Unofficial and Deniable

by John Gordon Davis

  Harker would have loved to make a clean breast to the Truth Commission and secure amnesty – but he dared not. It would explode his relationship with Josephine, ruin Harvest House; he would be prosecuted for murder in America even though he had received amnesty in South Africa.

  ‘Forget it, Josie,’ he said. ‘I doubt many transgressors will come forward. They won’t trust the Commission.’

  She appeared not to hear him. ‘Oh boy,’ she said maliciously, ‘there must be a lot of worried bastards in South Africa right now. Can you imagine the frantic deals being struck? The threats? The bribes?’

  Yes, Harker could imagine it because that was exactly how he felt. Fear that he could be inculpated by Derek Clements over the Long Island job, by Ferdi Spicer, by Felix Dupont. Even by the Chairman.

  Josephine took both his hands across the table. ‘Darling,’ she smiled, ‘I’m afraid this means I’ll have to make another trip to South Africa.’

  Harker’s heart was sinking.

  He said grimly, ‘Josie, Harvest has a lot of money invested in you. You have a responsibility to us. Both morally and contractually. And you have an even greater responsibility to me, as your partner.’

  Josephine nodded solemnly. ‘Agreed.’

  ‘And,’ Harker said, ‘I am telling you now, as my author, that I made no money on your last two books and I can’t afford that on your next one. I therefore beg you not to even think about writing Wages of Sin. And I must warn you that if you do so I will probably be unable to publish it, no matter what our contract says.’

  Josephine nodded solemnly, still holding his hands. ‘I assure you I have no intention of asking you to publish a book you may lose money on. All I ask is that you consider the book. If you don’t have confidence, we’ll forget about it, stuff it under the bed, and I’ll write you another one, a humdinger.’ She squeezed his hands. ‘But, darling, I’ve just got to go when this Truth Commission starts, and see the action.’

  Harker’s heart was sinking. ‘I beg you,’ he said, ‘beg you to get your beautiful ass to an anchor right here in New York and start writing something else.’

  Josephine held his hands. ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘please understand that I’ve just got to witness this drama …’

  Loud opposition to the creation of the Truth Commission came from Afrikaner politicians, from the security forces, from many Zulus, all of whom had much to hide; but there was also much opposition from many members of the ANC and other black political groups who wanted to see apartheid’s crimes against humanity punished in Nuremberg-style trials. There was loud opposition from some high-profile victims of apartheid who wanted to sue the perpetrators for civil damages: they argued that the legislation creating the Truth Commission was unconstitutional because amnesty gave the villains immunity from civil action as well as from prosecution. Feelings ran high. F.W. de Klerk proclaimed in parliament that a Truth Commission would rip the stitches from the healing wounds of apartheid; Chief Buthelezi of the Zulus pronounced the Truth Commission ‘the stuff of Disneyland’, which would make right-wingers take the law into their own hands; General Constand Viljoen of the Freedom Front warned parliament that the Commission would produce neither truth nor reconciliation; the Commissioner of Police, General van der Merwe, darkly warned that the truth about atrocities committed by the ANC would prove a grave embarrassment.

  But the ANC government proclaimed that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission would begin in April the following year, 1996, that the villains had better start preparing their confessions.

  And then, to hurry them along, the Attorney General launched a massive prosecution against the last officer commanding the police death-squad base on the farm called Platplaas, Colonel Eugene de Kock, a man whom his own hit-men called Prime Evil.

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  The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a quasi-judicial body; its seventeen members, all with impeccable credentials, were presided over by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The Commission had three standing committees, all independent of each other.

  The first was the Committee on Human Rights Violations: its purpose was to hear evidence of gross injustices, to identify those responsible, to ascertain whether such abuses were the ‘result of deliberate planning’ with a political objective.

  The function of the second committee, the Committee on Amnesty, chaired by a judge, was to decide on applications for amnesty for violations of human rights: to grant amnesty the committee had to be satisfied that the violation had a ‘political objective’ and that the applicant had made a full disclosure of all relevant facts.

