“The Smit murders [1977]: Re-examined” – International Involvement [Part 1]dated 7 June 2010 at https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/the-smit-murders-reexamined written by James Myburgh. Below are excerpts.

JOHANNESBURG - The assassination of Dr Robert Smit, and his wife Jeanne-Cora, on November 22 1977 is perhaps South Africa's greatest unsolved political crime.

It is an assassination that stands at odds with most apartheid-era killings because it was a hit carried out against an up-and-coming National Party politician, apparently on the orders of someone at the top of the Afrikaner establishment. And unlike most other political crimes from that era there is still no certainty as to who was responsible. Or, what the actual motive was.

It is a fascinating case about which it is very difficult to write with any conviction. Very little primary material about the murder is available - with the police docket still kept hidden from public view. As a result it is hard to be sure of even the most basic facts of the case.

The secondary material meanwhile is awash with misreporting, red herrings, dead ends, conjecture, rumour and suspicion. Researching the case means slowly making ones way through this fog of disinformation and denial. Trying to get to the truth over three decades on is like trying to hit, from a great distance, one blurred and fleeting target among many.

The following long essay is a preliminary effort to try and make sense of the case. It deals with the basic facts, why the case is so important, and the recent claims as to who was responsible. It then goes on to analyse the ‘lost theory' of the murders.

The facts of the case

Robert Van Schalkwyk Smit had enjoyed a rapid rise through the Afrikaner establishment. He had attended Pembroke College, Oxford, on a Rhodes Scholarship, received a doctorate in economics from the University of Stellenbosch, and in 1967 had been appointed deputy secretary of finance. He had gone on to serve as South Africa's ambassador to the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC between 1971 and 1975 (James Sanders, Apartheid's Friends, 2006). An archivist at the IMF says that according to their records Dr Smit "was appointed as Alternate Executive Director on Jun 5, 1971 and completed his term of service as Alternate Executive Director effective October 31, 1974."

He had returned to South Africa where he had taken up a position with Santam International. He was standing as the National Party candidate in the Springs constituency, just outside of Johannesburg, in the national elections scheduled for November 30 1977. It was expected that he would take up a high position in government after the poll, possibly even as finance minister.

He and his wife had rented a house in Selcourt, Springs, while their two children stayed on in their Pretoria home.

When Robert Smit walked through the door of the house, sometime later, he was shot in the neck from a few paces away, and collapsed to the ground. He was then shot, from close range, in the head, back and chest. Robert Smit and Jeanne Cora were shot with two different calibre guns: a 0.32 (7,65mm) and a 0.38 (9mm.)

Apart from the gunshot wounds Robert Smit had been stabbed once in the back, and Mrs Smit 14 times with a stiletto. The letters "RAU TEM" had been written - in red spray paint - across the fridge and kitchen walls.

The following year some reports claimed that the killers, or (presumably) their accomplices, had returned to the scene of the crime at least two hours after the shootings. It was then that RAU TEM had been sprayed on the walls, and the bodies of the Smits stabbed. (The Star November 17 1978) If this is true, it is conceivable that the spray paint and stabbings were a half-baked effort - after the fact - to make a clinical assassination look like the work of a deranged maniac.

“The Smit murders [1977]: Re-examined” – International Involvement [Part 2]dated 7 June 2010 at https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/the-smit-murders-reexamined written by James Myburgh. Below are excerpts.

However, in an interview with Rapport (June 24 1979) Robert Smit's brother, Iaan, said that an individual, who had been working on the campaign, told him that at midday on November 22 Robert Smit had told him: "Oom, I tell you, vuilgoed are coming to visit me [tonight]" (not Prog voters.)

Iaan explained to the newspaper that when his brother spoke of "vuilgoed" (rubbish) he meant undesirable foreign elements that had settled in the Republic - from Scandinavia, England, America, Hungary and from the former Portuguese colonies in Africa (post April 1974.) Iaan also said that ever since his Oxford days Smit had used ‘McDougall' as a kind of fictional name - a reference to a ‘Van der Merwe' like character.

There were suspicions at the time that foreign assassins had carried out the murders. Yet, as Iaan Smit commented in his 1979 Rapport interviews, even if the killers were foreigners, they would have had to been recruited, and assisted, by people inside the country. "There is no doubt that the murder was well planned, and the murderers were professional and well acquainted with the area. Apart from the graffiti on the walls they left no tracks."

The mysterious Mark Benza

In the immediate aftermath of the killing there was some suspicion that a Czech Canadian scientist businessman called Mark Benza may have been involved in some way. He was briefly detained and questioned by the police before being allowed to leave the country. There were a number of reports published at the time about Benza. These related the following:

On September 7 1977 Robert M Edmund, CEO of the Edmund Scientific Company, of Barrington, New Jersey had handed Benza a letter of introduction ahead of his trip to South Africa. It was addressed to the South African "Department of Commerce" and said that Mr Benza had the right to manufacture and sell various products of the company in the Republic.

It seems that Benza arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa, on September 9 1977. He moved into the luxury Ponte Building, in Berea, on September 15 claiming, on the lease agreement, to be President of the Edmund Scientific Africa Corporation. However, in the business cards he had printed in South Africa he claimed to have been the President of the Enercon Corporation.

On September 29 he met up with Emmerentia Liebenberg, a close friend of Robert Smit, who happened to live in the same apartment block.

Liebenberg was the widow of CR Liebenberg the Joint Managing Director of Spectro Beherend Ltd (formerly Spectro Research Laboratories). He had died suddenly in April 1977. She was the sister-in-law of Tommie Muller, the chairman of Iskor and brother of Hilgard Muller, South Africa's foreign minister between 1964 and 1974.

Benza was introduced to Robert Smit by Liebenberg in early November 1977. According to Beeld (December 5 1977) the two men met in Pretoria to discuss "overseas financial matters." Shortly after that meeting Benza showed Liebenberg a scale model of his newest invention - an engine that was driven by solar energy.

