Welcome to Unsolved Murders SA, a podcast series where we will be delving into gruesome homicide investigations that, at the time of producing the episodes, were still open.
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Assassinations, in a way, are the bedrock of transformation in politics. To enforce new ideologies and reframe the structure of norms, blood must be shed.
This approach to power shifts in the highest orders of the political world can be traced back to 336 BC w hen Philip the Second of Macedon, was struck down by a bodyguard at his daughter’s marriage celebrations.
He was the father of Alexander the Great, one of the world’s most revered military strategists. Alexander the Great’s ascension to power, his opportunity to transform political ideology at the time, hinged on his greatest sacrifice.
Similarly, much later in 44 BC, the most famous Roman Emperor Julius Caesar fell to the sword of his own senators, who felt it necessary to sacrifice the revered leader to preserve a political system that solely benefited the few.
In South Africa, political assassinations have long been linked to the preservation of the status quo.
The apartheid regime used this tactic to sow divisions in the struggle movement and collapse efforts to abolish the segregatory political system.
Even in the advent of democracy, assassinations are very much prevalent.
However, the motivation behind the mysterious deaths of Robert Smith and his wife Jeanne-Cora are somewhat wedged between political links and unchartered chapters of their personal lives.
A background on Robert Smit
Robert van Schalkwyk Smit was born in 1933 and, in his adult life, rose to become one of the most prominent figures of politics during the apartheid era.
In a book released by one of his children – he and wife Jeanne-Cora had a son, Robert Jr, and a daughter, Liza – titled I Am Liza Smit, it is stated that Smit was a privileged Rhodes scholar who attended Pembroke College, Oxford, and Stellenbosch University, and was revered for his thesis on “South Africa and International Trade Politics.”:
If this spine-chilling story which, is easily one of South Africa’s most mysterious unsolved murder s, is of interest to you, then we highly recommend you read Liza Smit’s autobiography.
In her book, Liza, who was 13 years old at the time her parents were brutally murdered, names a number of suspects, some with strong links, and makes sensible points about the figures of the National Party she believes were central to the double homicide.
The National Party was formed in Bloemfontein, in 1914 by Afrikaner nationalists after the establishment of the Union of South Africa.
The latter, of course, was the culmination of the Anglo-Boer War and, ironically, the National Party was formed by former Justice Minister of the Union of South Africa, General James Barry Munnik Hertzog following disagreements about the government of the time’s push for a two-stream policy that advocated for the equal rights of English and Afrikaner communities.
The National Party’s first taste of power came after a coalition with the Labour Party in 1924 and, Hertzog, a proud Afrikaner, was elected Prime Minister.
History does not indicate when Robert Smit joined the National Party. However, we can confirm that in 1967, more than a decade after he had met, fell in love and married Jeanne-Cora – the couple met in the UK during Robert’s tenure as a scholar at Oxford – Mr Smit served as the Deputy Secretary of Finance for the apartheid government.
In 1971, at the age of 38, Robert Smit hauled his family to Washington DC, after securing a position as South Africa’s ambassador at the International Monetary Fund.
South Africa’s relationship with the IMF has, over the years, been sketchy, to say the least.
Former Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel has always been vocal about the international financial institution’s lending history with South Africa, and the role it played in providing credit to the apartheid establishment at a time when the rest of the world shunned its segregatory policies against non-white citizens.
In the 1970s, South Africa received three credit payments from the IMF, mostly to assist with the balance of payments problems that emanated from the weakened gold price at the time.
Robert Smit was an integral figure in negotiating the impossible during his tenure as South Africa’s ambassador between 1971 and 1975.
At the time, global politics were not only highly frustrated with the apartheid government’s enforcement of its racist policies, but debate was also rife about banks lending money to South Africa.
A global stoppage to funnelling money to the apartheid government would be enforced in the 1980s, but by then, thanks to Robert Smit, the National Party had found a loophole in the insurance trade.
After vacating his position at the IMF in 1975, Robert Smit and his family returned to South Africa and, aged 42 at the time, he was recruited as Managing Director of Santam, South Africa’s largest short-term insurance company.
