BIRD ISLAND SCANDAL
Magnus, a maze of money trails and the minions who murdered for him
When in 1988 co-editor Victor Munnik and I published a collection of short stories about conscription, Forces Favourites, then defence minister Magnus Malan wanted us locked up. This, anyway, was what an editor at an Afrikaans newspaper told me. The liberal-minded editor added that he had persuaded Malan not to persecute us, to avoid giving us more publicity. I was disappointed. Although all 5,000 copies, printed by the anti-apartheid publisher Taurus, of which I was a director, were sold in the end, the book did not really seem to add much to the cause in any overt way. We needed that publicity. What did happen was that mysterious break-ins started at my house. Documents on investigations disappeared. After the unbanning of the ANC, and during a raid on the premises of the Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB), my name was found on a list its members had overlooked when they burned most of their paperwork. I did not suffer nearly as much as other journalists or activists at the hands of ...
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