There were various inconsistencies in Benza's account of himself, which raised the suspicions of his acquaintances. Jesus Guardiola, a restaurant owner in Ponte with whom he had discussed a possible business arrangement, told Rapport (December 18 1977) that Benza was a person who could not be trusted: "He lied about too many things. First he said he had never lived in South Africa. Then he said he had just lived here for three years before."

Liebenberg later told Rapport (November 23 1980) that the first she heard of the murder was when she was driving with Benza in her car in Johannesburg on the morning of November 23 1977. They saw newspaper posters along the side of the road and she had cried out: "Mark, Robert was murdered!" Benza had allegedly replied: "It's a good thing he's dead. He talked too much."

“The Smit murders [1977]: Re-examined” – International Involvement [Part 3]dated 7 June 2010 at https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/the-smit-murders-reexamined written by James Myburgh. Below are excerpts.

According to Stephan Terblanche of Rapport Benza's two former employers - Edmund and A Wettberg of the Alberta Gas and Trunk Line - knew little of his background. He studied at a Communist school in Czechoslovakia and then fled the country for "political reasons." He then came to Canada. He had also visited various black African states. (December 18 1977)

While the newspapers were clearly still intrigued by Benza, the police weren't. A police spokesman told Die Transvaler (December 12 1977) that the investigation into Mr Benza was completed more than a week ago. "Benza had nothing to do with the murder."

Nothing more would be reported about Benza for the next few years.

Motive

There were reports soon after the murder that Robert Smit had stumbled across wrongdoing and that this could be why he had been murdered. In the Sunday Express of December 18 1977 Kitt Katzin reported that police were considering the possibility that Robert Smit had been murdered "shortly after he uncovered a foreign currency racket and made it known he meant to expose the swindlers." An investigating officer told the newspaper: "There is the chance that he stumbled across some vital information and was about to topple someone's empire."

Over the following year there were a number of similar reports. According to The Star (June 1978) the British publication Euromoney had claimed that IMF officials say "rumours about the murder of Dr Robert Smit have been circulating in Washington for more than five months. The general rumour is that Dr Smit, while he was in Washington as South Africa's IMF representative, become suspicious about certain monetary transactions and the activities of some officials but had not been able to properly investigate his suspicions. On his return to South Africa he is rumoured to have begun a personal investigation which is said to have uncovered the so-called capital evacuation scheme. This, the rumours hold, led to his murder and murder of his wife…."

Then on November 12 1978 the Sunday Times ran a report headed "I'll spill the beans said Smit." Emmarentia Liebenberg told the newspaper that, five weeks before the murder, Robert Smit had told her that he had decided to approach a senior cabinet minister about a matter that would "rock the nation" and "go right to the top."

A follow up report in The Star (November 17 1978) quoted G.P. Croeser, a friend and colleague of Smit, as saying that at Smit's final campaign event mutual friends had told him "that Dr Smit had mentioned that he was going to expose something once he was elected and reached Parliament."

In his 1979 interview with Rapport Iaan Smit said that at the end of September 1977 he had visited his brother in Springs to see how the campaign was going. In a discussion on the political situation Robert said that "Things are not right. There are things on the go that are improper (onbehoorlik) and that will shock our people. I am sorry, but at the right time I am going to go public with them."

The consequences

The murder of the Smits preceded, and may have precipitated, many of the damning revelations about the misuse of funds by Eschel Rhoodie's Department of Information (most famously to set up The Citizen newspaper.) It was a scandal that was to bring down the three most powerful men in the country: Prime Minister John Vorster; Dr Connie Mulder, the leader of the National Party in the Transvaal; and chief of the Bureau for State Security (BOSS), General Hendrik van den Bergh.

“The Smit murders [1977]: Re-examined” – International Involvement [Part 4]dated 7 June 2010 at https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/the-smit-murders-reexamined written by James Myburgh. Below are excerpts.

As reports emerged of wrongdoing by Rhoodie's department, and that Smit was murdered because he was investigating internal government wrongdoing, a lethal net of suspicion fell upon Vorster, Mulder, Rhoodie and Van den Bergh. In his self-exculpatory 1983 book Rhoodie complained "Some newspapers barely troubled to hide their conviction that… Robert Smit and his wife… were murdered because Dr Smit had discovered that the Department of Information had clandestinely transferred millions of dollars of state funds into secret Swiss bank accounts. At Pretoria's post Menlo Park High School [which Rhoodie's children attended], the children whispered that General van den Bergh had instructed ‘Boss' to kill Dr Smit when he discovered the secret."

In his foreword to Muldergate - Mervyn Rees and Chris Day's 1979 account of the Info Scandal - Allister Sparks noted that the scandal had "shattered the image of leadership in the eyes of the traditional patriarchal Afrikaner nationalist volk. The fall of the father figure John Vorster and his heir apparent, Connie Mulder, the discovery that some respected figures lied and others cheated; the shattering of the self-image of a stern, upright, incorruptible people, have all added to a national trauma."

One could add that what had done most to destroy the nationalists' confident sense of self was the thought that someone, high up in Afrikanerdom, had sanctioned the brutal murder of two of their own. It is difficult to measure the impact of unarticulated suspicion on political events. But, arguably, the Smit murders were one of the blows that cracked the Afrikaner monolith.

Named suspects

After the end of apartheid, and the revelations of government sponsored hit squads, there was hope that the Smit Murders would soon be solved. In 1997 a former member of the security police, Roy Allen, was named as the chief suspect in the case. In an interview with Beeld at the time he denied the charges saying: "I am no murderer. I was at the time in the security police. But I was never a member of the so-called Z-squad or Z-Section as we called it. I was a member of the N-Section. Nothing that we ever did came close to murder."