The role of Santam in funding the apartheid government at a time when global financial institutions had followed suit in implementing sanctions against South Africa, is key in the popularity Robert Smit garnered as a future leader of a segregated nation.
Liza Smit, in her book however, notes that her father had always felt it was wrong that people of colour were not afforded the right to participate in politics, let alone exercise their right to vote.
Liza was very careful with her wording. Not once did she articulate her thoughts on how her father felt about apartheid as a system of oppression.
However unclear this was, it cannot be denied that Liza, her brother, Jeanne-Cora, Robert Smit and their extended family were beneficiaries of the injustices of the system.
Alas, by the mid-1970s, only a couple of years before the notorious murders, Robert Smit was in a prime position to challenge for presidency in the National Party.
Writers at the time described him as a darling of the Afrikaner. Political corridors were abuzz with murmurs that Robert Smit would rise to become the Minister of Finance and usher the government into a new frontier, one that was independent of global support.
In 1977, Robert Smit launched his political career into full swing and contested for candidacy as a leader of the Springs constituency months leading up to the national elections in November of that year.
In what turned out to be a twist of fate, Robert and Jeanne-Cora were forced to leave their children in the care of their family in Pretoria, while the couple moved to Selcourt, quaint suburbia situated in Springs.
Robert enjoyed a great deal of support from his wife. In her book, Liza writes about the strength of Jeanne-Cora, who was the anchor of the family.
She took great care of her children and played a vital role in keeping her husband grounded in his pursuit of political power.
What they did not know, however, was that this came at a price, one that they would pay for in the worst way possible.
The fateful month of November 1977 came and Robert’s campaigning was drawing to a close. By the 30th of November, he would be recognised as the winner of a hotly contested political campaign in Springs.
As fate would have it, Robert Smit and his wife would die in the most brutal manner imaginable, eight days prior to realising the outcomes of their hard work and sacrifice.
Unsolved Murders SA: Who is responsible in the Smit murders?
On 22 November 1977, a Tuesday, Robert was at his office in Springs, wrapping up the last bits and pieces of his political campaign.
Jeanne was out running errands in the afternoon, chauffeured by the family’s driver, Daniel Tshabalala.
Daniel would later inform investigators that Jeanne had returned from a busy day in the city, at approximately 18:10 and, the last time he saw her alive, was when he left the residence at 18:50.
Robert’s office workers assisted investigators with building a timeline when they noted that somewhere between 19:14 and 19:40, they had received a phone call from Jeanne asking for her husband’s whereabouts.
Jeanne, according to the workers, wanted to inform her husband that the anti-National Party voters he was due to meet with at his residence had arrived and were awaiting him.
Jeanne’s body was later found slumped over the phone, an indication that she met her fate in the worst manner imaginable, shortly after she had dropped the phone.
According to an autopsy report released after the murders, it was confirmed that Jeanne had raised her left hand in defence before a gunshot was released on her head, at point-blank range.
The bullet had pierced her hand and entered her head. She was also shot in the back and stabbed 14 times with a weapon consistent with a stiletto knife.
The forensic pathologist who examined Jeanne concluded she was the victim of overkill. The perpetrators behind the murder went to great lengths to ensure that there was not a single ounce of life left in the mother’s body.
Homicide investigators were never able to pin down exact times in timeline but its believed Robert may have returned home between 30 minutes and three hours after his wife was brutally murdered.
As soon as he entered the lobby of the rental, Robert was struck by a bullet in his neck. A second gunshot pierced his chest and a third entered the back of his head. The last two gunshots were fired at close range, pathologists found.
Robert too was stabbed but, in his case, a single entry wound, lodged by the same stiletto knife, was found on his back.
Did the police purposefully foil the investigation?
Ballistic examinations conducted after evidence was collected at the premises showed that at least two firearms were used in the commission of the crime.
The crime scene was thoroughly combed for forensic evidence after the bodies were collected. However, investigators were never able to determine the areas where Jeanne and Robert were killed.
Bloody shoe prints found at the residence were never matched and despite a number of clues gathered, like the RAU TEM spelling that was spray painted on the kitchen wall and cabinets, no suspects were ever pursued in the double murder investigation.
A lot of criticism was placed on the Springs police department on the manner in which the crime scene was handled.
