The Lost Boys of Bird Island: A shocking exposé from within the heart of the NP government

by Mark Minnie

  Once I have proof, when no doubt whatsoever exists in my mind that the deceased was murdered or was the victim of an assisted suicide, then I’ll hand the case over to the Murder and Robbery Squad.

  A proper specimen should clear up all remaining doubt. Right now, I console myself with the fact that I’m actually doing part of the investigation for the squad, something they’d appreciate. I’ll go look for a handwriting specimen at Uncle Dave’s house tomorrow.

  I head back to my office, stopping off to pick up a hamburger from the cafeteria. The aroma of beef and onions fills my office. I want to dig into the burger straight away.

  But my hunger pangs will need to continue unabated for a while longer because as I sit down, my eyes fall upon a handwritten note on my desk. It’s in red ink. Must be urgent, or I’m in some type of shit. In my world, anything written in red ink denotes importance or trouble.

  The note reads: ‘Contact the SPP urgently.’

  Why would the senior public prosecutor be looking for me? I have no pending investigations or court cases requiring his attention. I dial his direct number.

  ‘Senior public prosecutor’s office …’

  It’s him.

  ‘Morning, sir. Sergeant Max here. ‘

  ‘Oh yes, Sergeant Max. Concerning the Dave Allen investigation, which I happen to have no knowledge of, I need you and the docket to be in my office straight after lunch. Clear?’

  ‘No problem, sir …’

  He hangs up. At least he’s giving me time to munch my burger.

  The senior public prosecutor is a highly intelligent man who has worked himself up into a powerful position in the legal profession at a relatively young age. He’s smart, suave and handsome. You’ll always find him surrounded by a bevy of gorgeous beauties when he’s dining out. And don’t forget the men. All of them important, rich people. I do happen to get around in my town. It’s the nature of my job.

  I walk into the SPP’s office, the case docket held under my arm. The smell of English Blazer aftershave lingers tantalisingly in the air. It’s a Yardley product, affordable only to the rich, or so I think.

  He stands up – a man of above-average height, immaculately attired in an expensive-looking black suit. The accompanying white silk shirt and impressive-looking red tie add to his aura of confidence. He gazes sternly at my 1,78-metre stature, eyeballing me from head to toe. I’m not intimidated.

  ‘Why is it that you did not approach me first with this case?’ he asks, clearly annoyed.

  Am I missing something here? This guy’s upset, in a flutter regarding this case, and he has no cause to be. I’m not obligated to discuss dog shit with him. I’m the fucking cop, not him. If the law has been broken, I investigate, I arrest and I see to it that the case lands up in court. His job is to delegate work to the team of prosecutors beneath him.

  ‘I had no reason to discuss it with you,’ I reply. ‘I decided that in order to expedite the investigation, applying for the search warrant through the office of my brigadier would serve my cause better. I have the necessary affidavit justifying my application.’

  ‘Show me what you’ve got.’

  I hand him the docket and he casually retires to his chair and begins to read it. The waiting gets to me – I’m dying for a smoke.

  After a while the SPP writes something in the docket, closes it and hands it back to me.

  ‘That’s all. Thank you,’ he says.

  I’m dismissed. I turn and walk out.

  At this point my sole intention is to get out of this building as quickly as possible in order to light up. I’ll read the entry he made in the docket later. Outside, I appreciatively puff away on two cigarettes in quick succession before departing for my office.

  Only once I am at my desk do I check the docket. I’m flabbergasted. No, in actual fact, I’m fucking pissed off.

  I fly into the brigadier’s office. He reads the entry by the senior public prosecutor for the magisterial district of my home town.

  ‘Appears as if you’ve ruffled some feathers, Max. The SPP must be acting on instructions from higher authority. Who, though? That’s the million-dollar question.’

  I proceed to inform the brigadier of my suspicions regarding the ‘suicide’ scene – namely, the witness finding the gun resting in the deceased’s hand and no trace of the cartridge anywhere. I also relate to him the fact that the deceased bore no gunpowder burns to his forehead. The old man is intrigued.

  ‘Right now you’re sitting on a powder keg, Max. If it explodes, it’s going to blow up in your face. You need that handwriting specimen as much as an alcoholic needs a drink. However, if you go into that house, the SPP will skin you alive. My advice is to sit back and let things play out on their own accord.’

  ‘And keep your mouth shut because walls have ears,’ he quickly adds.

  Back in my office I re-read the SPP’s entry in my docket. It’s written in bold red ink and reads as follows: ‘All investigation into this matter must cease immediately’ – signed, ‘John Scott’.

  14

  Fateful Tuesday

  It’s Tuesday, a few weeks after Dave Allen’s ‘suicide’. On my way to work I’m greeted by billboards along the road displaying the headline ‘Cabinet minister commits suicide’.

  I’m intrigued, so I pull over and buy the morning edition of our local newspaper from a vendor. After establishing the identity of the deceased minister, I realise that I need to get to the brigadier’s office without delay. Is it possible that Uncle Dave was not bullshitting me with regard to certain revelations he made on the day of his arrest? I ask myself.

