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

by Mark Minnie

  In another twist, two pilots remembered that one of the cabinet ministers who had visited the island had another place not far from Port Elizabeth. In an e-mail sent to me, it was stated that this minister ‘owned or rented a beach house near Eerste Rivier. As they [the two pilots] had never visited the place, they did not know its location.’

  This meant nothing to me until I learned from Mark during the writing of this book that Allen had also taken young boys to Witelsbos near Eerste Rivier. Mark said one of the boys told him that ‘Uncle Dave’ had taken him and various other boys to ‘a farm’ in Witelsbos on numerous occasions to sexually gratify older men. It was the first time that the ex-cop and I were able to compare notes.

  A couple of days earlier, Mark had arrived with a bunch of flowers and a card that read: ‘Dear Chrissy, I apologise for being rude to you so many years ago. Mark Minnie.’

  I used the opportunity to pass on to him a tip-off I received from a man who claimed to have a top-secret job in intelligence during the apartheid era. That man had told me that, according to a Port Elizabeth diver, young ‘coloured’ boys were offered ‘jobs’ on Bird Island in the eighties. The diver further claimed that two of those boys – with whom he was friends – never returned.

  Mark – who was returning to Port Elizabeth for the rest of his holiday in South Africa – spent two weeks following up that claim, but was unable to find the diver or unearth any further information on the possible disappearance of young boys who had gone to the island.

  By then I had located the surgeon who was believed to have carried out the operation on the young boy who ended up in the hospital after a trip to the island. The doctor had retired and become a wine farmer. On 7 August 2017 I wrote to him:

  I am the co-author of a book on Bird Island.

  I would like to include any comments you may have on a life-saving operation you performed on a young boy injured there about 30 years ago.

  The next day the retired surgeon replied:

  Dear Chris

  I am sorry, I cannot comment on this subject as this violates patient confidentiality.

  That meant the survivor – who has not broken his silence in 30 years – could not be traced and asked for his side of the story.

  Meanwhile, there are other burning questions that beg an answer. First, if Wiley and Allen did not kill themselves, who did – or who assisted or coerced them to do so? Second, who had the power to order the ‘suicides’ of a cabinet minister and a police reservist who was a multimillionaire businessman?

  In search of possible answers, I turned to people with knowledge of state-sanctioned killing during the apartheid years. Among those I spoke to were two former high-ranking members of the government-sponsored death squad that operated under Malan’s authorisation during his time as defence minister. One former operative detailed the process that was usually followed for state-sanctioned murder, indicating that ‘any assassination carried out by covert units of either the South African Police [SAP] or the South African Defence Force [SADF] had to be authorised at the very highest level’.

  Typically, he said, a target would be identified. This target would have to be someone viewed as a major threat to the national security of the state:

  He/she may have belonged to a so-called liberation or terrorist movement, or be someone who knew something that could severely embarrass the state, or compromise members of the ruling party, but could not be trusted to keep his/her silence. In the latter case, the assassination would have been authorised by either the minister of police or the minister of defence [Malan at the time].

  This contact told me that if the target resided in South Africa, the assassination would usually have been carried out by a covert SAP unit such as the security police or even C-10 (the police death squad also known as Vlakplaas). But

  in extremely rare cases, the order would have been given to an SADF covert unit. The reason for this is that the SADF was, at that time, not authorised to conduct covert operations within the borders of SA without the SAP’s knowledge. However, despite this fact, the SADF did on very rare occasions conduct covert operations within SA – but never without ministerial approval and the SAP’s knowledge.

  It is possible, said this source, that the SADF could have intimated that a person resident in South Africa was a major threat to national security and, in so doing, convinced the SAP to carry out the operation on their behalf. This would be done if the target’s death was bound to be investigated – as all suspicious deaths were subject to SAP investigation. The source went on to say:

  If the SADF carried out the operation, it would have been done by the unit that later became known as the Civil Cooperation Bureau [CCB], formerly D40 and [Project] Barnacle [also known as the Section of Pseudo Operations].

  The former operative also described why this unit – in its various incarnations – would have been among those favourably considered for the task of getting rid of someone as important as a cabinet minister. Recalling the unit’s history, the ex-operative said that it was part of Barnacle’s operational mission ‘to manage extremely sensitive operations’, and that the unit’s functions included ‘eliminations’.

  He referred me to an 18 February 1981 classified directive authorising the neutralisation or elimination of certain identified ‘enemies of the state’. That directive, approved by the State Security Council, meant that Barnacle had in effect become a ‘political elimination’ squad. That was followed swiftly by another directive, which gave Barnacle the responsibility of eliminating any own forces members who were deemed to be a threat to the state or to Special Forces operations.