  The function of the third committee, on Reparation and Rehabilitation, was to compensate the victims. In addition the Truth Commission had a high-powered investigation unit: top-ranking detectives were provided by Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Ireland and the Netherlands, while the governments of Ireland, Norway and Sweden provided the giant computer database. The Truth Commission had power to subpoena witnesses, seize documents and other exhibits, exhume bodies. The Violation of Human Rights Committee, therefore, could subpoena an alleged perpetrator to appear and answer allegations. If that perpetrator made a full confession and his crime was proportionate to the political objective, the Amnesty Committee would grant him indemnity from both prosecution and civil damages. If the Committee were not so satisfied the matter would be handed over to the police for prosecution.

  Alternatively, a perpetrator could, of his own accord, apply to the Amnesty Committee for indemnity before 15 December 1996. If the Amnesty Committee concluded that he had told the whole truth he was safe from prosecution and civil damages; if the Committee was not satisfied, they could throw the book at him, although the confession made to the Commission could not be used against him at his trial.

  The Truth Commission headquarters were in Cape Town, but its various sub-committees toured the country like a circuit court to hear complaints, different tribunals sitting in different places at the same time.

  The day after Josephine Valentine arrived in South Africa the Truth and Reconciliation Commission officially opened with solemn fanfare in the City Hall of East London in the Eastern Cape, with ringing speeches about the noble purpose, prayers for guidance, truth and justice. ‘The Truth Shall Make Us Free’ proclaimed the massive banner above the commissioners’ bench. ‘Even-handedness will be our watchword,’ announced the chairman, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, for the ‘TRC does not allow its members to say this kind of violence is better than that kind of violence …’

  The Eastern Cape was an appropriate setting for this historic event, for the area had been the first battleground between black and white in South Africa – ten so-called Kaffir Wars had been fought there over the centuries. Those wars had been the cause of the Great Trek which led to the opening-up of the subcontinent by the Boers and all the heartbreak that brought about, including the political science of apartheid. The City Hall of East London was crammed with dignitaries, international observers and the international media, their cameras and sound equipment. The proceedings were broadcast live worldwide.

  In New York’s pre-dawn Harker sat grimly in Madam Velvet’s dungeon, notebook and pen in hand. He looked for Josephine in the sea of faces though he knew, because she had telephoned him, that the media were mostly holed up in an adjoining room with simultaneous translation facilities. He listened intently as the official leader of evidence slowly led the witnesses through their bitter stories of suffering. Harker watched grimly as witness after witness began to flesh out the horrors of the apartheid system, as black widows and bereaved mothers tearfully, bitterly told what had happened to them, to their loved ones, their husbands, sons, daughters who were anti-apartheid activists.

  It was a terrible litany of state oppression, of cruelty, callous murder to ensure the supremacy of the white man over the black. Harker had had little idea of the extent of the brutality, of the ruthless lengths the government had gone to in order to suppress dissent, he’d had little notion of the dehumanizat
ion that this apartheid mentality had engendered. Sure, he had always thought that apartheid was wrong, but he had never dreamed that its officials committed such torture and murder. In the army his job had been to fight the enemy’s soldiers, not the enemy’s civilians. Oh Jesus, this awful story unfolding now was what he had been associated with?

  At the lunch adjournment, Josephine telephoned him. It was only breakfast time in New York. ‘Please tell me you didn’t know about this sort of thing, Jack.’

  Harker shook his head grimly. ‘I promise you I did not …’

  Hour after hour on that first day the Truth Commission heard about blacks’ personal horrors; and then they listened to some of the other side, from victims of ANC atrocities, from white men and women who had suffered from ANC bombs and gunmen, from innocents who had had arms and legs blown off by bombs planted in bars, from farmers’ wives whose husbands had been gunned down.

