The presenter of a new television programme on food was part of the world of people who carried out some of the most ghastly deeds in the name of the apartheid state Terry Bell The new food and travel programme on e.tv has almost certainly attracted an unlikely niche audience: a small group of Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) watchers and former investigators along with a larger group, including some of the most notorious names from our recent, sordid past. For the host of Off at a Tangent (Saturday at 6.05pm) is none other than Paul Deans. Deans, balding, portly and booming with brash bonhomie, is the man who for years provided one of the main meeting places for security force operatives in what is now Gauteng. He featured it prominently in his first programme last Saturday, but only as “my farm” where he cooked quail and risotto for a group of guests. The “farm” is, in fact, the site of the Hertford hotel, restaurant and pub tucked away in an idyllic, wooded setting to the west of the highway leading to Lanseria airport. This is the airstrip located between Pretoria and Johannesburg, which was once the secret send-off point for everything from weapons, poached rhino horn, ivory and illegal diamonds to unwanted bodies destined for high-flying burial at sea. When the manne had done their grisly or illegal business, they could relax in the bar of the Hertford and swop tales with their colleagues. Deans was very much part of this closed world of men and a few women who carried out some of the most ghastly labour in the name of the apartheid state. That he played such a role was scarcely surprising since both his stepsons, Paul and Mark Asmussen, were Special Branch men.
They were also former school friends of letter-bomb killer Craig Williamson, who moved from the police to the military where he set up propaganda “fronts” such as the Security Forces Support Committee (SFSC). Deans played a role in the SFSC, which was sponsored by Paul Asmussen. The chair of the committee was another former schoolfriend and close confidant of Williamson, Jonty Leontsinis, owner of a nursery down the road at Fourways and who was to flit briefly through the TRC limelight in an affidavit by former Vlakplaas boss Eugene
de Kock. All, at various times, gathered in the restaurant or pub at the Hertford. Twenty years ago newspapers tended to prefix references to the Hertford with the phrase: “Well- known security police haunt”.
But for those really in the know the Hertford was much more than a drinking hole, much more than a retreat for hard men who had spent a hard day thrusting electrodes into various orifices or who still wore the bloodstains of their latest labour. It was, until 1980, the base for a police-run and -sponsored African National Congress escape route, largely financed with funds stolen from anti-apartheid donations. Established by security police chief Johan Coetzee and Craig Williamson, it was run for most of the time by police spy Karl “Zac” Edwards who, during that period, lived in a cottage in the grounds of the Hertford. It was during this time too, that R100E000 intended for community development in South Africa, ended up in the bank account of Karl Zachary Edwards. Much other money, intended for anti-apartheid projects and for the victims of the system, was funnelled through two trusts controlled by Williamson’s sister Lisa and in which the Asmussen brothers played a part. Lisa Williamson also had a role in the “escape route” to Botswana. How many travelled on this route and how many may not have arrived is not known. Pre-programme publicity promised that Deans would take us to historically or scenically interesting places where he would “cook, eat, do extraordinary things and meet interesting people”. Much more tantalising was the additional promise that “a pinch of history is thrown in for spice”. Recent history during the bloody, corrupt and dying days of apartheid would indeed have added spice. Deans and the Hertford were at the centre of one of these vortices. But the only history that Deans dealt with was the beans and bully beef diet of British soldiers stationed near Hartebeestpoort dam during the Anglo-Boer South African War. Just as close to home he could have visited that historic braai and potjiekos venue on the banks of the upper Hennops river, known as Vlakplaas. But that would hardly have been off at a tangent.