Stefaans Brummer
PRESSURE is building in New Zealand over the presence of a former South African security police captain implicated in the brutal slaying of his first wife.
New Zealand’s immigration service is now reviewing its file on Michael Bellingan, who left Johannesburg on May 29, three weeks after a Johannesburg inquest court found there was prima facie evidence that he was responsible for the death of his wife, Janine.
She was found bludgeoned to death in the couple’s Johannesburg home in September 1991 after she had started collecting information on an alleged “dirty tricks” operation run by her husband against the National Union of Metalworkers (Numsa).
Three-and-a-half months after the inquest finding, Witwatersrand Attorney- General Klaus von Lieres und Wilkau has still made no formal decision to prosecute Bellingan, but it is understood that “the wheels have been set in motion” to ask for his extradition from New Zealand — a clear indication that a decision to prosecute is imminent.
That Bellingan had been granted residency status featured prominently in New Zealand media reports this week and uncovered a raw nerve in the immigration ministry, which took heavy criticism from activists and minorities for granting residency to South African rightwinger Jan Smith in April.
Smith, a former head of the white supremacist Church of the Creator in South Africa, was allowed to stay after the New Zealand Immigration Service concluded it had no legal grounds to expel him, but Immigration Minister Roger Maxwell announced character checks of residency applicants would be tightened.
An Immigration Service spokesman said this week Bellingan’s immigration file was being reviewed. The service was looking at whether he had made appropriate disclosures on his visa application, which requires applicants to state whether they are under investigation by any law enforcement agency.
In a telephone interview with the Mail & Guardian, Bellingan this week maintained he was innocent and denied misleading the Immigration Service, saying his visa application had been lodged before the inquest finding.
He said from his home in Auckland that he would “be the first person” back in South Africa if he was prosecuted. He said he was planning to visit South Africa soon anyway and an air ticket had already been bought — and insinuations that he had “skipped” South Africa were “libellous”.
Bellingan refused to confirm that he had decided to make New Zealand his permanent home, saying: “Nothing happens in a day. One doesn’t just develop a new home overnight.”
He complained that he had been made “a pawn in a political game” and that “the whole thing has been very unfair on me and my family”. Bellingan is in New Zealand with his new wife, a South African Police Service employee, and two young children from his marriage with Janine Bellingan.