  ‘Yes,’ Josephine said when she telephoned him during the lunch adjournment, ‘but no white man was really “innocent”, was he? He supported the government indirectly by not protesting, by enjoying his privileged position as a white man.’

  And then, at the end of that first harrowing day, a black man called Alexander Looksmart Kumalo was called to give evidence.

  His face was scarred, he had a patch over one eye. He walked across the hushed chamber to the witness table with a limp, and his right arm was amputated below the elbow.

  ‘Looksmart …’ Josephine whispered in the media room. She snatched up her cellphone and dialled Harker in New York. ‘Have you got the television on?’

  ‘No, I’ve just come home for lunch.’

  ‘Switch it on, it’s Looksmart Kumalo testifying, the guy I told you about – I met him during the hit-squad commission, remember? He survived that assassination attack on Long Island …’

  Harker’s heart lurched. He snapped on the set. He stared at the man, feeling sick. Staring at his stump of arm, at his scarred face. Oh God …

  Looksmart Kumalo took the oath to tell the truth. Then the counsel for the Commission rose to lead his evidence.

  ‘Mr Kumalo, were you an official in the African National Congress, a liaison officer in MK, the armed wing of the ANC?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Please tell us briefly your history, starting with when you joined the ANC.’

  Looksmart Kumalo faced the commission grimly, his scarred, hawkish face sullen: he held his stump of forearm across his chest like a sash for the television cameras. In measured tones resonant with bitterness, he described how he had joined MK after the outbreak of the Soweto riots in 1976, when black students had rebelled against the government’s decree that they must receive their schooling in Afrikaans. For several years the riots had continued with running battles between the security forces and the students; an extraordinary detail of all this mayhem was that it was the rebellious youth who effectively governed the townships, it was the so-called Students’ Representative Council who issued the orders to the black schoolmasters and shopkeepers and shebeen-owners and all the millions of workers. The students’ council called the strikes and boycotts, ruthlessly enforced them and brought about this beginning of the end of apartheid. It was not their browbeaten parents, not the ANC leadership, which had fled into exile many years earlier.

  ‘I was one of the student leaders. I was on the Soweto Students’ Representative Council from 1976 until 1978 when I decided like many others to leave the country and join the ANC in exile. We got to the Swaziland border with great difficulty, then crossed at night. We found the ANC office. After some months they smuggled us across Rhodesia into Zambia. This was very dangerous because Rhodesia was under white control and they were at war with the freedom fighters of Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo. Finally we crossed the Zambezi river into Zambia, and we were put in an ANC camp. After some months we were sent overseas for military training.’

  ‘Where were you sent?’

  ‘Russia. And Cuba.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Two years. Then I was sent to the ANC’s headquarters in Angola, as a military intelligence officer. It was now 1981. The Cubans were helping the Angolans fight their UNITA rebels and the South Africans, so I worked closely with Cuban military intelligence. Then, in 1987 I was posted to New York.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I was posted to the United Nations, attached to the Angolan delegation. My duties were the gathering of military intelligence about South Africa’s war effort in Angola. The UN was one of the few places where intelligence could be collected – it was almost impossible in Pretoria, or anywhere else in South Africa. The UN was good because everybody has an office there and you hear lots of information.’

  Harker snorted to himself: he had not known that a Mr Looksmart Kumalo was in the UN – Clements, Deep Throat and Falsetto had slipped up.

  The lawyer was saying, ‘Now, tell us how you came by those injuries we see.’

  Harker massaged his eyelids with thumb and forefinger. And Looksmart Kumalo told his story.

  On 12 June 1988 he received information as a result of which he proceeded to a private airfield in Florida where he met a light aircraft that was arriving from the Dominican Republic. Aboard were two passengers, General Alfonso Sanchez and Brigadier Juan Moreno, both of the Cuban army, both of whom Looksmart Kumalo had last seen in Angola where they were based. They were now returning from Cuba to Angola via America because – amongst other reasons – they wished to consult with Kumalo and two other members of the ANC based in America; one was Clarence Ndlovu, in Washington, the other Steve Ncube, in New York, both undercover intelligence officers. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss military strategies against South Africa. No, Looksmart Kumalo told the Truth Commission, he could not elaborate because he was bound by secrecy.

