The Crocodiles of Johannesburg

The Crocodiles of Johannesburg

Harris Oliphant

Smashwords Edition

Copyright Harris Oliphant 2012

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Chapter One

The Sunday morning was cool and partly cloudy in Johannesburg, though the previous day's weather forecasters had announced that it would be windy and warm, with clear skies.

The weather of this megalopolis changed so fast that it almost kept ahead of the forecasters. If they announced anything about it, it had already become something else.

At the fifth floor balcony of the Armadale former office block in Bree Street, that had been seized by the city's homeless and turned into an apartment building, a group of residents sat in a semi-circle around bottles of liquor and cool drinks, whiling the weekend away.

As they sat there one man called out to the others: See down there! Car thieves! The cops must be after them!

The others all turned to look downstairs. They saw two men sprinting away from a motor vehicle they had just parked in the street. Hey, those guys can run! the amused man said again.

Another agreed with him: Whoever is chasing them hasn't a chance of catching them! Hey, look!

The running men dived into another car that pulled up behind them and stopped with screaming tyres. The vehicle’s engine whined like a jet fighter as it sped off and disappeared down the street.

Next moment the vehicle the men had abandoned in the street, which was an Audi, erupted in a huge thundering explosion that shook the city as in a massive earthquake. A great ball of fire leapt up to the balcony accompanied by showers of shrapnel and debris that landed up to the tenth floor of the Armadale building.

The blast wave almost ripped the nearby skyscrapers off their foundations, and shook hundreds of window panels off their frames. Then a great cloud of brownish dust and black smoke engulfed that whole area of downtown Johannesburg.Shortly later the police, army and paramedics swarmed the bombing scene, which was marked by a great crater and the burned out remains of a motor vehicle.

The security agents later established that the ninety kilogram bomb had been constructed from a mixture of plastic explosives, Anfax, diesel and pieces of metal to act as shrapnel.

That was only three days before the first South African democratic general elections, which were poised to oust the apartheid rulers from power. The blast had killed eleven people, who included an African National Congress (ANC) member who had been registered as a candidate in the forthcoming elections.

At that time of the transition out of apartheid rule into democracy, the politicians were virtually at each other's throats. Many of them sought to use the most inflammatory statements they could muster, whenever addressing their supporters. They blamed and counter blamed each other for everything that went wrong, and accused each other of inciting murders and massacres that had become almost the order of the day in those stark days.

But at that time the politicians did not seem so enthusiastic in increasing the tension that was already sky high; neither did they point fingers directly at each other as they often did. Nearly all of them, including those who could somehow be linked to right-wing movements, calmly blamed the bombing on right-wing agents, faceless people who had come to be known as the third force.

The projection was that the first force was the apartheid government's armed forces; the second force being the liberation forces; hence the third force.

In a SABC television interview, one ANC man called Pieter Bokapa, who was known for his fiery statements, and controversial sloganeering, and dubbed as a firebrand, declared that he knew who had hired military agents to derail the peace process that was about to complete the end of apartheid rule. He however postponed revealing the identity of whoever he was referring to.

Then he said: This is the second time in such a short period they are placing the country at the brink of full-scale civil-war, after they murdered Hani and thousands other people. They're so stupid because they can't even win the war they are so busy looking for, but if they continue like this they’ll soon get it. The ground shall turn into burning coals beneath their feet, and they just won't know where to stand!

Due in a few days were the first democratic elections, that were poised to hand power over to the ANC and other politicians who would seize the opportunity, and generally the black majority of the country.

That week police combed the whole city and environs hunting for the bombers. Each day that passed without the cops catching the culprits gave police Commissioner Joe Fivers sleepless nights.

Nearly every day journalists asked him when he would catch the bombers, who had extended their bombing campaign to other parts of the city, accumulating a death toll of twelve people so far. Some of them even suggested to him that the city was becoming like Beirut while he sat in his expansive office and did little to catch the culprits.

Commissioner Fivers eventually got a way round especially the young journos, who now seemed to be drawing pleasure in tormenting him. Each time they asked him that question he said to them: We shall leave no stone unturned in our search for the bombers.

He told that to all of them journos, and had his communications staff fax kilometres of length of paper to editorial offices, both local and abroad, conveying that same message. Later a cartoonist glorified Commissioner Fivers' universal answer with a drawing that depicted a group of policemen virtually turning stones over on a piece of ground.

Within the next two weeks police published identikits of several of the men implicated in the bombing, offering to reward handsomely anyone who helped find them. The amounts ranged around five attractive digits of rands.