For one, first-responding homicide investigators pitched up to the crime scene wearing casual clothes not covered by protective gear.
Also, Springs police were criticised for failing to secure a parameter around the residence and no effort was made to prevent trampling over key areas of the crime scene.
Moreover, the long hours that had gone by after the Smits were killed had certainly not helped with the investigation.
The couples’ bodies were only discovered and subsequently reported on Wednesday morning.
Daniel arrived on time to resume his duties and, as it was the norm, he knocked on his boss’ door but, unusually, the call to response was not reciprocated.
Also, the door was bizarrely unlocked.
So, in what was a rare occasion, he let himself in.
Immediately, Daniel was met by the sight of Robert’s corpse lying on the floor of the lobby, drenched in a pool of blood.
Jeanne’s body, he later revealed, was slumped over the house telephone in the lounge. Completely mortified by what he had discovered, Daniel ran to alert a neighbour about the gruesome discovery.
Another crucial element of the investigation that has fuelled conspiracies was Robert Smit’s missing briefcase at the crime scene.
Investigative journalist Chris Karsten who authored the book Unsolved: No Answers to Heinous South African Cirmes hinted that this was the crucial piece of the jigsaw puzzle that would have sealed the investigation.
Perhaps, Karsten wrote, the briefcase contained incriminating details of the sordid activities conducted by the Department of Information, destined for Prime Minsiter John Vorster.
Unsolved Murders SA: The Smit murder conspiracy theories
A number of factors have been attributed as possible reasons why the Smits’ murder case remains unsolved.
One reason is the amount of time that was afforded to the killers to conjure an escape unnoticed and completely disappear, 10 or more hours before police were alerted.
Another reason can be attributed to technological advances at the time. CCTV cameras were not popular in residential areas. Therefore, police had no visual references to rely on in gathering clues about the people involved in the murders.
Perhaps, a crucial cog that may have lent a hand in heightening mystery around the murders were the RAU TEM letters purposefully spraypainted across the resident’s kitchen walls.
Whoever did it wanted investigators to dig into the meaning behind the clue. Turns out, RAU TEM was an Afrikaans term for a specialist sub-unit of the notorious intelligence agency, the Bureau of State Security, or BOSS.
This was the most obvious lead birthed from the evidence collected at the crime scene, and has, for decades, remained a focal point of the investigation.
But, was this a fallacy to begin with? Perhaps, the killers used existing murmurs about BOSS’ reputation to spin a narrative about the National Party’s relationship with Robert Smit?
It sure is interesting that the killers, who had clearly made every effort to ensure their sordid plan was executed meticulously, would leave a revealing clue such as this for investigators to find.
Anyhow, the presence of the spraypaint sent shockwaves across South Africa, and many believed BOSS’ murderous commander Hendrik van den Bergh, a man who had garnered a reputation as ‘The Tall Assassin’, had masterminded the high-profile hit.
“I have enough men to commit murder if I tell them to kill. I don’t care who the prey is,” van den Bergh once told a government commission.
Those with intimate knowledge of the investigation would, however, discount the involvement of BOSS in the murders since:
- This was not the typical MO of a BOSS assassination; and
- The can of paint used to mark the letters belonged to the Smits.
Therefore, it was reasonably assumed that the killers had used this as an opportunity to sabotage the investigation.
Kwei Quartey, a Ghanian-American novelist wrote extensively about the Smit murders, as one part of a group of 11 investigative journalists who had formed a blog Murder Is Everywhere, an online true crime index that includes examinations of the most intriguing murder investigations.
In his dissertation of the Smit murders, Quartey noted the crucial timing of the killings.
“At that time in South Africa’s political history, the atmosphere was fraught. During this period, the country was in utter turmoil. The inquest into the death of Steve Biko had begun on November 14, a black high school student Sipho Malaza had allegedly died in police custody, the twenty-first in some 20 months, and embargoes against South Africa were beginning to mount. Against this backdrop, it’s easy to see how all kinds of people in various political camps could have ended up dead. The Information Scandal also broke around that time, costing the jobs of the prime minister and a couple of his cabinet members. The scheme deflected funds from the defense budget to a number of pro-apartheid propaganda campaigns. Robert Smit might have had detailed detrimental information that he intended to expose after his putative election–a threat that would have been too dangerous for the implicated persons to let stand. Other conspiracy theories, too detailed to go into here, included Israel and nuclear secrets,” he wrote.