He said that he had been dating Robert Smit's secretary at the time and the two men had spoken a few times about "this and that." Allen stated that "my personal belief is that no one in the security forces at the time would have taken Smit out. He was a white, Afrikaans speaking, prominent soon-to-be member of the government. But I would not go so far as to say that the regime was not involved."

He added that the murder looked as if it had been carried out by a foreign hit squad. The advantage of the method, Allen noted, is that foreigners come in, do the job, then leave, and no tracks are left linking the hit to those in the regime who ordered it.

In 2006 Beeld reported that according to high level intelligence sources the Smit murders had been carried out by three members of the security police and taskforce: The late Dries Verwey, Phil Freeman (who had used "Mr McDougall" as a pseudonym in the 1980s) and Allen. Allen had by then moved to Australia and he once again vehemently denied the allegations.

The newspaper stated that the motive for the killings was to silence Smit after he threatened to go public about highly secret overseas bank accounts which the regime was using to pay various front organisations.

Then in 2009 R.W. Johnson linked the late Taillefer ‘Tai' Minnaar - and apparently an associate of Allen and Freeman - to the murders. In his book South Africa's Brave New World Johnson, citing an impeccable source, wrote that "Minnaar became remorseful about the hit in his later years, saying that his orders had ‘come from the very top' but that he now regretted the whole dirty business."

Minnaar (born 1939) had worked undercover in Cuba in the mid-1970s, alongside the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He had been handled out of South Africa's Washington embassy. In a 1984 interview in the Star he had described himself as an old friend of General van den Bergh (with whom he had worked at BOSS). By late 1976 he was back in South Africa and was working as an instructor at the intelligence service's Rietvlei headquarters.

This may explain why South Africa continues to do business with Cuba. This article gets more interesting.

“The Smit murders [1977]: Re-examined” – International Involvement [Part 5]dated 7 June 2010 at https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/the-smit-murders-reexamined written by James Myburgh. Below are excerpts.

The lost theory of the Smit murders

Little attention was paid to Johnson's claim after the book came out, with Minnaar simply joining the long list of named suspects in the Smit murders. However, there is an intriguing overlap between Minnaar, with his links to Cuban exiles in America dating from the mid-1970s, and what could be called the ‘lost theory' of the Smit murders. This theory constitutes the most complete explanation of who carried the hit, and why. Curiously, it disappeared from public consciousness very soon after it was reported on in South Africa.

On February 24 1980 the Sunday News Journal of Wilmington Delaware published an article by the journalist Joe Trento on the way in which foreign intelligence services had recruited individuals from within the Cuban nationalist movement in the United States to carry out assassinations. [The text of the article, "CIA helped Chile recruit Cuban killers", written by Joe Trento, can be found at https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/full-text-of-joe-trentos-1980-article-on-the-smit-. Even CIA has a copy of the article at https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00552R000606730010-0.pdf]

Trento wrote that in the mid-1970s the CIA had assisted in the recruitment of a hit-team of CIA-trained Cuban-exile terrorists by South Africa (BOSS) and Pinochet's Chile (DINA). According to Trento's sources the CIA had provided introductions for operatives of BOSS and DINA "to leaders of the Cuban nationalist movement [CNM] in Miami and Union City, New Jersey." Initial recruitment by DINA had been conducted by Antal Lipthay, a Hungarian-exile who posed as journalist on his travels to the United States.

These Cuban-exiles in the United States, along with Italian fascists in Europe, would provide a network which DINA, under the direction of Manuel Contreras, used to carry out a series of assassinations against opponents of the Pinochet regime. These killings formed part of the "third phase" of "Operation Condor" -whereby political opponents of various right-wing Latin American regimes were hunted down and killed in Europe and the United States.

John Dinges (The Condor Years, 2004) writes that a small group from the CNM - Guillermo Novo, Jose Dionisio Suarez and Orlando Bosch - had travelled to Chile in December 1974 where they had cemented ties with DINA. In early 1975 Michael Vernon Townley, the Chilean American who was one of DINA's main assassins, travelled to the US where he met up with a young operations man from the Cuban Nationalist Movement, Virgilio Paz. Paz and Townley would work closely together on a number of operations over the next few years.

According to Trento (1980): "The known victims of the hit team include: Former Chilean Gen. Carlos Prats and his wife, Cora, killed in an October 1974 bombing in Buenos Aires; Chilean Minister of Defence Oscar Bonilio, blown up with five other people in a helicopter in Chile in March 1975; Ronni Kapen Moffit and Orlando Letelier, who died in the September 1976 Washington car bombing… Another couple, Chilean exile leader Bernardo Leighton and his wife Ana, were seriously injured in an unsuccessful assassination attempt in Rome in October 1975."

In addition to these rivals and opponents of Pinochet the hit team had killed a "South African economist and his wife, who were shot to death in their South Africa home in November 1977." The Sunday News Journal investigation, Trento wrote, had shown that the killing of the Smit had been "carried out by members of the Cuban Nationalist Movement under orders of elements of [BOSS]. These BOSS officials did not want Smit releasing details of whom the South African Information Ministry had paid off abroad."

“The Smit murders [1977]: Re-examined” – International Involvement [Part 6]dated 7 June 2010 at https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/the-smit-murders-reexamined written by James Myburgh. Below are excerpts.

According to the newspaper while working as South Africa's representative to the IMF Smit had lobbied "the World Bank to loan money to his government. His long time friends and associates asked Smit why a loan was needed since more than $70 million was already deposited in U.S. accounts in the name of South Africa. Smit, who had the reputation of being impeccably honest, had discovered an unprecedented scandal. According to CIA and State Department sources, Smit discovered the names of more than 20 American politicians, including U.S. senators, rightwing-journalists, and publishers who had received payoffs and bribes. Some of these people were known to be supporters of the Pinochet regime in Chile, which is said to have close ties with South Africa. Both governments had a strong interest in keeping their names secret."

