all his war experience, found intimidating. Galela was big for a black man, powerfully built across the shoulders, and, although his uniform was loose fitting, tension emanated from beneath it. His eyes appeared to have no pupils; they were black with no definition, as if there was no soul. The scars above his eyes and mouth contributed to the intimidating demeanour. The absence of his left lower ear was further testimony to the violence he lived with.

Galela did not speak to him. He just stared with a look that spat disrespect. Van der Walt pulled over a chair, turned it around and sat in front of Galela. Two feet in front of him he met the black eyes and felt something that he had experienced only once or twice before. It was like being close to the presence of uncontrolled evil. The presence that created intimidation related to Galela’s soul. As he spoke to Galela, he became increasingly uncomfortable. It was not a fear, for fear he recognised from many encounters with it in the past. He had conquered such a feeling many times. It was the presence in Galela that reached out to you, threatened to encircle your throat and squeeze all life from you. For a moment Van der Walt wondered whether he was the devil incarnate and whether, like the devil, he would only ever answer to himself.

When he had finished explaining the concept, Galela still had not spoken. He watched the lifeless black eyes and he was sure they did not blink. Although he knew it would be seen as a victory, he moved his chair back and got up.

‘I’ll come,’ was all that Galela said.

The Vlakplaas farm was about twenty kilometres from Pretoria, so Van der Walt wondered why Galela had brought back one of the criminals that they had used in the terrorist attack in Cape Town. His instructions had been to eliminate them all. With Galela, though, you never knew because his psychopathic nature meant that he sometimes prolonged the killing to increase the enjoyment. He wondered whether he should just instruct him to bury the black terrorist at the farm but he had not yet been able to debrief Galela, and having that information would be useful for the Black Watch committee meeting. He knew that it would be approximately an hour before they arrived, which would give him plenty of time to see both Galela and the prisoner. He asked Adams to call him when they arrived.

The prisoner would have been taken to room nine, as this was the non-insulated room favoured by Galela, especially if there were others waiting to be interrogated.

Adams called him forty minutes later, and he made his way down to room nine. When he entered the room, the two white officers stood up. Galela did not look in his direction; he was sitting next to the window holding on
to the barrel of his pistol. He could see no prisoner and momentarily wondered whether Galela had killed him and buried him at the farm. Then he saw the black fingers holding on to the window ledge. Galela did not look at Van der Walt, but on hearing him enter the room, smashed the pistol butt on to one of the fingers. The disintegration of bone was a sound overwhelmed by the scream from beyond the window. One hand remained on the window as Galela spat out of the window at the prisoner. He then turned slowly and fixed Van der Walt with a look that suggested no command could change his current course of action and enjoyment.