As the hackneyed saying goes that money makes the world go round, someone led the cops to one of them. That then sparked a series of arrests of members of the Ystergarde branch of the right wing Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, which was better known by its acronym, the AWB, led by a heavily bearded weirdo called Terre Blanche.

In that seemingly endless campaign Commissioner Fivers kept announcing that they were still looking for more of the suspects involved in the bombings. That went on till most newspapers almost lost interest in the story, and some editors almost forgot about it.

About sixty kilometres out of Johannesburg, a heavily built man with the arms of a lowland gorilla, and a tattooed chest that looked like some topographic mapwork, Bernie Strydom, was playing with his ferocious pit-bull terrier near the barn in his farm near Lindleyspoort in Rustenburg.

A 4x4 motor vehicle appeared at his gate, and drove up the driveway towards the house. When it came closer, Strydom noticed that it carried four white men. He walked over with his dog to meet them, his unlighted cigar jutting out through his lips.

Who're you? And what do you want! he shouted his standard greeting to uninvited guests.

The four men disembarked and one of them said: I'm Detective Sergeant Kort from the Violent Crimes Unit at police headquarters in Pretoria.

Then as if responding to an unspoken order, the other men displayed their police appointment cards to him.

We would like to speak to Bernie Strydom, Det Sgt Kort added.

Bernie, yeah that's my cousin, Strydom said. What's it about him?

Not much, the detective said. Is he here?

No, he hasn't been here for weeks.

He lives here?

Not at all; he comes only for an occasional sleepover; I don't know where he lives.

Det Sgt Kort displayed a photograph of a bespectacled man who carried a beard heavier than that of communism philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels put together, his mouth only a slit as a clearing in the Congo rainforest.

Looks exactly like you. Doesn't he? the cop said.

Of course he does, he's my cousin. But if he shaved that forest of a beard and took off those mountaineering goggles he would look a little more like me, as we're of the same bloodline, said Strydom.

The detectives scoured his face silently for a time that seemed an eternity, then Det Sgt Kort said: You are Bernie Strydom, aren't you?

How can I be my own cousin? Strydom scoffed at him.

Who are you?

I'm Ben Strydom.

Hey, we want Bernie Strydom and you're Ben Strydom! Is that a coincidence?

Of course not, Strydom is a surname as common as the English Smith, and Bernie and Ben are some of the commonest names in these parts, so what's your gripe?

Okay, so where's your cousin? the detective asked.

I already told you Bernie was last here some weeks ago. But if you really want him, he'll be spending this coming weekend here, according to what he said. You can wait for him if you like, but you'll have to provide your own food and bedding.

The cop said: Okay, we'll wait. But meanwhile please show me your identity book.

Your pleasure, Strydom said. Just wait a while here; I'll fetch it from the house.

The heavily built man dragged his bull terrier along, talking to it in Afrikaans, saying something to it as he lumbered into the expansive house. A moment later the detectives heard him shouting and swearing at someone inside, who responded in a protesting female voice.

They heard him shout: You've to learn to shut up, Elina!

The cops however decided not to interfere in what appeared to be a minor domestic matter they considered would only waste their time.

We can only go in there if he takes too long, Det Sgt Kort told his men.

That need however did not come, as Strydom quickly returned with much more than what the cop had asked for. He gave the detective a bundle of documents. Included were his identity book that displayed a photo of his clean-shaven face; his South African passport with a similar picture of him; and student cards that bore college stamps dated over thirty years ago; and general correspondence, all confirming that his name was Ben Strydom.

How funny, we're looking for Bernie Strydom and here we find Ben Strydom, Det Sgt Kort said.

His three colleagues agreed with him, however clearly looking puzzled.

Strydom lighted his cigar, dispelled a cloud of smoke that encircled the cops, and when he had it running said: That can't be confusing if you grew up here in South Africa, or even in Rhodesia for that matter. Just consider how many Strydoms there are, how many Bernies, and how many Bens in this country!

I admit it's plenty of them, but this kind of coincidence is quite rare, and at this moment I don't believe it's mere coincidence, the detective sergeant said. But I won't take you in right now though I have reason to suspect you're the man we're looking for.

If you suspect that, you're more than welcome to take me in, Strydom offered his wrists to be handcuffed. But only if you'll afford the damages I'll institute against you and your ANC bosses, who'll almost certainly fire you after having to pay me millions of rands in damages and violating my rights.