Townley and Paz had travelled to Europe in September 1975 where they had linked up with the Italian fascist leader Stefano Delle Chiaie (alias "Alfredo di Stefano"/"Topogigio" (the doll)/"Alpha") in Rome. On October 5 1975 the exiled Chilean Christian Democrat leader, Bernardo Leighton, and his wife Ana, were shot on a Rome street. Both miraculously survived, though Ana was not able to walk properly again.

According to Trento's CIA sources Paz was the suspected shooter in the Leighton assassination attempt. BOSS agents had allegedly helped prepare and send the communications in which "Zero" - the terrorist organisation to which Paz was affiliated - took credit for the assassination attempt on Leighton. Paz "was given a West German passport by BOSS agents and South African Ministry of Information officials provided Paz and Townley transportation out of Rome through the South African airline, investigators have recently learned. Townley apparently travelled under an American passport; using the name Kenneth W. Eynhart. According to CIA officials working in Rome at the time a report was sent back to CIA headquarters in Washington detailing Chilean, Cuban nationalist and South African involvement in the murder attempt."

According to the Sunday News Journal's sources Paz was also the suspected trigger man in the Smit killing. The same Brigadier Berretta handgun was used in both incidents. "The bullets recovered from the surviving couple in the Rome assassination attempt matched bullets recovered from the body of Mrs. Smit, according to a report on the incident filed from the Rome CIA Station."

In March1978 the FBI had managed to identify Townley as the key suspect it was searching for, for the 1976 murder of Orlando Letelier in Washington DC. Townley was extradited from Chile and agreed to turn state witness against his co-conspirators. However, in terms of the plea-agreement he would only have to testify about the Letelier assassination (not any of the other operations he had been involved in.)

Paz and Dionisio Suarez, who were also implicated in the Letelier murder, went on the run. (They were only tracked down and arrested by the FBI in the early 1990s.) Trento wrote that Ricardo Canete - a protected witness in the Letelier case- had told the Sunday News Journal: "Last year I brought Krugerrands to the FBI that the [Paz and Suarez] had been using as currency in Manhattan. I was told at the time that the boys were bragging that the coins had been given to them by BOSS."

I managed to contact Trento, who is now president of the Washington DC based Public Education Center. Trento said that he had come across the Smit angle after running an earlier story on the Cuban Nationalist Movement. He had been contacted by a high level CIA source who told him that he was missing a trick - and that was the murder of the Smits in South Africa. A major source for the article was James Jesus Angleton, the former head of counter-intelligence at the CIA, who had been instrumental in setting up BOSS in South Africa. Trento said that he had been told at the time, though he couldn't remember the source, that the hit had been set up using a solar energy company as a front. Trento said that he had found it strange that he had not been contacted by South African law enforcement agencies after the story had been run.

“The Smit murders [1977]: Re-examined” – International Involvement [Part 7]dated 7 June 2010 at https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/the-smit-murders-reexamined written by James Myburgh. Below are excerpts.

The Star's strange reporting

The Sunday News Journal story on the Cuban-exile connection to the Smit murder was extensively reported on in The Star (Johannesburg) on Monday February 25 and Tuesday February 26 1980. What is curious about The Star's reports are that they included various claims that were not in the original Journal article.

A normal reader would have assumed that these claims came from the Sunday News Journal investigation. Yet, they were not present in the original article. And Trento says that they did not come from him.

Some, maybe all, of these additional claims were false.

One explanation for the presence of these additional claims was that The Star had its own sources in the FBI and US Justice Department. However, on the Friday (January 29 1980) the newspaper said that it had had to run its own investigation into the Sunday News Journal claims as the newspaper "would not name its high level sources it quoted in the CIA, FBI, State Department and Justice Department."

Conclusion

The above survey has been mostly based on secondary sources. Without being able to drill down to the rock of primary material it is not possible to make firm judgments about the crime. If there is a tentative conclusion that can be drawn it is that it is important to look again into possible foreign involvement in the killing. There are three reasons for this:

Firstly, members of the South African security services would have had to be involved in recruiting the hit team, facilitating the operation and (perhaps) even the clumsy efforts to obscure the true nature of the crime. But it has always seemed unlikely is that they actually killed Robert Smit and, more particularly, his wife. By contrast DINA and the CNM had no compunctions about taking out targets along with their partners. Indeed, this seems to have been their preferred modus operandi.

Secondly, as far as I can establish, the local investigation has essentially run its course. There are strong suspicions about who was involved. But these suspicions have not been hardened into provable fact. It does not seem as if the possibility of DINA/CNM/Condor involvement has been properly explored. The 1980 Sunday News Journal article opened up an important new line of investigation, but it was not followed up by the police. As Trento commented in an email: "The thing I can't get my head around is why the SA authorities did not contact me just to see if they could move the case" (one possible reason for this was the apparent misreporting of his article by The Star.)

Thirdly, there always was an international dimension to the case. It seems almost common cause that Smit came across some kind slush fund overseas, that he planned to expose it, and this is what got him killed. However, the actual motive behind the killing has not been properly established. What was it about the way that this money was being used that so outraged Smit that he wanted to go public? And why was it regarded as so important that he be stopped from doing so, that there was resort to murder?

If a foreign hit squad was involved then there could have been as many as three groups involved in the assassination. There would be the South Africans who called in the hit (and perhaps tried to ‘clean up' afterwards). If the usual Operation Condor methodology applied, a first team would have been dispatched by DINA (or whoever) to locate and survey the target. Once the location and surveillance operation was complete, this team's mission would have been terminated. A second team would have then been dispatched to "carry out the actual sanction against the target" (Dinges, 2004 pg 194).

“The Smit murders [1977]: Re-examined” – International Involvement [Part 8]dated 7 June 2010 at https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/the-smit-murders-reexamined written by James Myburgh. Below are excerpts.

