kill me’ A Witbank lawyer claims he is on a farmer’s hit list because he is a ‘big white communist’ and that there had been attempts on his life in the past Thuli Nhlapo The South African police’s special investigating unit, the Scorpions, is investigating a case of a Witbank lawyer who claims he was poisoned by security officers for being too left wing. Scorpions investigator Neel de Lange confirmed this week that the unit is working on the case, after being contacted by the lawyer, Hilmer Kruger, but declined to divulge details of their progress. Kruger said a police informer had told him that his coffee was spiked with poison in 1989 when he was representing Soweto taxi owners whose vehicles had been illegally confiscated by the Protea vehicle unit. Erika Olivier, a former journalist of the now defunct Transvaaler newspaper, who investigated the matter at the time, disclosed that taxi owners were conned into paying R950 for their vehicles to be released after a receipt on which “brought to book” was written was handed to the station commander. Kruger said he tried to alert senior police officers to the scam but the confiscation of vehicles continued until he contacted the chief of the motor vehicle theft unit, Basie Smit. Smit promised to deal with the matter but, Kruger said, asked him to first submit a written report and to keep their discussion a secret. According to Kruger, a few weeks after reporting the matter to Smit, his health deteriorated. A Johannesburg-based doctor who examined Kruger confirmed he complained at the time about a lack of energy and responded like someone who was heavily drugged. The doctor placed Kruger on a drip weekly and prescribed vitamin tablets. However, Kruger’s condition worsened when he became disoriented and could not comprehend conversations.
Kruger said a Pretoria physician who treated him in March 1991 said he was “suffering from yuppie flu”. His condition deteriorated so badly that he could not stand on his feet and spent most of the day sleeping. Kruger was struck off the roll, he said, when he failed to perform his duties as a lawyer, and he relocated back to his parents’ home in Witbank. But at the end of 1993 he started feeling better and even accepted the leadership of the local National Party branch. He said his liberal behaviour led to a split in the branch and conservative members operated a competing NP office. In 1994 he resigned from the NP and joined the African National Congress. Kruger started practising as a lawyer again in 1994 but said he found himself despised by local farmers – possibly because by 1996 he was working more and more with land-claim cases, representing farmworkers throughout Mpumalanga – in Witbank, Ermelo, Bethal, Hendrina, Middleburg, Balmoral and Delmas. Since a 1996 case in Balmoral, where he represented Geelboy Mabena against a farm owned by Boer Republic Cooperative Limited, Kruger said strange things have happened to his family. His daughter’s life was endangered when she drove into a wall after someone removed her vehicle’s steering bolt. His practice has been broken into and all his back-up tapes wiped out. He also claimed to have received reports from a local farmer that his name is on the farmer’s hit list. A Van Dyksdrift farmer told Kruger early this year that a price was put on his head because he was “a big white communist”.
But not all farmers in Mpumalanga hate Kruger and some back up his claims. According to Albert du Toit, a Middelburg farmer, Kruger has fought for human rights without noticing the colour of the person, which is why farmers are out to kill him. Kruger said when he was poisoned in 1989, he was trying to prove that his clients had not stolen their minibuses as police officers had alleged. To provide facts, Kruger had hired David Klatzow, an independent forensic consultant, to examine the vehicles on his behalf. A copy of the forensic report reveals that vehicles were not tampered with.