Well, we've to go now, Det Sgt Kort said. But we'll be back soon.

"You're welcome, it's only a pity you're going without having eaten a piece of boerewoors, or drunk a cup of coffee, or a beer or some whisky from my bar."

We won't be back for any luxuries, mister, the cop said. We'll be having a search and arrest warrant for you!

Strydom said: "You're welcome to try that too. I always knew that the kaffirs sent you; the ANC has bought you, all of you our own trusted police, and turned you against us. It uses you to harass us peaceful farmers, hoping to scare us off our land.

Go tell Mandela that when my granddad occupied this part of Lindleyspoort he had found it completely vacant, I mean with not even a single kaffir within a hundred kilometres. He had to bring the kaffirs from as far as the Drakensberg Mountains to work his land. I won't do as your kaffir bosses hope, at least while I still live!

The cops were fascinated by that splendid display of racist oratory.

Det Sgt Kort said: We've got nothing to do with your politics, we...

So what's the secret that you want my cousin for? Strydom asked.

Det Sgt Kort looked him straight in the eye, the traditional police way, and said to him: We want him for providing the bombs that have killed and injured people in Johannesburg and Pretoria. Is your cousin Bernie, or Ben, keeping any bombs in your property?

You must be very stupid not to know that all bombings are the work of the ANC. Mean you never heard of what happened at Johannesburg’s Park Station, Pretoria's Church Street, Cape Town's Magoo's Bar, you name it, all have the ANC's signature. But I bet you my last rand Bernie would never join the kaffir ANC, or become a communist terrorist, never, ever! Why not look for whoever did that in Soweto or Alexandra for that matter? You can even try McBride!

The detective led his colleagues into their vehicle; they bade Strydom good-bye and left.

In the next week the commander of Rustenburg police station, Captain Jan Rossouw received an order from police headquarters in Pretoria to arrest Bernie Strydom of Lindleyspoort, for providing explosives and instructions in the recent bombing campaign in Johannesburg and Pretoria.

Capt Rossouw sent four men to arrest Strydom, but when they reached his home he was not there. They then reported a gruesome find in the suspect's house in his farm.

The policemen reported that the farmhouse was deserted, with all doors left wide open. In the lounge they had found a bloodstained iron bar, and at the bedroom door a pool of caking blood had confronted them. On the floor lay the body of a dead woman, probably shot and bludgeoned to death with the iron rod.

The men had brought the iron rod and two nine-millimetre pistol bullet casings. They also reported that a servant said she heard a noise in the house as Strydom assaulted his fourth wife Elina. She added that she heard her scream: "I'll tell the police!" Then after all went quiet Strydom had driven off in his 4x4 truck.

Captain Rossouw ordered his men to open a murder docket and charge fugitive Bernie Strydom as the prime suspect for the alleged murder.

In the next days police launched a nation-wide search for Strydom. They splashed his portrait on walls, newspapers and television screens, with a five hundred thousand rand price tag on him in the form of reward to whoever helped nab and convict him.

Though police forces and other law enforcement agencies the world over often deny buying information regarding fugitives, they have used huge sums of money to buy public co-operation. In some cases that helped catch some of the most wanted crooks and murderers in the world.

A day later Commissioner Fivers announced through his spokesman that his men were about to catch Bernie Strydom. The dragnet is closing in around him, he said.

Later press reports declared that Strydom had skipped the country, probably headed for the United States, Canada, Britain or Australia, but Fivers was adamant that his fugitive would nevertheless be caught soon.

He has no known connections outside this country, except next-door in Zimbabwe, in which case we'll catch him before he eats his next meal, Fivers announced.

Soon after that public focus shifted to the trial of the alleged bombers who had been arrested earlier, and Fivers enjoyed a breather from the pestering journalists. He had often reflected that some of them were outright annoying, especially the young ones who seemed to be on mere college field assignments.

Nonetheless, sleepless nights persisted to haunt him as he pondered how he would catch one of the most wanted men at that time. That continued for the next four weeks, but the weary commissioner would not admit that the fugitive was eluding him.

In the sixth week a man sat in front of Fivers at a posh restaurant called the Press Cafe in the Rivonia Boulevard in Rivonia, north of Johannesburg and Sandton. They had piles of food around them as they ate slowly, occasionally sipping from their glasses of fruit juice and something else.

That man said to Fivers: "Even if I'm not of completely pure Aryan blood, I can penetrate them with ease because I worked with them for a long time in the security police and the secret service. I can get the man for you within a week. But only if you'll pay at least a million rands; and not the peanuts you offer in your wanted posters."