If this was how the assassination was worked then understanding the role of an individual suspect would require a grasp of how the whole thing fitted together.

Since 1980 a lot of information has emerged about DINA, the CNM and Operation Condor. However, in the primary and secondary sources that I was able to access very little seems to have come out about the relationship between BOSS and these organisations. In his 1980 book on the Letelier assassination, co-written with Saul Landau, Dinges writes only that Canete had done specialised jobs for BOSS.

Material has emerged that is at least indirectly relevant to the Trento thesis of CNM involvement in the Smit murders. In the Condor Years (2004) Dinges writes that it is now established that Townley and Paz set up the Leighton assassination attempt, and were in Rome at the time of the attack. However, while Paz/Zero were allowed to take the credit, the actual trigger man was Pier Luigi Concutelli an associate of Delle Chiaie. A Beretta 9mm handgun was used in the attempt.

It seems that the possibility of a South African slush fund located at Riggs Bank in Washington DC, and used to finance who knows what wrong-doing, is not implausible either. In August 1975 DINA's head, Manuel Contreras, had travelled to the US to meet CIA deputy director Vernon Walters at CIA headquarters in Virginia. In September 2000 Contreras told Lilian Olivares of Chile's La Segunda that "'Walters proposed that we take on a lobby of North American senators, to get them to stop harassing Chile in the international arena.' He said Walters suggested he contact five unnamed senators from both parties, ‘who would be paid $2 million a year so that they will act in favour of Chile.' Contreras said he took the idea back to Chile, but it was never implemented." (Dinges, 2004)

The truth about the Smit murders remains elusive. In the above account of the facts of the case, and the theories around it, there are certain interesting ‘coincidences'. For instance, Minnaar had Cuban connections. And Trento's CIA sources suspected Cuban-exiles of involvement in the killings. These may be significant, or they may mean nothing at all. However, if there is information out there that could show these ‘coincidences' to be provable linkages - then the crime would be very close to being solved.

>>14148115

>On February 24 1980 the Sunday News Journal of Wilmington Delaware published an article by the journalist Joe Trento on the way in which foreign intelligence services had recruited individuals from within the Cuban nationalist movement in the United States to carry out assassinations. [The text of the article, "CIA helped Chile recruit Cuban killers", written by Joe Trento, can be found at https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/full-text-of-joe-trentos-1980-article-on-the-smit-. Even CIA has a copy of the article at https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00552R000606730010-0.pdf]

“Full text of Joe Trento's 1980 article on the Smit murders”- https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/full-text-of-joe-trentos-1980-article-on-the-smit-. Below are excerpt.

Ricardo Canete, a protected witness in the Letelier bombing, told the Sunday News Journal that Virgilio Pablo Paz and Dionisio Suarez, the fugitives wanted in the Letelier killing, had been using CIA-supplied counterfeit money and South African gold Krugerrands to live on while at large.

Testifying under the name of Carlos Casado, Canete gave that information in secret to a grand jury in March 1978, but did not repeat it at the public trial.

The convicted Cubans defended themselves by claiming that the Letelier-Moffit killings were a CIA operation from the beginning. The Justice Department has insisted the murders were plotted by agents of the Chilean government.

The CIA started working closely in 1959? With anti-Castro Cubans, training them in Miami and Guatemala before the Bay of Pigs invasion. The CIA also played a large role in the overthrow of the Marxist Allende government in Chile in 1973.

FBI and Justice Department sources said the relationship between CIA, DINA and the Cubans explain why the CIA was reluctant to track down Paz and Suarez, the two Cubans who remain at large.

Some FBI investigators believe Paz was the trigger man in the Leighton attempt and in the murder of the Smits.

"The fact of the matter is we have gotten no cooperation from the CIA on tracking these guys down. They have been at large for more than a year and a half. They have been spotted coming in and out of the country and when the bureau gets tipped off it is always too late," one angry FBI agent told the Sunday News Journal.

The agent contends, "If we arrest these two, they are going to reveal how the CIA was responsible for the Letelier hit and others. I have got to think that the CIA has a real interest in keeping this from coming out."

>>14148095

>Apart from the gunshot wounds Robert Smit had been stabbed once in the back, and Mrs Smit 14 times with a stiletto. The letters "RAU TEM" had been written - in red spray paint - across the fridge and kitchen walls.

>The following year some reports claimed that the killers, or (presumably) their accomplices, had returned to the scene of the crime at least two hours after the shootings. It was then that RAU TEM had been sprayed on the walls, and the bodies of the Smits stabbed. (The Star November 17 1978) If this is true, it is conceivable that the spray paint and stabbings were a half-baked effort - after the fact - to make a clinical assassination look like the work of a deranged maniac.

“South Africa’s Greatest Unsolved Political Crime” – “RAU TEM”- http://flatnote.co.za/sa-greatest-unsolved-crime/. Written 8 years ago.

The mysterious words “RAU TEM”, which were spray-painted in red on the walls and kitchen cupboards at the scene of the Smit murders, are decoded in Alan Elsdon’s book. The book reveals that “RAU TEM” is an Afrikaans acronym for “Randse Afrikaanse Universiteit – Tegnies En Moord”. It was a name given to a specialist sub-unit of the Bureau of State Security (B.O.S.S.), an intelligence agency created in 1969 by Hendrik van den Bergh (aka, The Tall Assassin). Hendrik van den Bergh, the creator of the term “RAU TEM”, was the only person who knew the meaning of the name and also the location of the main base of his clandestine unit. It was situated on an island in the middle of the Vaal Dam on a piece of ground owned by the old Rand Afrikaans University (now known as the University of Johannesburg).

According to reports, a surviving daughter of the Smit couple received death threats during the investigation into the murders. She was also offered a substantial amount of money in exchange for the family’s silence.