The Smit murders were impaired by conspiracy theories, the most pronounced being that he held state secrets that, if revealed, would destabilise the apartheid regime.
It is said that prior to his death, Robert Smit had uncovered a large-scale corruption ring within the governing party and had informed several people about the ‘explosive’ information he planned to expose.
Reports of this alleged corruption secret were first published by the Sunday Express in December 1977 and, in the article, it was claimed that Robert Smit held privileged information on a foreign currency racket.
The infamous Information Scandal that broke in 1978, which named Prime Minister John Vorster, as the mastermind behind a multi-million-rand slush fund that was used to steer a covert propaganda campaign, was also linked to the Smits murder. It was believed, at the time, that Robert Smit was privy to this information and had planned to unveil it after the 1977 elections.
BOSS remained a central cog to the investigation as the years tumbled on. The state security organisation was a key roleplayer in the information scandal and, according to reports, Robert Smit posed a great threat to its operations.
The elusive Z-Squad, a sub-division of BOSS, was touted as the group responsible for killing the political couple.
Former BOSS members, Roy Allen, Dries Verwey and Phil Freeman, were named suspects in a report published by Beeld in the early 2000s.
It was said that the trio pulled off the murders as a means of preventing Robert Smit from spilling the beans about deep-seated corruption that involved secret international bank accounts held by the state to pay shell companies.
No charges were ever laid against the trio. Verwey died in 1980. Freeman took his own life in 1990, and Allen migrated to Australia and his circumstances were never revealed.
In 2013, Allen published an article on Politicsweb where he went into great detail about his version of events.
What you are about to hear is Allen’s full account of the Smit murders and who he believes was responsible.
The news of the Smit murders in 1977 was a bolt out of the blue. Both I and my girlfriend were astounded, as we searched for a motive… Ida had worked for Dr Smit for about 6 to 8 months in the preceding year when he was the chief of Santam International.
They worked from a two-person office in the Johannesburg CBD. I had met him on one or two occasions whilst picking Ida up from his offices. He seemed like a very nice guy.
Before this Ida had worked as a secretary to P.W. Botha when he was Minister of Defence. She had a Top Secret clearance from the Military, which made her suitable for employment in such a confidential post with Dr Smit.
She was also later to work as the secretary of Fanie Botha, the then Minister of Labor, before going on to work for Prof Wiehahn when he was conducting the inquiry that became known as the “Wiehahn Commission”. She never discussed the nature of her work at any of these “jobs” with me, and was fanatically loyal towards her government bosses.
Try as I might, I could not bring anything into the context of the political setup that existed within the RSA at the time, to work out what the words “RAU TEM” meant. I could only infer that these cryptic letters had meaning for some person/s involved with the Smits – as this was clearly a message or warning of sorts. After a while, however, the whole thing passed and receded into history.
At the time I had wondered, could it have been Col Dries Verwey – my commander at the Police Special Task Force? I was thus not totally surprised when his driver asked me in the ensuing days if I had been involved with Verwey in the murders. This seemed to bear out what I had been thinking. His driver knew Verwey very well. He was also aware that I had conducted extra-judicial operations with him in Cape Town.
My suspicions that Verwey could have been involved are NOT founded on any clues at all – for instance, there were no ‘Smit briefcases’ in Verwey’s office safe, as has been alleged – rather just a well-developed gut feeling/sixth sense.
Dries Verwey and Phil Freeman
You ask then “why” did I think this way? A valid question… It was because I had been witness to the cold menace of Verwey’s anger and privy to some of the goods and devices that accompanied him from his D-4 Section, at Security Branch (SB) HQ. In his special room at SB HQ he had silenced weapons of many different types and calibres, poisoned bottles of exotic Portuguese liquor that were popular in Mozambique/Angola at the time, Zambian police officer uniforms and cell keys, and transistor radios that were ‘loaded’ with deadly explosives that would blow up anyone switching them on.