It’s your duty as a citizen to help me catch that guy, Fivers said to the man. Just tell me where to find him and you'll collect the money and enjoy hero status in this whole country.

I don't want that status for that little. It may cost my life, and I don't want my kids to starve if it happens. But I insist, if you'll pay I'll go out alone and bring him to you in a plate if you'd so like, the man added.

Fivers said: The only thing I can say is that as an anonymous undercover agent, with dubious credentials of course, you can go all on your own. Bring him in that plate; or in a cup for that matter, but he must be alive and able to speak, said Fivers.

You promise to pay?

I'm not offering any contract, as I don't even know you.

My profession demands that anyway, the secret man said. My contracts are never signed, but I go out and work, hoping to be paid somehow.

After a lull in the trial of the alleged bombers the press returned the focus to Commissioner Fivers. At that time he had learned how to contain the journos, give all of them one answer to all their questions. When one reporter from the New Nation weekly pushed him to acknowledge that Strydom had fled the country, Fivers announced that their concerns had already been attended to, because the matter had been handed over to Interpol.

In another off the job meeting with that man, whose name was Len Green; again at the Press Cafe restaurant in Rivonia, Joe Fivers learned that Bernie Strydom was a very sophisticated and cunning man.

He had graduated from the Free State University with flying colours in physical science. But instead of pursuing a scientific career Strydom joined the army, where he was trained as an infantryman, then as a sapper and posted to a special operations unit, where he soon earned the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Soon after that he was again transferred to the security police, where much of his work was to diffuse bombs that were planted by ANC and Pan Africanist (PAC) guerrillas.

One day he had to disarm a grenade that had been left in a Pretoria supermarket. The Soviet made thing exploded in his face and nearly killed him. He had to lie in hospital intensive care for three months before emerging with a heavily scarred torso. He had then camouflaged the scars on his chest with heavy tattooing, depicting snakes, crocodiles, scorpions, guns and knives, together with other weird and obscene images.

Soon after he got well Lt Col Strydom pleaded with his superiors that his abilities were not fully utilised in the security police, and sought to be moved to a unit where there was more action. They then transferred him to the Civil Co-operation Bureau of the secret service, the CCB.

There he was trained to be a spook, without identity tags and anything to identify his work or job description.

Six months later he led bands of killers to Maputo, Bulawayo, Harare, Gaberone, Maseru and Lusaka; where they blasted houses and offices of ANC members and other anti-apartheid activists, and also killed many innocent people.

When he went out on such missions Lt Col Strydom and his men did not carry the bombs and weapons there. They travelled there as innocent tourists, complete with cameras, maps and all other gear. Often they carried British, American or German passports; plus huge sums of money in varying currencies.

Then once inside the countries they bought explosives from miners and other clandestine sources. Much of his bomb-making ingredients were trinitrotoluene, which he bought from miners, and ammonium nitrate from farmers and agri-shops. He wired up those together with other unlikely substances to produce explosives that, according to him ‘terrorised the terrorists’ who were holed up in the neighbouring countries. They also bought guns and ammunition that included grenades and rockets from corrupt policemen and army personnel, their favourite weapons being the AK-47 and the RPG-7 rocket launcher, the bazooka.

Lt Col Strydom did that so often that he raised a great amount of alarm, and to the extent that his description became known from numerous identikits published by police and other security agencies all around Southern Africa. That led to the day he had to flee from the Sheraton Hotel in Harare as police got to about five metres of him.

He leapt out the fourth floor window as police agents knocked at his door. He then stole a car and fled to a farm in Marondera, south of the city, where a helicopter sent by his CCB secret agency picked him up and flew him back to South Africa. He however left behind two of his men languishing in jail.

When he reached his Civil Co-operation Bureau secret service headquarters at Vlakplaas, Lt Col Strydom found many captured former ANC guerrillas being trained to turn against their own people and work for the apartheid regime. At first he protested against the policy of allowing ‘terrorists’ to infiltrate their base, but the director of operations, Major Roger Koch, told him that the order had been handed down from the top politicians in government.

I think they're right, the major said. That sets up the kaffirs against each other. They are otherwise more capable than us in dealing with their folk, so we thoroughly train them, arm and set them loose.

But they can get back to their terrorist commanders with all the information about us?