“South Africa’s Greatest Unsolved Political Crime – How the plot unraveled”- http://flatnote.co.za/sa-greatest-unsolved-crime/3/

In the book “Really Inside BOSS: A Tale of South Africa’s Late Intelligence Service” it is claimed that Dr Smit discovered that S33million was diverted to a secret numbered account in a Swiss bank. The account’s owner was the State President, Dr Nicolaas Diederichs. Nicolaas Johannes Diederichs was South Africa’s fourth state president. Diederichs, a former finance minister whose international reputation was tainted by financial scandals, and who had allegedly held a massive secret bank account in Switzerland.

Using this knowledge as a weapon, Dr Smit returned to South Africa and “issued an ultimatum to Premier John Vorster”. He demanded a safe seat in parliament, to be followed with an appointment as Minister of Finance. And that, of course, is why he was murdered.

He died just eight days before the election, which would certainly have put him into parliament.

The Swiss bank account, holding R28-million and linked to Diederichs, was uncovered in 1980. A retired judge, Joseph Ludolf, informed a newspaper of the existence of the account.

A public outcry led to an investigation by the auditor-general, who found the “secret account” belonged to a David Mort and now contained only R500. What emerged, although it was swept under the carpet, was that Mort was a friend of Diederichs. The mystery deepened further when a safety-deposit box Diederichs had opened at Volkskas Bank shortly before his death was found empty weeks after his death.

Diederichs died of a heart attack on 21 August 1978 in Cape Town.

Around the same time, it emerged that the Erasmus Commission, which investigated the Information Scandal, had also probed the existence of a secret Swiss bank account said to contain R128-million.

The National Prosecuting Authority has confirmed the case remains open, so if new evidence surfaces, it will be investigated.

In a phone interview with the media, former foreign affairs minister Pik Botha, now 80, who was friends with the Smits, said: “No sufficient evidence was ever found to trace the murderers. It remains one of the most haunting criminal mysteries in our country.”

>>14149278

I am inclined to think that they are playing both sides in order achieve their desired results. Are you familiar with Wynand Du Toit’s ordeal in Angola when he was captured by the Cubans in the 1980s? It certainly seems as if it was a set-up. You can listen to his interview in this video, “Ex-Special Forces Recce and POW, Wynand du Toit, reflects on Operation Argon” at https://youtu.be/Ad6Xt-m9dhg.

“SANDF at SABC | Reaction to SANDF deployment to the SABC: Hannes Du Buisson”- https://youtu.be/8i-UoNrWCxs

“Unions demand explanation for SANDF deployment at SABC headquarters” dated 8 August 2021 at https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/unions-demand-explanation-for-sandf-deployment-at-sabc-headquarters/. Below are excerpts.

Communications Unions have called for an explanation into why armed soldiers were allowed inside the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) headquarters in Auckland Park, Johannesburg.

The staff has reported seeing soldiers carrying guns walking through the third floor of the TV Building where the News studios are situated.

The SABC has confirmed that soldiers were deployed to its offices in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal to protect the national key points.

President of Bemawu, Hannes du Buisson has challenged the SABC to study their CCTV cameras if they want proof of the soldiers in the newsroom. He says the presence of soldiers creates an atmosphere of fear.

“That easily could create the impression that government or the SANDF are watching you, as journalists. You don’t have to say anything, your mere presence there totally out of place, totally unwarranted, unjustified, being in the public broadcaster building armed with rifles, totally out of place. All of that has certainly created the impression that we are not free, we are not independent, we are watched by Big Brother.”

The SANDF says they were deployed to National Key Points during the riots in July, and SABC premises are part of that deployment. SANDF spokesperson, Brigadier General Mafi Mgobozi, says soldiers will remain stationed where they are needed until they are told to withdraw.

“Our soldiers, when the unrest started, we started deploying our soldiers to national key point areas. The SABC was one of them. And then this deployment will continue until we receive instruction from the Commander in Chief that our soldiers must start withdrawing from the areas where they are.”

Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula tweeted: “We know that the rebels intended to take over the broadcaster.” Du Buisson says if this is true, the broadcaster must play open cards with the employees and the country.

“If a Minister of this country says the rebels wanted to take over the broadcaster, that is very serious. And I think the question should be asked to the board, were you aware or are you aware of any attempts that were aimed at taking over the public broadcaster, the SABC? And why has that not been communicated to the general public out there.”

The SABC says it will not be commenting further at this stage.

“Astonishing amount of firearms and ammunition stolen from Gauteng Police”- https://southafricatoday.net/south-africa-news/astonishing-amount-of-firearms-and-ammunition-stolen-from-gauteng-police/

The FF Plus is deeply concerned about the large quantities of ammunition and firearms stolen from the police and metro police in Gauteng and the strong possibility that it may end up in the hands of criminals.

The Gauteng MEC for Community Safety, Faith Mazibuko, confirmed in response to a written question by the FF Plus that thousands of rounds of ammunition and 107 firearms belonging to the police and metro police were reported stolen or missing between July 2020 and June 2021.

At present, there are 279 cases under investigation in which police officers’ ammunition and firearms were stolen during armed robberies or have simply gone missing from safes.

In Gauteng alone, 84 police officers are under investigation. The missing firearms include one shotgun, four R5 rifles and 274 pistols.

In addition, 1 668 R5 rounds, 575 shotgun rounds and 1 644 9mm rounds have gone missing. Of the police officers, 12 have already been found guilty, one has been suspended from service and 11 have been given final warnings. The rest are still under investigation.

Ten officers of the Ekurhuleni Metro Police have reported their pistols and ammunition as stolen. These incidents are also still under investigation.

Ten officers of the Tshwane Metro Police have reported their 9mm pistols and ammunition as stolen. Eight of these cases are being investigated and the final result in the other two is pending.

