Michael Schmidt - Death Flight: Apartheids Secret Doctrine of Disappearance

Michael Schmidt

DEATH

FLIGHT

Apartheids secret doctrine of disappearance

TAFELBERG

To the families of the hundreds

of men and one woman

who were disappeared

under Operation Dual

from 12 July 1979 to 12 December 1987

Style Note: Translations from the original French, Afrikaans, Portuguese, or other language sources are by the author. I have attempted to accurately reflect characters correct ranks at the relevant periods under discussion and to indicate where these changed as they were promoted; I have, however, continued using the ranks of pseudo-operators after they went civilian so as to indicate their hierarchy. Lastly, contemporary geographic names are used throughout. For example, South West Africa and Rhodesia only become Namibia and Zimbabwe, respectively, after independence. This may conflict with current Namibian and Zimbabwean sensibilities but is historically accurate. The airfield codes in South West Africa (which all changed on independence) are cited as per the pilots logbooks.

ANCAfrican National Congress

AZAPOAzanian Peoples Organisation

BOSSBureau of State Security

BSAPBritish South Africa Police

CBWchemical and biological warfare

CCBCivil Cooperation Bureau

CIACentral Intelligence Agency

CICCoordinating Intelligence Committee

CIOCentral Intelligence Organisation

ConCourtConstitutional Court

CSIChief of Staff Intelligence

D40Delta 40

DSTDirectorate of Special Tasks

EMLCElektroniese, Meganiese, Landboukundige en Chemiese Ingenieursvaardighede

EOExecutive Outcomes

FAFforward airfields

FAPLAPeoples Armed Forces of Liberation of Angola

FBIFederal Bureau of Investigation

FNLANational Front for the Liberation of Angola

FPLMPeoples Forces of Liberation of Mozambique

FRELIMOMozambique Liberation Front

IFPInkatha Freedom Party

IWBIrregular Warfare Branch

JMCsJoint Management Centres

KIKCo-ordinating Intelligence Committee

MIMilitary Intelligence

MKuMkhonto we Sizwe

MPLAPeoples Movement for the Liberation of Angola

NISNational Intelligence Service

NPANational Prosecuting Authority

NSMSNational Security Management System

PACPan Africanist Congress

PCLUPriority Crimes Litigation Unit

PLANPeoples Liberation Army of Namibia

RARRhodesian African Rifles

RENAMOMozambican National Resistance

RLIRhodesian Light Infantry

SAAFSouth African Air Force

SACPSouth African Communist Party

SADFSouth African Defence Force

SANDFSouth African National Defence Force

SAPSouth African Police

SASSpecial Air Service

SBSpecial Branch

SFSpecial Forces

SPOSection of Pseudo-Operations

SSCState Security Council

SWAPOSouth West African Peoples Organisation

SWAPOLSouth West African Police

SWATFSouth West Africa Territorial Force

TRCTruth and Reconciliation Commission

TREWITSTeen-Rewolusionre Inligtingstaakspan

UANCUnited African National Council

UDFUnited Democratic Front

UNUnited Nations

UNITANational Union for the Total Independence of Angola

USUnited States

ZANLAZimbabwe African National Liberation Army

ZANUZimbabwean African National Union

ZAPUZimbabwe African Peoples Union

ZCIOZimbabwean Central Intelligence Organisation

ZIPRAZimbabwe Peoples Revolutionary Army

ZSOUimbabwe Special Operations Unit

This book will make your stomach turn. Do not avert your eyes.

Our efforts to understand and document exactly how wide the footprint of apartheids atrocities stretched, how far its violence travelled within and beyond our borders, have not gone far enough. Death Flight shines a much-needed light on some of the darkest corners of a regime waging a desperate and dirty fight against the inevitable. It is the first detailed exploration of the horrendous practice of flinging murdered prisoners into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

By following the thread of apartheids violence into Namibia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Angola, Swaziland, and Zambia, Death Flight elucidates the transnational nature of this crime against humanity. In so doing, it raises fascinating questions about the role of international law in the attainment of hitherto evasive justice.

The general callousness with which apartheids henchmen treated human life is an assault on ones senses. In the process, the book demolishes the supremacist argument central to apartheid, that at its core lay a desire to bring enlightenment to a backward people.

I found it disturbing that most of the death flight victims in the book could not be identified because the interviewees chose not to remember details. It is unimaginable that a system ostensibly operating on the basis of security intelligence would have disposed of people without knowledge of the risk (real or imagined) that they presented and, most importantly, without knowing their identities the basic construct of the world of intelligence.

One hopes that the names that did make it into the book will bring some closure to many a family who, to date, may have had little idea of what happened to their beloved.

And for those whose identities remain unverified, one hopes that, by turning the light on this hitherto concealed class of victims, Death Flight will invite further scholarship and activism probing this issue. It appears that this important task escaped even the TRC.

Adding to the contemporary relevance of the book is the disturbing revelation of a covert, post-TRC process of exemption for perpetrators, as well as an inexplicable (if not unconstitutional) change to the policy of the National Prosecuting Authority. One hopes that this may provide impetus for the wheels of justice to once again start turning.

This part of the book resonates with the recent progressive judgment handed down in the Ahmed Timol matter by Judge Billy Mothle. The case has re-energised the efforts of many families in South Africa seeking justice for the unresolved political killings of their loved ones. The court proceedings, aimed at ensuring that Joo Rodrigues is held accountable for the murder of Timol, have exposed the conniving role played by some structures of the democratic government in protecting the perpetrators of apartheid.

The recent denial by former president FW de Klerk that apartheid was a crime against humanity triggered an outcry and a national debate about our past. The contents of this book make an irrefutable case confirming the commission in the most brutal of ways of such a crime. Furthermore, it raises serious questions about the role of members of the State Security Council, which at one stage included De Klerk himself, along with a broad network of other senior members of government.

Death Flight is a daring mission to salvage the ghosts of those who were thought to have been eternally dissolved, by apartheid Special Forces, deep in the oceanic waters off our shores. It is destined to become an invaluable tool, connecting the dots in the quest to ensure that no victim of the deadly hand of apartheid is left unaccounted for.

Nkosinathi Biko

May 2020

In early May 1947, a group of six to eight villagers were herded onto a French military plane in eastern Madagascar. The captured men were about to become unwilling participants in a crude and cruel display of power by the colonial forces.