  Barnacle would eventually morph into the CCB – which, according to a former Brixton Murder and Robbery Squad detective, was not above violent elimination of its own members. This ex-cop told me, in April 2017, that CCB members had ‘staged’ the ‘suicide’ of former Military Intelligence (MI) agent and CCB member Eugene Riley in 1994. The ex-cop said he believed Riley had had his drink spiked prior to his death:

  First they took off his spectacles while he was sitting slumbering on the couch … Then they popped him through the head close to the ear on the right side. Then they opened the cylinder of the .38 Special revolver and dropped out one bullet. They turned the cylinder so that two bullets were protruding so it could look like they were about to fall out. The spent one was still in the cylinder. They used silver-tipped bullets. They put the revolver in his hand, and they put his specs back on. These okes did it is as subtly as they could, but they were not as subtle as they thought. The local cops registered it as a suicide, but the next day a detective looked at the inquest docket and said: ‘This is not suicide,’ and opened a murder docket. But they took him [the detective] to The Ranch [an escort club] and videotaped him [and a colleague] and blackmailed them to neutralise them.

  According to this source, Riley had probably signed his own death warrant by arriving – armed with a shotgun – on the smallholding of former kick-boxing champion, dragster racer, brothel boss and gangster Corrie Goosen to question him about being done out of his cut by Goosen and CCB member and gangster Ferdi Barnard in one of their criminal operations.

  Although the test for gun residue on Riley’s hands came back negative, the ballistics were inconclusive. The murder docket was closed, and an inquest concluded it could not be determined whether Riley had killed himself or whether he was murdered. ‘It was another murder they got away with,’ the ex-cop stated.

  That former policeman’s version of events confirmed some of what I wrote when I reported on Riley’s death back in 1994. My story published on 2 February was headlined ‘Ex SAP-man with Webster link found shot dead’. The first two paragraphs read as follows:

  Ex-policeman Eugene Riley, who was implicated by two witnesses at an inquest into the assassination of Wits University lecturer Dr David Webster, died of a gunshot wound to the head at his home in Brixton early Monday morning, police said yesterday.

  Speculation was rife in p
olice and legal circles yesterday that Mr Riley was the victim of a staged suicide.

  In a follow-up story on 14 February – headlined ‘Brixton Unit investigating Riley death’– I wrote:

  People who have maintained that Mr Riley was either murdered or coerced into killing himself said he had been in the process of buying himself a second shotgun for self-protection shortly before his death.

  That is not the only ‘unsolved’ case linked to the CCB, but most of its operations remain shrouded in secrecy to this day. However, the CCB could certainly be described as Malan’s pet hit squad. It was Malan himself (and SADF chief General Jannie Geldenhuys) who had approved its inauguration in 1986. Although the CCB was originally conceived for external operations, an internal section had been added by 1988, and was fully functional by January 1989.

  The Harms Commission, charged with investigating clandestine operations by security forces, heard that the CCB eventually had a vast network of almost 300 members operating in 40 cells within nine regions. And the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) states that there is evidence that the CCB was involved in a number of killings. Apart from Webster and Lubowski, CCB victims include anti-apartheid political activist Dulcie September, Jacob ‘Boy’ Molekwane and Matsela Polokela in Botswana, and Tsitsi Chiliza – the wife of an ANC member – in Harare.

  Other information available to the TRC linked the CCB to the killings of community worker Florence Ribeiro and her husband Dr Fabian Ribeiro and former KwaNdebele cabinet minister Piet Ntuli, as well as the attempted killings of Godfrey Motsepe, the ANC’s representative in Brussels, Jeremy Brickhill in Harare, exiled lawyer (later Constitutional Court judge) Albie Sachs in Maputo, Comrade Che Ogara in Botswana and cleric Frank Chikane. There were also plans to kill South African Communist Party (SACP) member (later housing minister) Joe Slovo in London in the mid-1980s, ANC president Oliver Tambo in Harare in 1987, Namibian journalist Gwen Lister, South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) members Daniel Tjongarero and Hidipo Hamutenya in South West Africa, as well as Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) secretary general Jay Naidoo, white ANC member Roland White, and lawyer and senior ANC member Kwenza Mhlaba in South Africa.

  The TRC also found that the CCB had participated in elimination missions with other security force elements, such as the security police and the more overt Special Forces wing. One such joint mission was the 1988 attack on the ANC transit house in Phiring, Botswana, in which Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) regional commander Patrick Vundla was killed.

  In my attempt to at least clear some of the informational fog surrounding the deaths of Wiley and Allen, another ex-state assassin, who was with the former Military Intelligence (MI) Counter Intelligence and Counter Espionage Division, was also asked for an opinion. ‘I think it was CCB,’ he said. ‘Vlakplaas was too amateurish.’

  A high-ranking former member of the CCB also dismissed the possibility of Vlakplaas involvement. He told me that Barnacle (later CCB) rather than Vlakplaas would have been called in for that type of operation.

  The only other possibility, according to the MI assassin, would have been the Security Branch, members of whom he was with on an ‘assassination course presented by NI [National Intelligence]’. He pointed out that ‘assassination teams co-operated and liaised’ with one another.

  The involvement of members of the Security Branch – at least in the death of Allen – was a possibility also mentioned to Mark Minnie by a former Selous Scout of the old Rhodesian era, who himself later worked for the branch.

  A retired Brixton Murder and Robbery police officer, whom I contacted in April 2017, said he also believed that the Wiley and Allen ‘suicides’ were staged, either by military or police operatives specialising in ‘dirty work’. However, he too felt that it was more likely to have been a military operation.