That’s why we’ve to thoroughly vet and train them. Those we deem unsuitable are sent back to prison and the gallows, or we dispose of them ourselves if it's convenient enough. These you see here have passed a thorough mental and physical selection test, and will certainly make good operatives.

We don't need those bloody kaffirs, said Strydom. At this very moment we can wipe out the whole kaffir population, I'm only wondering why someone doesn't just give the order.

You mean sending the army to shoot every one of them in the townships. It wouldn't finish the job before there was a worse worldwide outcry and was withdrawn.

Not that nonsense, Roger, we already have pathogens to speed up the death of top terrorists. Those are a hundred times deadlier than guns, as they include the bacteria that cause cholera, plague, brucellosis, and over forty types of anthrax. Spores of anthrax sprinkled on letter-sized envelopes, and on cigarettes, could be fifty times deadlier than the current letter bomb we're using, or even the Russian KGB's real or imagined cigarette bomb. We could also distribute peppermint candies and beers with pesticide added to them, and also sugar cubes laced with salmonella.

Major Koch was visibly amazed, for he was basically a simple military man who just found himself in those circumstances. In awe he said: You mean this has reached that far?

Even further, Strydom said. Now the top guys are developing the biological Black Bomb, which selects targets by skin colour! A good package for the kaffirs!

The major's amazement increased, and that time he could only manage a grunt.

And also a programme to halt the reproduction of the bloody kaffirs, Strydom added, which would cut their population growth by half within five years.

That time Major Koch only managed to say: How?

How else? By adding contraceptives to their water supply systems. That'll eventually sterilise all their men and ugly women, and virtually stop them making kids!

It took Lt Col Strydom almost a month to get used to the idea of retraining the former guerillas, who he still addressed as terrorists. However he helped in developing a training programme for the former guerrillas, now turned into what had become to be known as askaris. Those men were to be used against the liberation forces inside and outside the country, so Strydom's knowledge and experience in that kind of work was vital.

Strydom taught the askaris much more killing and destroying methods than the ANC's military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe, and the PAC's APLA, together with their Russian, Cuban and Chinese instructors had ever taught them.

He showed them how to make and prime letter bombs, designed to explode upon an envelope being opened. Later he sent some of them to European and American cities, travelling on fake passports, from where they would have to make the bombs and post the letters to addresses supplied to them. The targets were South African and international anti-apartheid activists, both black and white.

He also taught them how to wire up explosives into television sets, primed to detonate as soon as power was switched on. He sent some of his men to Switzerland, where they bought the TV sets, booby-trapped them as instructed, and posted them purporting to be from ANC sympathisers, to opponents of PW Botha’s regime.

One of their deadliest attacks was in Harare’s Warren Park suburb in Zimbabwe, where one of the explosives killed two ANC officials, together with five neighbourhood children who had come to witness the first switching-on of their neighbour's new TV set.

The colonel also taught the askaris how to prime a hand grenade to delayed detonation, so that it exploded after several days. The grenade was then slid into the petrol tank of the intended victim's car, which Lt Col Strydom called ’witchcraft’.

Though he trained them, Lt Col Strydom still did not trust any of the former ‘terrorists’, as he never stopped referring to them. He always kept a sharp eye on them, searching for the slightest sign of dissent in any of them.

He often said to them: If you aren't happy here, get back to the ANC!

There was one askari, a black man who was racially classified as ‘coloured,’ called Len Green, who was loved by the secret service's top men, and often given special perks. But strangely Green often spoke out openly that he was not going to kowtow to them. One day when Lt Col Strydom repeated his favourite advice, about ‘getting back to the ANC’, Green retorted: Will you lend me your jeep!

The lieutenant colonel did not respond immediately.

A week later the ‘witchcraft’ landed on Green. At about mid-day he parked his car at the Midrand shopping complex's parking lot and rushed into a supermarket, leaving his eight year-old daughter in his car.

As he approached the car upon his return, the vehicle exploded in a huge blast, erupting in a ball of flame and fragments. His daughter was thrown several metres away from the wreckage, and when paramedics reached the scene she was dead. One shopper was also killed and several others seriously injured.

When he returned to Vlakplaas, Lt Col Strydom said to him: That was a warning for you that you can't run away from the ANC, so here you'll be closely watched so that you don't bring your ANC in here.

Nonetheless, apartheid politicians reaped political capital out of the murder. They told the world that the bombing was yet another sign from the ANC that it preferred violence to dialogue. The Minister of Police and Covert Operations, Major-General Piet Bekker vowed that the liberation movement would get what it was asking for, in terms of counter-violence.