There were also parcel bombs made in seized copies of Mao Tse-Tung’s “Little Red Book”. These bombs were made with surgical precision, with the “Pentolite” poured into the hollowed out inside in molten form… The way the pages were surgically cut and glued, the placement and affixing of the micro-switch and the ‘arming’ device, was like looking at the innards of a Swiss timepiece…
This was typical handiwork of Phil Freeman, who was a perfectionist. And when Verwey and Freeman had both been at BfSS, they had worked very closely together, as well as in the Security Police, long before the inception of BOSS.
To give an example of Freeman’s attention to detail: Back in 1972 I still smoked. After lighting a cigarette, I would let the match burn 3/4 and then grip the burnt end and let the rest burn out. Phil said that this was a unique characteristic that would link me to any location where I had smoked a cigarette and that I should desist from such identifiable habits!!!
At the time I was doing “jobs” with another BfSS member, and wherever we went, my “Tag” that I spray-painted in red at the scene, was a Russian “Hammer and Sickle”. Being left-handed I did it the wrong way around – i.e. a mirror image of the correct way. Phil cautioned me about this idiosyncrasy as it could lead directly back to me. He was a very, very focussed and astute man, who had he remained in the British Military after WW-2, would have surely ended up as Chief of Special Operations for the British Forces.
Only the oldest former Security Branch members will recall the early Sixties -“Rivonia”, “Lilliesleaf” etc – when the SB arrested Mandela and his fellow terrorists at “Lilliesleaf” farm. They had been blowing up power pylons and sabotaging State infrastructure.
Two of these “rats”, Goldreich and Wolpe, were detained at “Marshall Square” in Johannesburg. Whilst in the cells, they “duped’ a young constable into allowing them to escape in exchange for a brand new car (costing about R1200 and R1,500 in cash) At the time the monthly wage for a Cst was about R70 – before deductions…..)
They escaped to Lesotho disguised as priests, and from there flew on a chartered single-engined A/C to Gaborone in Botswana. From Gaborone, they were due to fly to Tanzania – or Tanganyika as I think it was still called at the time. A CAA (Central African Airways) aircraft, a DC-3 Dakota was flown to Gabs. Whilst on the ground in Gab’s it was set alight one night and burned to the ground. This was done by Phil Freeman and “another”. (At the time I was in Std 8 at school.) This was long before the inception of the South African Special Forces…
The SA Police, in the early Sixties, had “Hard Men” to conduct operations like this. (They had attended courses in France, and practised their ‘skills’ with the French in the Algerian insurgency.)
Whilst Phil never admitted to me that he was involved in the DC-3 sabotage, we came very close to destroying the private jet of a mining conglomerate at D.F. Malan Airport in Cape Town in 1973/4. It had been put at the disposal of student leaders to travel between Cape Town and Johannesburg. This was due to weather and ‘other’ reasons that sometimes delayed the departure of the SAA flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg, which sometimes caused the student leaders to miss their connecting flight to conferences in Europe – only arriving a day late.
Phil had made a “fire brick” to destroy the aircraft with. It had the consistency of hard fudge and was a mixture of aluminium or magnesium and sulphur. Placed on the wing – it burned at an extremely high temperature (5000 C) – and would melt the aluminium wing structure like butter, passing through the wing fuel tanks and ensuring the total destruction of the aeroplane. I am sure that this was the method that was used to destroy the CAA DC-3 in Gaborone. (Like the way Phil talked at the time, was the way one talks about something that you have already done before..)
Phil was a master of whatever he chose to do. He was an electronics buff and also a perfectionist on the lathe. He made a silencer in 1974 that was the quietest silencer that I had ever heard.. Phil even had a kiddies dummy/teat over the end of the silencer, to allow the projectile to exit and then to immediately close after the projectile, to stop any ‘air noise’.
It was around 1974 and I was getting itchy feet with the inaction at BfSS – not the fault of the Organization – solely mine, as I was the square peg in a round hole. Around this time Phil had been working with Jan Breytenbach from the SADF. They were experimenting with shaped charges at the Naval shooting range in Simonstown (Redhill comes to mind.) Jan Breytenbach was with the SADF Infantry base at Oudtshoorn at the time, and Phil encouraged me to join the Army and go and work for Jan.