  I rush into the brigadier’s office and immediately share the revelation that on the day of his arrest Dave Allen had mentioned the name of the recently deceased minister.

  ‘Seems as if the chickens are coming home to roost, Max,’ he says in a flat, unemotional tone of voice.

  The old man is close to retirement. A staunch member of the Dutch Reformed Church, he has given the major part of his life to the service of the state. The rest he shares between God and the ponies. The state of affairs with regard to our case is not going down well with him. Someone is tying our hands behind our backs. The brig’s not happy and neither am I. But he advises restraint.

  ‘At our last meeting, I told you to sit back and let things play out on their own accord. That was a month ago. Continue doing so, son. They’ve got the watches, but we have the time. Let them use whatever connections they’ve got in order to quell the flames. Eventually, these low-life scum are going to hang themselves.’

  I leave his office aware that I have come to feel totally different about him since I’ve been spending some time with him on this investigation. He’s not such a grumpy prick after all. In fact, I now view him as a wise old owl – although owls tend to be moody at times, granted.

  I pop into George’s pub for lunch. He serves a mean steak, egg and chips – tasty, and more than enough to fill your gut. Ruddy well cheap too. Bernie senses a change in my mood.

  ‘I can tell that today’s story in the Herald has got something to do with the case you’re investigating, Max. You’re bloody well smiling like a Cheshire cat,’ she chirps girlishly.

  ‘Possibly,’ is all that I’m prepared to offer in return.

  ‘Things are starting to look real nasty, Max,’ Bernie says in a hushed voice barely loud enough for me to hear.

  ‘No, babes. You’re wrong. Things are starting to look real damn good. I had a hunch that these bastards would start rattling. It’s exactly what they’re doing. They’re shitting in their pants right now. Anyhow, let’s enjoy the rest of the day and celebrate.’

  Wiley’s suicide has aroused a lot of interest among journalists in the country. Everyone’s looking for the reason he would have taken his own life. I could point the vultures in a possible direction, but I won’t. Let them do their own digging. Anyway, I don’t trust anyone now. We’re flying close to a very large and dangerous flame. I wouldn’t put it p
ast the powers that be to send someone posing as a journalist to find out what I know. They could even take me out, I think to myself.

  The general consensus is that Minister Wiley was experiencing financial problems of such magnitude that he decided to end his life. The journalistic frenzy is short-lived. However, inside information leads me to believe that ‘Die Groot Krokodil’ – PW Botha, the president of South Africa – has put the fear of God into all editors regarding the publication of information that points to an association between his deceased cabinet minister and the late Dave Allen.

  Botha is no doubt protecting his party. Elections are approaching, with 6 May looming in the not-too-distant future. Freedom of speech? My arse. The National Party is running scared, and consequently using strong-arm tactics in order to protect its interests. Does this explain the mystery of my local newspaper refusing to follow up on the lead I supplied a month ago? Reporters usually pounce like lions when fed information of this nature.

  * * *

  Two days later, while enjoying a quiet moment in my office, the peaceful silence is broken by an unexpected call from my branch commander.

  ‘You need to get your butt over to the Security building,’ he says. ‘Two colonels are waiting for you at this very moment.’ He supplies me with the floor and office number.

  The wing housing the Security Branch is in a different building from mine. Access is through a private entrance, a five-minute walk from my office. As I enter the premises, a feeling of foreboding envelops me. The place is dark and curiously quiet. I know where I’m headed, but it’s a destination I feel wary about reaching.

  I have the feeling that I am at the centre of the Afrikaner fiefdom’s enforcement arm. The powerful and efficient Security Branch is in charge of countering sabotage and other subversive activities that threaten the apartheid state. Guys working at the South African Security Branch are not cut from your ordinary cloth. Loyalty to the Afrikaner Broederbond – the influential secret society dedicated to promoting Afrikaner control in government, the economy and culture – needs to be proved all the way back to the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck.

  These Security Branch guys are vetted, screened and vetted again before being allowed to join this brotherhood. There’s too much ‘English’ blood coursing through my veins even to be considered as a member of this protected and secretive clan.

  I know of only two Englishmen who have met their vetting standards and who have been taken in by them. One is a Rhodes University graduate. The other is running around somewhere in Ovamboland, South West Africa, fighting a war on behalf of the South African government in a territory we should have relinquished ages ago in terms of international law. But you can’t get that point across to these knuckleheaded Dutchmen. The Americans have blown the danger of communism way out of proportion, to the extent that they’re chasing their own tail. They got our government convinced that the ‘Reds’ (Russia and China) are intent on destroying South Africa.

  As I arrive at the specific office number supplied to me by my commander, two guys who are already seated invite me in. They’re complete strangers to me, definitely not locals. Both are dressed in grey suits. More than likely these were purchased from the same Indian tailor, who probably offered the guys a cheap cut of cloth and made the suits in haste so as not to waste any time in pocketing R500 per customer, this being the annual clothing allowance afforded to these dudes by the government. Five hundred rand gets you two cheap-assed suits, two coarse-necked shirts, two matching ties and a pair of shoes. Most tailors throw a pair of socks into the mix as well.