Three Gauteng traffic police officers have also reported their pistols and 45 rounds of 9mm ammunition as stolen. Some of these officers’ firearms were stolen during a hijacking.

This clearly points to poor management as well as a lack of control and discipline; decisive action must be taken.

These weapons that have gone missing or have been stolen are precisely the kind of weapons used in committing transit heists and even farm attacks.

“Duduzane vs Cyril: Zuma Jnr targets ANC leadership ‘by 2022’”- https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/will-duduzane-zuma-run-for-president-anc-leadership-2022/

This will be music to the ears of the pro-Zuma crowd: Duduzane has confirmed that he will directly challenge Ramaphosa for the presidency.

Is there another ‘President Zuma’ in the pipeline? Duduzane has again reiterated his desire to replace Cyril Ramaphosa as head of the ANC, with a view to becoming president during the next General Election.

DUDUZANE ZUMA TARGETING SHOWDOWN WITH PRESIDENT RAMAPHOSA

Speaking with Newsbreak Lotus on Saturday, the controversial businessman – and son of former President Jacob Zuma – said that a plan was ‘now in motion’ to challenge Ramaphosa at the 2022 ANC Elective Conference.

Duduzane has made no secret of his desire to follow in his father’s footsteps, and a bid for national leadership has been on the cards for a while. Zuma Jnr finds himself a popular choice amongst some factions of the ANC.

However, he may struggle to appeal to a broader audience – largely down to his connections with the Guptas. Duduzane worked very closely with the corrupt Indian billionaires, and their ties to state capture also reflect on the 37-year-old.

‘I AM WALKING A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PATH’

While speaking on-air, Duduzane Zuma said he was allowing himself to ‘dream big’, claiming that he would ‘do things differently’ to how President Ramaphosa is running the country. The battle, it seems, has begun in earnest.

“We are putting our name in the hat, running for ANC presidency in 2022 and national general elections in 2024. The reason I say [this] is that we are all allowed to dream big. I’m not a career politician, I’m a businessman and I have made this decision very late in my life,”

“I’m here to do something different because if you’re saying I’m competing against someone it means we walk in the same path. I’m walking a completely different path. We’re going to do things differently. The plan is now in motion.”

Duduzane Zuma

“LIVE: Colonel Wynand du Toit - Danger signals in South Africa”dated Aug 10, 2021, at https://youtu.be/GrZR8SRD4ec

1:07:20 – “What you must realise, that the forces behind this is not black or white… I also want to remind you but I actually don’t want to talk about it but that is the relationship of the… radical Islamic groups that we are currently experiencing in Northern parts of Mozambique. The food - they all got in KwaZulu Natal, their ties with the [Zulu] royal household and that is something that is very dangerous and that is something we don’t want to talk about it now as yet. But that is something that we have considered and are looking into and trying to keep up to date on. But there is another faction there, apart from our problem of being attacked by black people, black people attacked by white people. There is another faction that is the Islamic faction and we don’t know what they are planning.”

1:10:55 – “When you look at the situation and lets go back to our in depth backgrounds, in the old days of the border war. If certain things start happening, if you pick up certain things then it starts indicating on the fact that something is going to happen. That is a battle indication to say listen you can expect an attack by the enemy or we can expect this or this action or reaction from the enemy. If you look at South Africa currently we can also see battle indications. That battle indications being the [stolen] ammunition [from Durban harbor], being the violence, the looting of the warehouse which I talked about [stealing dry food only and no sweets or chips by a well organised group with trucks], we have had all sorts of reports coming in that they are now in the phase where they are gathering weapons at all costs. Just this morning, reports started coming out about incidence that happened in the Free State over this past weekend where people were actually pulled off at police road blocks. Their firearms confiscated whether they have license or not. Now this has been confirmed but nobody can give us a clear answer to say that it was a lawful roadblock, whether they confiscated the weapons and gave a receipt for the weapons or whether this actually part of this process of getting weapons into their hands. Now this is kind of battle indications that’s telling us if you listen to what they are saying you know this expropriation of land without compensation, the question of disarming the population, declaring certain things illegal, the misuse of the law, the misinterpretation of the law. That’s all battle indications that we are heading for the cliff. That sooner or later and I think it will be sooner, we are going to be over the cliff. So we must look at everything. All the different scenarios and things that is happening. And those little things that is happening must be telling us a story. So what we have done, I got a small group of former intelligence people that is working on all this Whatsapp messages and stuff that is coming in… and they go through that and they verify what is true, they throw out that is recirculated videos from 5 years ago whether it is false information. They separate that. So in the end, I receive from this group a defined intelligence report on what is happening and what everything is indicated. I will never talk about anything if I haven’t received confirmation that it did happen or is in the process of happening but has been confirmed… According to battle indications we are much much closer to anarchy than we were 2 months ago or 3 months ago.”

1:48:25 “Slowly but surely they are making progress. Eating away on our liberties and our rights to have firearms, our rights to protect ourselves and on the other hand it’s ridiculous. I mean, the police in some places in Natal was protected by security companies… The other day I hear Beki Cele said that the police station needs protection. Shit we must protect them? They are the police. They must protect us. They can’t protect us and now they want to take our firearms away and our means of protecting ourselves.”

1:54:16 – “I have been warned to stay away from the ISIS issues at this stage because I’m also at this stage a sort of a target. Not necessarily by them but definitely by certain people. But what I would like to tell you is that we must be very aware of their presence in KwaZulu Natal. They got trained members in Natal and in Gauteng. … Their presence and their aims are well known to the South African Intelligence Services. The only problem is what to do about it. Now I don’t want to go into that but there are regular travels between ISIS groups in the northern part of Mozambique and the sympathisers in Natal. But what I can tell you about the guys in Palma is the fact that the way how they have done things should be a lesson to us.”

