Angella Johnson
THE rural Eastern Cape town of Lady Grey is so small you can still get someone on the phone by dialling the exchange and asking for them by name. So when local gun enthusiast James Thorne was peppered with seven bullets at his farm one Friday afternoon, it was not long before tongues started wagging.
They were not stilled by the drama of his 19-year-old daughter, Sweeny-pai Thorne — the product of his marriage to a Chinese woman – — walking into the police station at Aliwal North 80km away to claim she had pulled the trigger.
Police say they still do not know what prompted the fatal shooting of this former military activist under the apartheid regime, who had become a born-again African National Congress supporter.
Investigating officer Captain Hendrik Stapelberg said although the teenager has admitted shooting her father with a friend’s 9mm pistol, she has refused to tell him why. Neighbours believe a clue may be found in her father’s military background. A former member of the South West Africa Police, he worked as a security officer for a company in Lady Grey.
”He was an army man and highly disciplined,” explained his employer, Johnnie Hattingh. ”You might say he was a perfectionist who set high standards.” This has led to speculation that his eldest daughter may have snapped after years of being controlled by an obsessively protective parent.
Said another policeman close to the investigation: ”He ruled with an iron rod and kept track of his two daughters’ comings and goings. Even their friends were vetted, and they were not allowed to have boyfriends.
”If he went away to Bloemfontein, he would ring several times during the day to see what they were doing. I think in the end she just cracked.”
Although there have been rumours that she may have been reacting to some kind of sexual abuse, or that the shooting was politically motivated, the investigation has found no evidence to back them up.
Hattingh, on whose remote property Thorne’s Chinese wife Shirley, sister-in-law Maureen and youngest daughter still live (Sweeny-pai is staying with relatives), insisted such allegations were ”a lot of bullshit”.
James Thorne was shot from behind at close range, at about 4.15pm on Friday August 2 while standing in his kitchen. His daughter then allegedly travelled to the Aliwal North police station and confessed that she had pulled the trigger.
It is not the first time this spirited and troubled offspring of a mixed marriage which challenged apart- heid’s strict Immorality Act has found herself in the public spotlight.
In 1993 she made national newspaper headlines after she was suspended for refusing to take a biology test on a ”question of principle”. She told her headmaster at Barkly East school he had no place in the new South Africa.
She had already refused to go to Bible classes or take part in any religious celebrations at the Afrikaans school. ”I don’t like the Dutch Reformed Church, and the reverend was ignorant,” she told a reporter. ”He didn’t use his Bible properly. And he always used the Bible to support his politics.”
Her headmaster, Ivor Hillebrand, accepted her religious views, but said her refusal to write the biology test was a challenge to his authority. He called her a stubborn girl who became ”very headstrong if she can’t get her own way”.
But Sweeny-pai Thorne was suported by her dad, who believed she had been wrongly penalised and given an ”F” for failing to attend a previous biology test when she was sick.
It may seem strange that James Thorne, a tough- looking, taciturn man who said he felt comfortable only when armed, chose to take his racially mixed family to live in a conservative town that supported Afrikaner nationalism. But perhaps he felt their exoticism and reclusive lifestyle would be best tolerated in a rural environment. There is no doubt the family had acquired a degree of grudging local acceptance.
”They were quiet and kept to themselves,” said Hattingh. ”The wife is positively distraught over all this. In fact, the whole community is still in a state of shock. She was such a quiet girl.”
The family made an unusual coterie amid the predominantly white neighbours. James Thorne was king of the castle with four women at his beck and call. He had to leave South Africa to marry his Chinese wife, who under apartheid laws was considered black.
Sweeney-pai Thorne was born in Bostwana to avoid prosecution under the Immorality Act, and Nicole, now 17, was born in Zimbabwe.
The family returned to South Africa in 1989 and settled in Barkly East, where local farmer Niels Dippenaar gave them a home. They worked as caretakers in exchange for free accommodation and food. James Thorne supplemented his income taking outdoor enthusiasts on survival courses, which included teaching people to shoot firearms.
The full facts of the case and events leading to James Thorne’s death will only become clear should his daughter stand trial. The case is under investigation and the attorney general has yet to make a ruling. But one fact is clear: he loved and was proud of his strong-willed offspring. Perhaps too much.