  Harker muttered to himself, ‘Blowing up women and children …’

  The lawyer was asking, ‘Now where was this meeting to be held?’

  ‘In a safe-house on Long Island belonging to the Russian authorities.’

  ‘Why was the meeting held there and not in one of your private offices in the United Nations building?’

  ‘Because the Cubans were sure that the CIA would have bugged all the offices in the UN. The Cubans were in America illegally, and they had other secret business which I knew nothing about.’

  ‘So tell us what happened after you met them at the airfield in Florida.’

  Looksmart Kumalo explained that following the directions of the Cuban officers he drove them via circuitous country roads to New York State, then across to Long Island. At a filling-station outside West Hampton they rendezvoused with another car occupied by the other two ANC officials. In one car they drove down a number of dirt roads through patches of forest and farmlands; finally they arrived at the house.

  ‘Describe it, please.’

  Harker closed his eyes: he could visualize it vividly, the peeling tinderbox of a place.

  ‘I did not feel very safe,’ Kumalo said, ‘because there was no security at all. I was very surprised. But the Cubans told me they had used the house before, the Russians assured them it was okay.’

  It was dark when they arrived. The Cubans were tired and wanted to eat before starting work. The ANC men had brought three barbecued chickens and some rum. Looksmart Kumalo did not say so at the Truth Commission but the black men resented the Cubans’ manner, resented being treated as underlings, almost as servants. The Cubans swigged rum while they devoured two of the three chickens, ripping them apart with their bare hands, while the Africans picked on the third in silence. The meal over, the Cubans told the black men to clear the table while they unpacked their briefcases, spread their maps and notes. The three black men returned from their chores in the kitchen and the Cubans, wreathed in the smoke of Havana cigars, immediately launched into their plan. Looksmart Kumalo did not mention any of this to the Truth Commission, but Harker knew what happened because he had tape-recorded the meeting, hear
d the plans being hatched to blow up the Voortrekker Monument, the Houses of Parliament and Johannesburg’s airport. Looksmart Kumalo told the Truth Commission only that the five of them had discussed ‘military matters’ until about midnight.

  At that juncture, Looksmart said, he had left the dining room and gone to his bag in the living room to fetch more cigarettes. Suddenly he had heard gunfire, the front and back doors bursting open, shouts, cries. He had flung himself out of the living room window on to the verandah. He landed on floorboards, lacerated, one eye gashed. He saw a form burst out of the darkness. He scrambled up and threw himself into the darkness under a hail of bullets. He felt his right arm and hand shot to pieces, another bullet ripped through his cheek, he ran into the black undergrowth and sprawled. He lost consciousness. He came to some time later with the sound of an explosion, the earth shaking, the world seeming to erupt around him. Stunned, he saw the house disintegrate in flying debris. He managed to scramble up and stagger on for a short distance before collapsing and passing out.

  When he regained consciousness there were flashing lights and policemen and he was being loaded into an ambulance; he remembered looking for the house – it had disappeared, only smoking debris marked where it had stood. His next memory was of coming round in a hospital bed, to find he had only one complete arm, only one eye, his face swathed in bandages, his right leg in plaster. And the pain. The agony.

  But he knew who had attacked him.

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t give us hearsay,’ the lawyer said.

  Kumalo looked at the lawyer with his one withering eye. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I know who attacked that house and I shall tell the world whether your laws permit it or not. It was the CCB, the Civil Cooperation Bureau. They were the Military Intelligence hit-squads. They are the same bastards who shot Dulcie September in Paris and Anton Lubowski in Namibia and blew up the ANC offices in London. And it was the CIA who helped the CCB!’