A week after the funeral of his daughter, Len Green learned from colleagues that Lt Col Strydom had told their base commander, Colonel Jan de Lange, that he doubted Green's loyalty to the unit.

They had then called in Major Roger Koch, the operations officer, and ordered him to watch Green closely. But Major Koch had said he would not take chances and waste his time with him. Besides, in that set up, watching a man did not mean merely looking at him. That order contained a myriad of interpretations that included elimination. Major Koch then allegedly ordered the ‘witchcraft’ to be practised on Green.

Green felt so mad that he threatened to challenge the strongmen of Vlakplaas. However his mates calmed and advised him that doing so would only lead to his bullet-riddled corpse buried that very afternoon, in a shallow and unmarked grave in the woods. Nonetheless, Len Green vowed to get even with at least one of them, starting with Major Roger Koch.

Thousands of people saw the photographs of Lt Col Bernie Strydom on TV, street pole posters and everywhere, with an enticing sum attached to them. However, no one came in to claim the money.

The only person in the whole country who knew where to find Strydom was Major Roger Koch, but he did not want the money, at least at that time.

The two sat in a secret venue in Germiston and discussed a major issue.

Strydom was saying: If they catch me, as they did Jan de Lange, that'll be a major victory for the ANC terrorists. That will also expose our people to untold suffering in the hands of the kaffirs. So I have decided to leave the country, just for a while to let the dust settle, then I'll be back with more funding, weapons and action against Mandela and his kaffirs.

Any special orders while you're away, asked Major Koch.

Not for now, Strydom said. "That's part of why I've to leave, so that I meet other people in Europe and America, right-wingers who share our views; they’re there in Berlin, in Amsterdam, in London. From there we'll formulate new stratagems that we'll employ here, which'll give the communist ANC a real headache, and make it accede to our demands for our volkstaat and cessation of the persecution of our people. You'll hear from me very soon on that matter."

I understand all that, said Major Koch. But what shall we be doing in the meantime?

You can do whatever you want, but one thing I want revived is the fighting in the taxi industry because it carries a great potential for keeping the kaffirs at each other’s throats. It's flagging now because of the treaties the ANC forces the taximen to sign. That's where the ANC's weak point lies; just keep it on till my return.

After lighting his cigar and getting it running amid a great cloud, Strydom added:"That's also your opportunity to rest from major operations. Lie low for a while, especially now that the ANC police are knocking on everyone's door. Within a week I'll be back with the new strategies for the continuation of the struggle against communism and persecution of our people. It's important to keep your men ready for action; especially those blasted kaffir askaris of yours. The politicians have paid us well for the recent job, just as you have seen in your cheque, and they promise to pay much more after I return with the new strategies from abroad."

That'll be done as you say, the major said. Are you taking Elina along?

No, Roger, the lieutenant colonel said. I've to confide in you that I had to dispense with her because she would hinder this important trip I'm taking.

Dispense with her? Major Koch's voice betrayed his alarm, because he knew that in their secret profession words meant much more than they meant.

Oh yes I had to, she threatened to call the ANC cops even before I left the farm. In a similar situation you'd do the same. At least it saves our people's struggle from being bogged down by one recalcitrant woman, who's not even completely Aryan in both skin and blood.

Major Koch escorted Strydom to Johannesburg Airport. Interestingly, of all those copies of Strydom's portrait on posters that appeared in otherwise half the city, none of them could be seen at the airport.

Lt Col Strydom went through customs with his British passport and climbed into a British Airways Boeing jumbo headed for London.

However, weeks developed into months and Major Koch did not receive even a word from Strydom. He wondered what to do with his armed former secret service gangsters, and feared that they might desert him before Strydom returned, especially because they were idle and unpaid. He then decided to create his own method to keep them under control.

Chapter Two

Approaching the city of Johannesburg from the air or land the JG Strijdom Tower, also or now called the Hillbrow Tower, juts out into the sky like a mythological feature, dwarfing the surrounding multiple storey buildings. Standing near it at midday imposes eye deception that prompts an illusion that it is swaying to the wind; suggesting it could as well come down crashing in devastating force.

The tower in Goldreich Street in the high-rise suburb of Hillbrow extends to over two hundred metres into the heavens. An escalator is there to take people up to the restaurant at its top, the opportunity naturally reserved for those without a phobia for heights. Its top disappears into the clouds on cloudy days, and sometimes gets mistaken for a UFO by night flyers.