  After a brief exchange of pleasantries and greetings, I’m instructed to take a seat. The guys get straight to the point. What I thought was going to be a friendly discussion soon transforms into a full-blown interrogation.

  One dude assumes the role of the good cop, with the other one coming across as pretty bad. What the fuck! Am I the enemy here? We’re on the same side, aren’t we? It soon becomes obvious to me that they’re ‘fishing’. They don’t know much about my discussion with Uncle Dave.

  They’re afraid that I might be ‘concealing sensitive information’ supplied to me by the deceased party. They are not interested in establishing whether there are other players involved in a possible paedophile ring. They’re simply intent on protecting existing players.

  Their attitude proves to me that I have opened a can of worms. Not out of my own doing, however – I was asked to investigate. I stick to the story I gave to the brigadier, revealing to them the same information I’ve shared with him. Nothing more, nothing less. They will speak to the brigadier at some stage if they haven’t already done so. I also notify them of the senior public prosecutor’s decree to halt all further investigation into the matter. This seems to put them at ease. I’m dismissed.

  A bitter taste runs through my mouth.

  CHRIS

  15

  Squashed

  After weeks of investigation, it was hard not to suspect that David Allen and John Wiley had died because of paedophilia, blackmail, a looming cabinet scandal of epic proportions – and the urgent need to protect the reputations of certain other top politicians.

  It was a hell of a story. There is no other way of putting it. However, little of what I knew would eventually appear in print.

  The inquest failed to establish the real reason behind Wiley’s death, and no clear picture emerged of the reason for what still appeared to be a suicide. Furthermore, it was found that no one could be held criminally responsible, either through an act or an omission.

  The day before the inquest, on 14 May 1987, I wrote a story under the headline ‘Wiley inquest in Simon’s Town today’. I pointed out that in South African law an inquest had limited scope. That story also contained this rather promising-looking announcement:

  After an intensive seven-week investigation into Mr Wiley’s life and death, the Cape Times will publish the ‘Wiley Dossier’ after the inquest.

  We were alerting readers to the fact that I had interviewed dozens of Wiley’s closest business and political associates and friends in an attempt to clear up some aspects of the mystery surrounding his death.

  I had spent many hours seeking facts from every possible source willing to discuss the intimate details of the sex and professional lives of a cabinet minister and his police reservist friend, as well as a couple of cabinet colleagues. I had spoken to a source whose information was based on the account of a Bird Island eyewitness. I knew for a fact that a child victim needed a life-saving operation. I was told of concessions lost and given, of brazen blackmail and blatant corruption. The most explosive of these allegations were not vague, but very detailed. I even had an off-the-record confirmation from a hostile cop that cabinet ministers had been implicated in acts of sex with children.

  But any hopes I might have had of seeing in print any counterbalance to official ‘findings’ were dashed by the newspaper’s decision to handle the matter with what I deemed to be unwarranted diplomacy. I was not allowed to reveal most of what I had uncovered during my investigation. This was not something I accepted without a fight. I argued, I raged, I threw tantrums as draft after draft of the story was gutted by the news desk until there was a version deemed safe for publication.

  This excessive caution exercised by the Cape Times in the case of the Wiley story was as baffling to me as it was infuriating. Various excuses were used, including the fact that my primary source was a ‘colourful character’, as if that automatically made him a liar.

  Although I had always applied the same standards of journalistic treatment to the living and the dead, the newspaper acted like it had never heard the words ‘dead men can’t sue’. In fact, I had known the paper to be less cautious in accusations against people still very much alive.

  I would like to think the newspaper was once again just being overly respectful of privacy – despite the matter clearly being in the public interest – but I could not stop wondering whether there was more to it than
that. In my moments of darkest suspicion, I feared that the newspaper could be trying to protect two other cabinet ministers who had been named to me as having been on the alleged sex tours to Bird Island. But then, I would argue with myself, why would a liberal paper that had fought so bravely to expose the excesses of the apartheid government want to protect two of its most notorious stalwarts?

  Perhaps Mahogany Row (newspaper management) simply didn’t want to see the newspaper dragged through the lengthy – and expensive – ethical and legal battles my Boesak story had put The Star through. Or maybe they thought the paper would be accused of hypocrisy for allowing me to write about the private life of an NP minister (or three) when it had condemned me so strongly for exposing the private life of a struggle icon.

  I did not have the answer. And nobody ever gave me one.

  Although not everyone involved in the newspaper’s decision-making processes was as liberal as editor Tony Heard, I could not even begin to identify the person responsible for ensuring that the ‘Wiley Dossier’ was reduced to an insignificant little tattletale.

  Of course, it was no secret that Cape Times news editor Colin Howell had an unhealthy belief in the credibility of government officials – especially policemen. Despite the fact that I usually wrote the bigger stories of the day, he and I clashed – often. In a confidential memo that I got to read, he went as far as to describe me as ‘our unguided missile’. Still, he did not have sole decision-making power over what went into the paper and what was kept out of it.

  I suspected then, as I still do now, that it was probably the result of a collective call by the newspaper’s hierarchy, inspired either by a lack of courage or an obligation on the part of somebody to cover up the truth.