H
April 2008
I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas
– from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot
THE BOMB
The man leaning over the bench is focused on his work – a study in concentration, as you should be when constructing a bomb. His name is Japie F Kok and he works for the mechanical department of the technical division of the security branch of the South African Police.
The division’s workshop is located at Rebecca Street in Pretoria West. Security around the workshop is tight, for this is the place where the ‘unofficial’ devices are made: the special phone taps, the booby traps, silencers, timing devices, detonators, grenades without the time delay. Here too containers are specially constructed to carry carefully designed weapons of assassination: poisons made of various toxins and poison dispensers, and, of course, bombs. Parcel bombs, letter bombs, letter-box bombs, pen bombs, jump bombs, landmine bombs, car bombs, suitcase bombs, limpet-mine bombs, fire bombs, bombs powerful enough to blow up buildings and bombs designed merely to blow off your hand. Bombs in all shapes, forms, intensity and guises.
1
It is April 1987. I’m on the Pretoria highway in the fast lane, ears pinned back, being pulled along in the slipstream of a seventy-seater school bus going like hell, the children clustered up against the large back window, pulling faces at me, smiling and waving. I am not enjoying myself.
This morning the phone rang at five o’clock. Not a good time for me.
I come up from a heavy sleep, grope clumsily for the instrument on the bedside table. Alongside me my wife Caroline turns away from the noise and pulls at the duvet. She’s a journalist. I’m a lawyer. Because of our jobs the phone rings at all hours of the day and night. It’s something we never get used to.
My voice is a croak when I answer.
‘Is that Peter Harris?’ says someone I don’t recognise.
‘I’m afraid so,’ I reply.
‘This call is from Lusaka. Please visit Jabu Masina, Ting Ting Masango, Neo Potsane and Joseph Makhura in Pretoria Central Maximum Security, they need to see you urgently. Please see what you can do to assist them.’
I have notepaper and a pen beside the phone. I scribble down the names. ‘No problem,’ I say, but the caller has cut the connection.
‘What is it?’ mumbles Caroline.
‘That’s what I’ve got to find out,’ I say, heading for the bathroom.
Maximum Security means ‘political’, nothing else. Serial killers, sadistic rapists, wild psychotics, mass murderers never make it close to Maximum Security. Maximum Security is for the ‘politicals’, my clients.
I’ve got the easy job. They get charged, I represent them, and then they go to jail, usually for lengthy periods. Then I visit them. In places like Pretoria Central or the ‘snakepit’ in Kroonstad, on Robben Island or at Diepkloof prison, otherwise known as ‘Sun City’ after the fantasy pleasure dome built by Sol Kerzner in Bop. Bophuthatswana to the apartheid architects.
‘Are they guilty?’
Well, yes, they are . . . mostly. At least the ones who end up in those kinds of places are, if guilty is the right word. Sadly, I suppose, I don’t have that many innocent clients. Not many lawyers do. Worse still, my clients are generally accused of the big things like treason, murder, conspiracy, trying to overthrow the State, sabotage, crimes which carry the death sentence. This is why these people are hard to defend, particularly if they are, in fact, guilty.
Even worse, my clients often don’t want to deny the charges against them; they’re not interested in their own innocence. This is in stark contrast to most people charged with criminal offences. Most people protest their innocence, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. Murderers holding a smoking gun proclaim their innocence. Try it for yourself: walk – or run – through your average prison on any day of the week and ask the prisoners convicted of criminal offences which of them are innocent and were wrongly convicted. Every hand will go up.
What distinguishes my clients is that they are politicals. Ask them if they intended to overthrow the State and you will get a strong yes. Unfortunately, though, even if they are separated from the criminals, they still end up in the same place, prison. This is depressing for a lawyer, demoralising.
Since this morning’s phone call I have made some enquiries about Jabu Masina and the Three Others, as we refer to our clients in legal parlance. I’ve found out that they were part of an African National Congress special operations unit that had been on a mission in the country for about ten months before they were caught. This in itself is interesting as a lot of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) operatives are caught a lot sooner. Askaris (captured and turned MK guerrillas), now in the employ of the security police, are deployed at all railway stations, taxi ranks, border posts and potential entry points looking for their ex-colleagues who, once identified, are quickly arrested. The border patrols and perimeter farm commandos take care of those who jump the fence.
The arrest of a unit like this will have been kept a secret so that the police could run their ‘investigation’ without the irritation of lawyers wanting to see their clients. That would have interfered with the careful construction of the State’s case. Depending on the circumstances of their arrest, their families tend to learn of their detention only much later.
There is a pattern in the way the State handles arrested MK soldiers. Generally, once arrested, they refuse to talk. There are threats of torture and then some talk, which, frankly, is precisely what I would do in that position. I would sing an aria if it helped. Others will not talk. So they are tortured according to the creativity and inclination of the security policeman involved. They talk and give a ‘confession’. Most talk in the end. For the brave it’s a matter of how long you can last and how complete your confession is.
Once there’s a confession, they are taken before a magistrate who, in all seriousness, asks the battered and exhausted accused if they have been tortured or if they have given the confession ‘freely and voluntarily’. The accused, avoiding the eye of the security policeman who has tortured them, reply that the confession was freely and voluntarily given. The magistrate attests to this and, hey presto, the primary building block of the State’s case slots into place. ‘Investigative technique?’ you ask. ‘Tip-offs and torture.’ Not too subtle, but effective. Betrayed by their bodies, the accused are dragged back to their separate cells in a mist of pain, shock and regret.
Now accomplices are arrested, the interrogation process is repeated and the investigation completed. Only when the case is virtually ready for trial are the accused brought to court for their first appearance. Of course, if there are decent channels of communication with other MK units or with headquarters in Lusaka, then word would have got out about their misfortune, particularly if a reporting date was missed. In Lusaka’s books, if a unit goes quiet for too long they are assumed arrested and the appropriate steps are taken to protect other groups. In most cases, however, MK guerrillas operate in small, discrete groups with little or no contact between them, particularly on special missions. Generally, the first court appearance is the first time that the outside world knows of their arrest.
Often,