  Another former police officer – who described to me how the police were used to get rid of political opponents by being given false information that their targets were dangerous criminals – had this to say:

  The dynamic of the time was such that anyone could be used for anything – even unwittingly. The reality is that there were so many role players that the people who needed things done, could choose … Also sanctions-busting led to good relations with many people on the outside who were available for that kind of thing …

  That possibility was also mooted by a former military and police operative who knew Malan quite well. He thought that the minister would have preferred to use ‘a total outsider’ or ‘ex-operatives’ rather than ‘an operational unit’. He told me: ‘Magnus was a good strategic militarist. He would have used his expertise to ensure they could never be traced back to him. And whoever was involved would never have been linked to Wiley.’ To make the swamp even murkier, I was told that it was ‘very easy for the police to make the military look guilty and vice versa’ in the carrying out of such operations.

  The bottom line is that Malan – or another member of his circle – would have been spoilt for choice when it came to hit squads and hit men.

  I also pursued this question: if Wiley and Allen did not die willingly, who would have given the order to eliminate them?

  Of the people I spoke to, two ex-military operatives and one retired policeman thought that the order for the ‘suicide’ of Wiley, and possibly Allen too, would most likely have come from Malan himself.

  However, one of them pointed out that the role of the third, still-living minister who was accused of paedophilia should not be discounted. ‘Don’t underestimate him. He was tipped to be president,’ the source reminded me. But he also did not mince words when he warned me that I was not likely to get to the ultimate truth in this case. He told me: ‘… nobody is going to come forward and confess. Nobody is going to put himself on the spot like that. It is his life.’ This view reflected the experience of a former TRC investigator who wrote to me in August 2017: ‘As you might know the Defence Force was not that cooperative [during the TRC hearings] and nothing of real substance came out from the top leaders or any foot soldiers. They were very tight and only bits and pieces of information came out.’

  So, at the end of a series of meetings with men who killed for the state, I was left with this suggestion by one of them: ‘Maybe you should write a book titled Men Who Can’t Talk.’ Perhaps that complicit silence was one of the reasons Malan could behave like a man who was absolutely certain that he would never be held accountable for his actions.

  During the writing of this book, I learned that Malan once gave an order for a test vehicle to be blown up with a soldier still inside. A former military officer sent me this story in 2017, describing how angry Malan got with him when he did not follow his orders:

  In 1983, whilst attending a course at Army Battle School, Lohatla, I was called on to blow up a new Mine Protected Vehicle [MPV] that was under development by ARMSCOR. Given the use of landmines and IEDs [improvised explosive devices] by PLAN [People’s Liberation Army of Namibia], the armed movement of SWAPO [South West Africa People’s Organisation] against the South African forces deployed there, constant research was being done to ensure the survivability of motorised South African troops.

  The vehicle in question was developed as a possible replacement vehicle for the MPV known as the ‘Buffel’, a good vehicle but one that could have been improved on as new information on mine blasts became available. The new vehicle was to be driven over a landmine in full view of the invited guests, i.e. foreign military attachés and diplomats. They would witness the vehicle being blown up with a driver inside, watching this from a safe overlook.

  My job was to lay and arm the landmine. Carrying the mine off to the designated blast area, I decided that there was no way in hell I was going to lay a mine and watch a South African soldier drive over it, no matter how much faith I had in our MPVs. As the vehicle came lumbering along, I stopped it, ordered the driver to get out and told him that I did not want him in the vehicle whilst it was being blo
wn up. His relief was very clearly visible and I instructed him to stay with me at all times.

  I placed the landmine under the front left wheel of the MPV – very close to where the driver would have been seated – and detonated the landmine. The driver kept thanking me, even while the dust, smoke, and noise was still settling. Had the driver been inside the vehicle cabin, he would at best have been severely maimed. At worst, he would have been killed by the blast. Walking back to re-join my class mates, I noticed General Malan looking distinctly unhappy. After all, according to my instructions, I had to blow up the vehicle with the driver inside of it. Perhaps that was why such a large visitors crowd had been brought along? Malan called me over and, in the presence of all the dignitaries, gave me a severe dressing-down for not following my instructions.

  That was the nature of Magnus Malan.

  In an ironic twist, the name of a close friend of one of the cabinet ministers who visited Bird Island could be attached to a progressive amendment to South Africa’s Sexual Offences Act. He was Sydney Frankel, the billionaire stockbroker, friend of politicians and alleged paedophile accused of sexually molesting eight children more than twenty years ago.

  Before he could face justice, Frankel died of cancer in April 2017, but if a bid – inspired by his victims – to legally overturn the prescription on sexual assault is successful, it could become known as ‘Frankel’s Law’.

  The case was brought by eight men and women who filed a civil lawsuit in 2013. The applicants challenged the validity of section 18 of the Criminal Procedures Act, which imposes a twenty-year statute of limitations on non-penetrative or digitally penetrative offences. (Criminal charges for rape can be pursued at any time.)