I was happier re-joining the SAP, as at least it was a culture that I was familiar with – and I was hoping to go and fight in Rhodesia. So I re-joined the SAP in about April 1975 – the Security Branch. However before I could arrange to volunteer for service in Rhodesia, the South African Prime Minister John Vorster withdrew the SAP from that country…
Fortunately, shortly after my return to the SAP, David Protter attacked the Israeli Embassy in Fox St Johannesburg, and as a consequence of the SA Police’s poor showing during the siege, the “Sanhedrin” decided that the SAP needed a SAS/GSG/SWAT type of anti-terrorist unit. This was the conception of the Task Force.
After successfully completing STM selection, Phil ‘gifted’ me with a MAT-49. It was a French version of the British ‘Sten’. Phil had made a silencer for it from a car shock-absorber – which screwed onto the end of the barrel. It was extremely quiet, with low-velocity ammunition. It now resides at the bottom of the Hartebeespoort Dam, in small pieces…
In Cape Town, Phil had modified a pellet gun to the proportions of a “sawn-off” shotgun. Only cut very short. Inside the “shotgun-like” tube you place a very thin glass tube containing cyanide or some gas. At the end of the barrel, there was a very fine copper gauze. (To arrest the fragments of the glass capsule so that they do not end up in the face of the dead target.)
The way to use it was to place it in a folded newspaper. Get up close to the target in the bus or Metro, and discharge the device at his face. The whooshing noise and surprise would cause him to inhale quickly, inhaling a deadly lungful of cyanide gas – resulting in instant death. This was never used on humans, but he told me that he had tested it on a dog, and it had worked 100%.
Phil had a direct line of communication to General Hendrik van den Bergh – the head of BfSS – as is borne out by th e following:
That evening Phil got in his Ranchero and drove throughout the night to Pretoria, where he saw General Van den Bergh the next morning. The Regional Rep was overruled by Van den Bergh and Phil was back in Cape Town later that evening. Hennie Botha never ‘f***ed’ with Phil again…
The Smits
Killing the enemy, I expressly do not use the word ‘murder’, was probably something that came easily for ‘Delta Victor’ (Verwey). He received the SA Police’s highest medal for bravery for some operation in Zambia/Botswana. It was done in the Commissioner’s office, as no mention was made about it in ‘dispatches’. He was heavily involved in the Portuguese PIDE effort in Mozambique against FRELIMO, and this was a ‘no holds barred’ war by a desperate and cruel Portuguese Military Dictatorship. (I do not criticize his/the Portuguese’ actions, and I would have followed a similar course of action, had I been involved at the time).
His other partner in the “Smit affair” was most probably Phil Freeman. I have thought about long and hard about the Smit murders since 1996 when the allegations of my involvement – as well as that of Phil and Verwey – arose in the SA media. The following is a possible set-out for what transpired:
– Phil drives up from Cape Town and meets Verwey at a motel on the East Rand where a room is booked in a false name. He would have used his subsidized vehicle with false plates. This way, there would be no air ticket records, and Phil would have disconnected the speedometer on his BfSS subsidized vehicle so as not to have to explain excessive mileage.
– Phil travels overnight, arriving mid morning and sleeps for most of the day. Verwey arrives late afternoon, and they go over the final planning for the mission in the motel room – consuming takeaway food Verwey supplied. Verwey has a stolen car that they use for the mission, and he provides the weapon/s. (There would be no drinking before the “Ops”).
– After completion of the mission, they return to the Motel, to shower and get rid of their bloodstained clothing. Both have one celebratory ‘dop’ of Whisky, and then Verwey drives the car to a remote area adjoining a black township on the West Rand, where he torches the vehicle. Phil then drops him off at his ‘official’ vehicle safely parked somewhere in Springs or environs.
– Verwey goes back home to Pretoria and Phil drives back to Cape Town, arriving in the early hours – and phoning in ‘sick’ to take the day off to rest. Phil would not have left the contaminated clothing in the stolen vehicle they set alight, just in case it did not burn out properly. He would have taken it with him, and stopped somewhere in the middle of the desolate Karoo. He would have completely burnt it out with petrol, then stirred the ashes and burnt it again.)
