1983: Anton Harber, junior reporter at the Rand Daily=20 Mail, receives a tip off that two strange people are=20 paying a black man to distribute anti-United Democratic=20 Front pamphlets outside Park Station in Johannesburg.=20 He is told to expect another rendezvous at 5pm that=20
Harber goes to the meeting place with a photographer.=20 The men arrive and are obviously plainclothes police=20 agents. The journalists confront the pair, demanding to=20 know who they are. The next day the Rand Daily Mail=20 publishes a picture of the men trying to hide their=20
The next night, bricks are thrown through the front=20 window of Harber’s Yeoville house, the first of a=20 series of such attacks over the next few months.
April 22 1984 3am: Shots are fired into the front door=20 of Harber’s Yeoville home. A dead cat is left hanging=20 on the door handle.
June 1995: Former Stratcom operative Paul Erasmus meets=20 Harber, now editor of the the Mail & Guardian at a=20 secret venue and tells him: ”You are lucky to be=20 alive”. He says the shotgun job was done by himself and=20 Michael Bellingham, a security policeman since=20 convicted for battering his wife to death.=20
”Bellingham hated you for blowing one of Stratcom’s=20 first propaganda campaigns and you became a target for=20 dirty tricks.”
In the months that followed the shotgun incident,=20 Harber regularly had bricks thrown through his study=20 window. His car windscreen was smashed and he received=20 a death threat from an organisation called Omega.
Erasmus tells Harber that he and Bellingham were the=20 security branch officers in charge of ”Operation Omega”=20 set up to harass members of the white left in=20
Homes attacked included those of Helen Joseph, Sheila=20 Weinberg, Beyers Naude, Caroline Heaton Nicholls, Rev=20 Rob Robertson, Wolfram Kistner, Geoff Budlender, Roger=20 Lucey. All of these are anti-apartheid campaigners.=20
”These types of activities were encouraged by senior=20 officers in the security branch. Members were exhorted=20 to use any and all means to harass anyone suspected of=20 opposing the National Party government,” says Erasmus.
The attacks ranged from shots being fired at houses, to=20 the firebombing of buildings and cars, to ”jokes” such=20 as filling the vehicle of a Wits student with=20 polystyrene foam.
”Out of these type of dirty tricks operations grew a=20 formalised unit known as Stratcom, an acronym for=20 Strategic Communications whose operations eventually=20 intruded into every sphere of South African society and=20 were approved at cabinet level.”
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