“Discussion | Resuscitating the SSA” – Mo Shaik Interview- https://youtu.be/wnPC80Sog_4

Keep in mind,

“Africa is new ‘El Dorado of espionage’, leaked intelligence files reveal” dated 24 Feb 2015 at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/24/africa-el-dorado-espionage-leaked-intelligence-files states;

With South Africa a regional powerhouse and communications hub, Pretoria has become a centre of the continent’s new Great Game, intelligence officials say, and a target of global espionage. The leaked documents obtained by al-Jazeera and shared with the Guardian contain the names of 78 foreign spies working in Pretoria, along with their photographs, addresses and mobile phone numbers - as well as 65 foreign intelligence agents identified by the South Africans as working undercover. Among the countries sending spies are the US, India, Britain and Senegal.

The United States, along with its French and British allies, is the major military and diplomatic power on the continent. South Africa spends a disproportionate amount of time focused on Iran and jihadi groups, in spite of internal documents showing its intelligence service does not regard either as a major threat to South Africa. “The Americans get what they want,” an intelligence source said.

According to one intelligence officer with extensive experience in South Africa, the NIA is politically factionalised and “totally penetrated” by foreign agencies: “Everyone is working for someone else.” The former head of the South African secret service, Mo Shaik, a close ally of the president, Jacob Zuma, was described as a US confidant and key source of information on “the Zuma camp” in a leaked 2008 Wikileaks cable from the American embassy in Pretoria.

>>14377982

Also

“On Mo Shaik, spy allegations, arms deal and political conspiracy.”Dated 22 October 2008 at https://thoughtleader.co.za/on-mo-shaik-spy-allegations-arms-deal-and-political-conspiracy/

In 2003 the Sunday Times published a story that Mac Maharaj had received about R500 000 and free nights accommodation in Disneyland from Shabir Shaik while doing business with an affiliate of Halliburton (a Dick Cheney company that profits in post-war Iraq). It was alleged that the R500 000 payment was made in relation to the awarding of tenders for the new-format driver’s licence and the N3 toll road between Johannesburg and Durban. The toll road deal was financed in part via FirstRand subsidiary Rand Merchant Bank. Maharaj was never charged for his alleged impropriety and his reputation was irreversibly blemished.

In the book by Patraigh Omalley, Shades of difference: Mac Maharaj and the struggle for South Africa, it is revealed that Mo Shaik first made claims of a political conspiracy against Jacob Zuma during this time when the NPA was investigating Zuma and his brother Shaik. Omalley claims that Mo Shaik was furious when he learnt that the NPA was investigating Jacob Zuma, whom he worked with in the ANC intelligence structures during apartheid. During the Hefer Commission (referred to below) he consistently stated that he knew Zuma was not involved in arms deal corruption. It arouses much interest why Mo Shaik was troubled by the NPA’s investigation of Zuma.

It emerged during the inquiry that Mo Shaik had in his possession a database of over 800 suspected apartheid government spies, which he refused to hand over to the National Intelligence Agency, because according to him that was the property of the ANC. The real reasons for Mo Shaik to have still been holding on to this database remain unclear. But one can only deduce that Mo Shaik might have been inspired by the J Edgar Hoover (1895-1972), the former head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), who amassed secret files on political leaders including every US president during his near 50 years tenure at the FBI. Hoover used this information to smear and manipulate highest political office bearers to advance his political adventures.

An apartheid murderer, Gideon Nieuwoudt, who was involved in the senseless murder of Steve Biko and many other South Africans who resisted the repressive apartheid regime, had some questionable relationship with Mo Shaik. Maharaj reported during the Hefer Commission that he once found Nieuwoudt at Mo Shaik’s house prior to him (Nieuwoudt) being interviewed by e.tv about these spy allegations.

Zuma himself had insinuated on countless occasions that if prosecuted, he would not go down alone. Something that suggests he possesses sufficient knowledge of improprieties committed by his fellow comrades, which he attempts to use as blackmail against state authorities and secure his freedom. Last time I checked, withholding evidence of a crime was a criminal offence. Lekota recently asked how Zuma knows who committed what crimes if he was not part of it and is innocent as he claims.

The relationship between Mo Shaik and Jacob Zuma appear to have remained firmly in tact; and Mo Shaik appear to be an influential Zuma lieutenant given some of the pronouncements he has a tendency of making on behalf of the ANC, as when he told us prior to Polokwane that Zuma would keep Manuel in cabinet, although he was not a member of the ANC national executive committee. Mo Shaik has become a permanent and important apparatus of Jacob Zuma; seen at almost all public gatherings by Zuma’s side and occasionally stepping forward to share his opinions about the ANC or Zuma with us.

His concocted insinuations of political conspiracy against his long-time comrade led Judge Nicholson to infer that Thabo Mbeki was behind the mechanisations to prevent Jacob Zuma from becoming president of the country. The Nicholson judgment and subsequent recall of Thabo Mbeki was a decisive victory for Mo Shaik as it paved the way for Jacob Zuma to become president; and also perhaps a considerable boost for his yet to be publicly known political aspirations. It raises questions as to whether perhaps Mo Shaik was the force behind a sudden change of heart by Jacob Zuma to entertain political conspiracy claims when Zuma had previously agreed in the presence of the ANC national executive committee that nothing of that sort existed.

Even arousing more interest is the Noseweek report that Shabir Shaik once accompanied his friend the then minister of public enterprises, Jeff Radebe, on an official trip to Russia; which puts his recent tirade against Terror Lekota in perspective. Connect the dots.

How influential is Mo Shaik on Jacob Zuma?

>>14378104

You should not make comments based on assumptions.

Wynand du Toit is being interviewed by Scott Balson who owns the Loving Life channel where this video is found.

If you kept track of events in South Africa, Wynand du Toit helps to join the dots. Keep in mind, he is a Special Forces veteran so he knows about getting and looking at intel.

You may learn something when you listen to the interview.