jail
Ferial Haffajee
The only son of Freedom Front leader Tienie Groene- wald, is in jail in Lisbon facing espionage charges.
Pieter Hendrik Groenewald, a former rightwinger and Wit Wolf – a spent far right-wing organisation – was re- arrested in August soon after being released after a failed extradition attempt by the South African government.
He was apparently found in possession of surveillance equipment by Portuguese authorities.
Groenewald is classified in South Africa as a fugitive from justice. He is also on Interpol’s wanted list and the director of public prosecutions’ office is considering appealing the Portuguese government’s decision not to extradite the former Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) member on murder charges.
Tienie Groenewald is a former general and an Afrikaner blue-blood. He is a member of the National Council of Provinces and serves on the Freedom Front’s federal council.
He refused to comment this week because he was on the election trail in KwaZulu-Natal. “I don’t want to talk about my son over the telephone,” he said.
The Transvaal attorney general has charged Groenewald junior with the May 1990 murder of two African National Congress members.
In a brutal assault that made headlines, two members of the Witwolwe stalked a car carrying three ANC activists: Petrus Mbakena, Simon Koba and Xavier Lekgoate. They forced the car from the highway near Mamelodi and shot at the three men. Mbakena and Koba died instantly when they were shot in the stomach and face. Lekgoate crawled into a ditch and played dead.
He lived to identify Groenewald and one Chester Brown as his assailants and they were arrested less than a week later by Colonel Suiker Brits. The two were given bail of R1 000 and Groenewald skipped the country to Portugal, abetted by what one insider called “his father’s connections”.
Six years later, Interpol traced him to Portugal, where he was living with a Brazilian heiress he married after his Pretoria-born wife divorced him. South Africa issued an extradition request and Groenewald was jailed pending the outcome of the case.
The attempt failed earlier this year because the attorney general’s office could not guarantee that he would not receive a life sentence. Portugal does not pass life sentences and will not extradite if the alleged offender stands the chance of receiving a life or death sentence.
“We spent hours and hours and hours on this case,” said senior prosecutor Christo Roberts, who is disappointed at the outcome.
When extradition failed, the South African authorities attempted to get Groenewald tried in Portugal on the murder charges. The request – which would have been similar to the Lockerbie trial – was also turned down.
Reports suggest that Tienie Groenewald has spent many hundreds of thousands of rands on his son’s defence. He has engaged Portuguese attorneys in Lisbon and the top Pretoria lawyer Adolf Malan, who also represented apartheid scientist Wouter Basson.
He flies to Portugal regularly to visit his son, who chose a different political path to his father. Tienie Groenewald is a former National Party member who has stayed in the system.
Pieter Groenewald chose instead to follow his uncle Jan Groenewald, a co- founder of the AWB, into more militant politics. A policeman by day, he became embroiled in the violent right-wing politics of the early 1990s.
But reports suggest that “he has calmed down. He is a reborn Christian now.”