A security police operation that allegedly defrauded trade unions in an attempt to sow internal dissent among “enemies of the state” is being probed by the international team investigating “third force” evidence uncovered by the Goldstone Commission.
The workings of Stratcom, a security police operation that reported directly to the State Security Council, came under the spotlight after a Johannesburg inquest court early last month concluded there was prima facie evidence that former security police captain Michael Bellingan was responsible for the murder of his wife, Janine, in 1991.
At the inquest it emerged Janine Bellingan had feared for her life, and had collected documentation on her husbands diversion of cheques destined for the National Union of Metal workers of South Africa (Numsa) a bank account he had opened in the name of Nicholas Umsa.
From evidence surrounding the murder investigation it appears that Bellingan’s activities were linked to those of Stratcom, which sources, believe continued to operate well after the reforms of 1990.
A neighbour testified at the inquest that Michael Bellingan had told him he had information that would make the activities of the Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB) “seem minor by comparison”.
Bellinngan denied at the inquest having opened the Nicholas Umsa bank account but said it was “quite possible” trade union money had been diverted — and justified the type of operation as “commendable”.
Stratcom is said to have been a national network which, among other things, ran an operation at Jeppe post office in Johannesburg where mail to trade unions was intercepted. The contents were sometimes substituted to sow confusion; sometimes cheques were diverted.
If the murder of Janine Bellingan was an attempt to stop her from exposing a part of the operation, it seems it was not the only time operatives were prepared to bloody their hands.
Sources say there is a strong suspicion a car bomb mentioned in the Goniwe inquest in which policemen were blown up after the Goniwe
murders, had “as much to do with the threatened uncovering of the diversion of union money as with the disclosure of Goniwe murder tacts”.
Counsel for the military fingered the security police at the inquest last year as having been responsible for the bombing-which was originally blamed on “terrorists” — to prevent the policemen from disclosing security force involvement in the Goniwe murders.
The inquest finding on May 6 came after a long delay. The investigation into the murder, Janine was bludgeoned to death at her Johannesburg home in September 1991 — was plagued by
obstructions and death threats to the investigating officer, Majore Steyn of the Brixton Murder and Robbery Squad.
Fingers have been pointed at security police (now Crime Intelligence Service) members, the police forensics division and even members of top police structures.
Steyn testified at the inquest that he had received a number of telephonic and written death threats to himself and his family, that he had been refused access to operatives who had claimed to have been with Bellingan at a “safe house” in Pietermaritzburg shortly before his wife’s death, and that he had been ordered to discontinue a line of relating to documents on the Numsa scam Janine Bellingan had left in a locker.
Steyn also testified a ginger hair he had found at the murder scene, believed to have been from Bellingan’s beard, had “disappeared after it was sent for forensic analysis. Bellingan is still a free man.
This week Witwatersrand attorney-general Klaus Von Heres and Wilkau had made no decision yet to prosecute, although his office is aware that Bellingan went to New Zealand a few weeks before the inquest to look for a job.