David Le Page
It’s common cause, but Abram “Slang” van Zyl still doesn’t refer directly to the source of his notoriety, the Civil Co- operation Bureau (CCB). Rather, he refers obliquely to the “defence force”, it having spawned the CCB, the “dirty tricks” operation that begat so many dreaded and familiar names: “Staal” Burger, “Joe” Verster, Wouter Basson, “Chappies” Maree, Calla Botha and Ferdi Barnard.
Van Zyl has made headlines again by building a case against Colin Bower, under arrest for the murder of his wife last year.
The police were deadlocked in the case when the family called in Van Zyl and his colleagues last November.
On Monday Bower was arrested and charged with killing his wife, boosting Van Zyl’s reputation as one who finds justice when women and children are threatened by nameless figures in the dark. For Bower is not the first wife murderer to be fingered by Van Zyl. He destroyed the illusions of psychiatrist Omar Sabadia and Caspar Greeff, a doctor and dentist, that by hiring assassins they might get away with allegedly killing off their nearest and dearest.
It is not certain that Bower is guilty. But history suggests a conviction is in the offing – Van Zyl takes pride in gathering evidence that will swing a judge as much as it persuades a prosecutor.
Born in Tulbagh in the Boland in 1960, Van Zyl joined the police immediately after leaving school. According to an acquaintance, he was handpicked by Staal Burger to work for the Brixton murder and robbery squad, plucked to become a commissioned police officer from the notorious John Vorster Square where he worked as a detective from 1983.
Most of his time is now taken up with criminal investigations for major corporations, including Absa, which has, however, denied hiring him particularly for the surveillance of parties investigating the Bankorp “lifeboat” saga.
But about 10% of his work springs from the curious nature of South African family life. “I like to work on murder cases because of my experience. It’s interesting because very few murder cases are the same. It can become emotional because your clients sometimes request the impossible from you.”
The impossible usually involves finding evidence to support the arrest of favoured suspects. In the Bower case, “a very difficult investigation”, this was not a problem.
“I don’t think [the family is] delighted to hear that it might be Colin Bower,” says Van Zyl. “We looked at this very objectively. Our investigation had gone a lot wider than [Bower].”
Not surprisingly, he still gets along well with the police. “We’ve got a very good working relationship. Particularly with the more organised units, such as the murder and robbery units.
“From day one, we had an excellent working relationship with Sergeant Du Plessis [in the Bower investigation]. It’s nice to be able to assist the police in solving crimes, and although we have probably played a major role in the arrest of Colin Bower, without the [South African Police Service] we would have got nowhere.”
In 1988 Van Zyl left the police and went to work for the covert CCB, heading its Western Cape operation. The CCB has been implicated in the murders of Namibian lawyer Anton Lubowski and activists David Webster and Dulcie September, among others.
According to the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, “the objective of the CCB was ‘the maximal disruption of the enemy’. A CCB planning document described disruption as having five dimensions: death, infiltration, bribery, compromise or blackmail, and destruction.”
Van Zyl has applied for amnesty for plotting the assassination of Abdullah Omar, now minister of transport, and Gavin Evans, former Mail & Guardian journalist. He has also confessed to hanging a monkey foetus in the garden of Desmond Tutu, then Archbishop of Cape Town, and to exploding a limpet mine at the Athlone Early Learning Centre.
This varied experience has undoubtedly helped in his professional work for Incom, the private investigating agency he founded while working for the CCB. “I know better how the criminal mind works than most other investigators do. I can come up with ideas to obtain evidence … This particular matter is a typical example. The SAPS investigation had come to a halt. We identified people that were friends with [Bower]. We approached those people to find out if they were able to tell us something of value to the investigation. That proved to be fruitful.”
What lies behind that one innocuous word, “approached”?
If there is one quality that distinguishes Van Zyl it is a certain persuasiveness. A colleague describes him as a most accomplished torturer. Now his reputation probably makes those skills superfluous.
But in the late eighties he investigated the death of the son of one of Johannesburg’s most notorious gangsters. The two suspects were so badly tortured – burnt tongues and genitals – that the case against them was withdrawn, highly unusual at a time when the justice system was not noted for intolerance of forced confessions.
Van Zyl now regrets his past.
“I wasn’t a productive citizen,” he says. “I wanted to change that by providing [investigative] services to the community.”
He describes the difference between his values during his CCB days and now as being “night and day”.
“I thought what I was doing was right. I always considered myself a religious person. [But] my religion couldn’t have been right then.”
He now embraces the changes he fought so hard against. His client base is as broad and varied as the general population.
“I’ve got no problem with the [African National Congress] being the government. I’m 10 times better off than I was 10 years ago.” The same good fortune has rarely attended those with whom he has dealt.