Conclusion
It was only about 10 years after the Smit murders, whilst I was stationed in Oshakati with the SADF, that an old friend from my SB days in Cape Town, now a Major with the SB in Oshakati, mentioned to me that he had been approached by the investigating team in the Smit murders in 1977 about my possible involvement in the murders.
They apparently thought I might have done it if Robert Smit (who was a real ‘ladies man’) had been having an affair with Ida, whilst she worked for him. They wanted to clandestinely search my apartment in Silverton, where Ida and I were living in 1977/8. I am unaware if they did, in fact, do so.
Phil Freeman was a fierce anti-Communist and a true patriot of South Africa and Western values. He was neither a criminal nor a thug!! I personally cannot see him becoming involved in something like this, just for the sake of protecting corrupt members of the National Party who might have been transferring Government monies to off-shore accounts for their personal enrichment. He was vehemently opposed to both the Broederbonders and the Freemasons, who seemed to have a 50/50% following in the SA Police/BfSS at the time.
The whole matter changes radically however, if he were told that Smit was working for the Soviet Union. Then he would not have had any qualms in killing them both.
Many earlier versions allege that there were four individuals involved: Dries Verwey, Phil Freeman, myself and another founder-member of the Police Special Task Force.
However, only two persons were required for this operation! Two would be the safe number in the event of unforeseen complications – which could possibly overwhelm a lone operator. Additional unneeded team members would only serve to complicate matters and potentially compromise the security of this “event”.
Later allegations by ex “NI” and SAP clowns like Taai Minnaar, Ponnie Van Vuuren, Vuil Oosthuizen and others, of “cleaner squads” sanitizing the scene after the “event” – and Smit’s briefcase being seen in Verwey’s safe – are utter rubbish! Crooks like Minnaar were solely motivated by greed and self-enrichment.
I also discount the view that the murders were carried out by a foreign hit squad. History is littered with examples of instances where somebody employed another to kill someone. And after the killing the murderer kept returning for more ‘silence money’, before eventually spilling the beans. There was all the more reason for the ‘hired killers’ to come out and own up to the story after the National Party transferred power to the ANC in 1994. Yet all that has been heard is a deathly silence.
In around 1977/8 Phil and his wife emigrated from the RSA to Brittany in France. They returned to South Africa sometime in the mid-1980s. I was in the SADF in South West Africa at the time and only remade contact with him in the early 1990s. I last saw Phil in Cape Town in 1992/3, when I was working for the Military in Pretoria. My work took me to Cape Town over a weekend, from time to time, and I would invariably enjoy a Sunday lunch and visit, with Phil and his charming wife, before flying back to Johannesburg.
Phil never referred to this matter during the course of our conversations. The ‘protocols’ in the intelligence services are, never to raise sensitive subjects like these – unless they were raised by the ‘operator’.
In conclusion I am, sadly, of the opinion that the Smit murders will never be solved. This is a pity for their children who would like some closure on the matter – and my heart goes out to them…..
The reasons that I believe this are twofold:
– It was the “perfect murder”, executed by professionals,
– The perpetrators are all dead…[1]
Postscript
My main purpose for compiling this narrative is simply to offer a possible explanation of how this criminal event could have occurred.
I believe that the persons mentioned above were in all probability the perpetrators of the murders. And by association with them I include myself. (The fourth member has been- unfairly and wrongly – dragged along due to his association/friendship with me… Exactly as I was due to my association/friendship with Verwey/Freeman…)
I am quite frank when I state unequivocally, that had I been involved I would now admit to it and face the appropriate sanction. As an Atheist, my imminent mortality does not bother me, in the least…. It is rather more an issue of what is right…..
Hopefully, somebody reading this, and who had some knowledge of the ‘matter’ will, on reading this, decide to break the ‘log-jam’ and tell what they know. Possibly a Police investigating officer at the murder scene, or some other bureaucrat within the Civil Service who had privy to this matter?
I believe that “you’ owe it to yourself, South Africa and the Smit children…….
Decades have since passed since the Smit murders. At the Truth and Reconciliation Comission hearings, the couple’s death was formally recognised as a politically motivated murder.
To this day, the murders remain unsolved.