Many stories have been told about that tower, but the most common one is that it is a symbol of wealth in a megalopolis that was virtually founded by gold, in conjunction with a convergence of all kinds of people from all over the world.

Legend has it that the city's streets were once paved in gold; hence its Sotho name Gauteng, which has been conferred to the province that contains the city and the capital Pretoria, or Tshwane; and its Nguni name eGoli, and in English the City of Gold.Nevertheless latest trends in press circles have referred to the metropolis as the City of Blood, owing to the violence it witnessed in recent years.

The commercial and residential centre of Hillbrow squats on the brow of the hill that is said to have once been all gold and no granite. The highrise suburb, made up of some of the tallest buildings in Africa, and most majestic in the world, has an interesting history, at least to those who find history interesting, and not traumatising.

Up to the late 1980s, the suburb was restricted to white residents only, in accordance with the apartheid laws of racial segregation, the notorious Group Areas Act. The only black people who lived there were domestic workers, who also had to carry proof of their permission, documents called passes, to be in the suburb. There were also those who lived there illegally, risking arrest and brutal treatment by the apartheid police. Upon arrest those were ‘deported’ to their rural lands; but often not before being shambocked and humiliated.

The white people who lived in Hillbrow were largely immigrants from all around Europe, the Americas and Australasia. The suburb developed as a major attraction and entertainment centre, which sometimes hosted some of the most revered figures of this world.

However, in the late 1980s the senses of racist politicians started trickling back in. Then they eventually came to their senses, and allowed non-whites to live in the suburb. That sparked an inevitable influx of black South Africans and foreigners seeking apartments in the tall apartment buildings. Among them the Ponte in Lily Avenue, Berea, that rises one hundred and seventy three metres of fifty-four floors.

Soon, white people, who had been denied mixing with blacks and other races for decades, had to contend with having mostly black neighbours. That became a recipe for a cultural and racial meltdown, soon to be even more complex later after Francophone Africans also arrived en masse.

In those days newspaper headlines, mostly written by white editors, screamed about an invasion of the suburb by black and other non-white people. Eventually black people ‘overran’ the suburb in their overwhelming numbers, calculated from all the country's provinces plus hundreds of thousands of immigrants, legal and mostly illegal.

That consequently sparked an influx of white people into the northern suburbs of the city. Estate agents will never forget that period, when their usually slow-flowing income suddenly flowed like the Nile River as demand for properties in the posh suburbs of Sandton, Randburg and others skyrocketed.

At that time the news headlines declared that the whites were fleeing the city, especially because of violent crime that was perpetrated by black criminals. But some scribes argued that the white influx evidenced that even if the politicians had come to their senses, the general population had not been groomed to live together, owing to decades of apartheid segregation.

Many of the white people hastily sold their properties and homes in the glittering high-rise suburbs of Hillbrow, Berea, Yeoville and in central Johannesburg.

Many of those were bitter at having to leave their homes, and some resolved to stop the wheels of political and cultural change with their bare hands.When the National Party's apartheid rule was finally dismantled in April 1994, the moment was marked by a series of bombings around the city. The blasts were blamed on right-wing politicians who were believably bent on resisting the change into majority rule.

One of their most powerful bombs, detonated in Bree Street in central Johannesburg in April that year, was dubbed the election bomb by the press. However more such bombs exploded in other parts of the city and Gauteng province, then called the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging region, or PWV in short. At the then Jan Smuts Airport (now called Oliver Tambo Airport) another blast killed twenty one people and injured two hundred.

Prior to that, in the period between the late 1980s and early 1990s the City of Gold had experienced chilling bloodshed of unprecedented levels, as political forces loyal to apartheid and those opposed to it vied to dominate the population in bloody campaigns. In that period police were relegated to bystanders or took sides with bloodthirsty mobs that supported the government that employed them.

The apartheid rulers' secret service and the notorious Security Police played a major role in fomenting violence among black people, especially in the sprawling black townships of Soweto and Alexandra. That grew to be known as ‘black-on-black’ violence, in which brother turned against brother, sister against sister, brother against sister and sister against brother. Blood was spilled in all the streets, avenues, rail lines and coaches, and in the suburbs and informal settlements, which the government called squatter camps. One of the most memorable of the massacres was committed at Boipatong, where scores of people were wantonly stabbed, shot and burned alive by a mob that was suspected to have been assembled and sent there by politicians who sympathized with the apartheid government.

The apartheid secret service men handed out weapons to virtually anyone who professed to be on their side, which flooded the city with firearms and led to the establishment of a culture of violence in the region. In those days it was safe to assume that everyone, women and kids included, had a gun.

The proliferation of weapons-of-war in Johannesburg contributed to unprecedented violent crime levels. That has included some of the most dramatic and deadly robberies and shootings the world has ever seen, live or in the movies.

Security and political researchers, analysts and other think-tanks, maintained that right-wing politicians, in conjunction with the secret service, targeted the main communications systems that served black people in a bid to cripple their economic capabilities. That would also help confine black people to the townships. They charged that the right-wingers sent their hired killers into commuter trains to masquerade as common thugs and political hoodlums, and murder innocent people and scare them from riding the trains.

Those men carried out some of the most gruesome murders ever committed in the history of this rotten world. They often attacked train coaches between Soweto and central Johannesburg, and between Springs and the city centre, and butchered scores of people they accused of not being on their political or tribal side.

One memorable massacre occurred at the Inhlazane Station in Soweto's Jabulani Township. About fifty men armed with all sorts of weapons, traditional and modern, stormed the coaches of a Johannesburg bound train and stabbed, shot, clubbed, chopped and threw commuters out of the windows of speeding trains.

One gang of such murderers became so known that its leader, who always had a smouldering cigarette in his hand, was named Smoking Max. Often when commuters saw him in the train, some jumped out while the train was still in motion, or quickly alighted at the next station.

At one moment Smoking Max and his men raided a train in Denver and threatened to throw one man out of the speeding train. The man pulled out a gun, but instead got a bullet through his head himself before he pulled the trigger. The gang then murdered nearly everyone else who was in that coach. Police were alerted about the incident but the alleged culprits were never caught, at least at that time.

However, soon after a new government swept into power in 1994, led by world famous ex-life-prisoner Nelson Mandela, it sent police to patrol the trains. That stopped the train killings in an amazingly short period.

During the 1980s and early 1990s violence period, township dwellers who resisted apartheid rule boycotted and burned down the few government buses allocated to the townships. One of the government sponsored bus companies, the Public Utility Transport Corporation, commonly known by its acronym Putco, suffered the worst losses.

Some anti-apartheid activists also murdered the bus crews in as yet untold cruelty to humankind. They burned them alive with petrol and flaming motor tyres round their necks, which was called ‘necklacing’. In the end there were no government, or government aligned buses operating in the black townships.

That promoted the development of alternative transport services. By 1985, fleets of minibus taxis, many of which had hitherto been transporting commuters as pirate taxis, as viewed by the racist government of that time, completely took over the transportation of commuters. That suddenly turned out to be very lucrative industry that attracted nearly everyone who owned a minibus.

In response to that the apartheid rulers spurred their clandestine forces to act. Soon the secret service men infiltrated the taxi industry, sometimes even joining the taxi associations. They then fomented squabbles over taxi routes; some of which developed into cycles of violence that were eventually termed the ‘taxi war’.

Nonetheless, there is an opinion that the ‘taxi war’ started a long time before that, in the mid-1960s. At that time licensed and unlicensed taxi operators competed for commuters. The licensed ones generally felt that the contest was unfair in that they had to pay fees to be in the industry, while the unlicensed ones did not pay any taxes, and often boasted about it.

The unlicensed taximen however maintained that the Local Transportation Board that turned down their applications, saying there were enough taxis for the townships, created the situation.

The unlicensed ones were often arrested, and when that happened, they suspected the licensed ones of informing on them to the police and sought revenge, which was often murder. They were said to have hired thugs to intimidate the licensed ones; and in response the licensed ones hired their own hooligans to do the same to the unlicensed ones. Thus the cycle of violence arguably started.

People who have lived in Johannesburg acknowledge that everyone in there is ‘clever’, and that anything can happen at any time, regardless of consequences, certainly not a place for the milksop.

About the city's violence, acclaimed late Rand Daily Mail former journalist, Nat Nakasa once wrote in an essay entitled Victims of the knifemen in his column in 1964: "Ugly, gaping wounds, bleeding faces torn with axes, backs and stomachs slashed with bush knives...broken limbs. Scores of mourning wives and children whose daddies were beaten up in the street, made to crawl home bleeding, naked, robbed of their pay packets.

"That is the weekend output of the beat-up men. They have made it a full time occupation. It's like they've been specially hired and licensed to give the city's hospitals a constant supply of hard, blood-curdling work.

"A false idea of 'toughness' is