/ 29 May 2008

A family betrayed

Marius Schoon, father of the murdered Katryn Schoon, died in February 1999 of lung cancer at the age of 61. He had still not forgiven Craig Williamson, a man he once considered a friend.

After returning to South Africa from exile in 1991 Schoon spent his final years working at the Development Bank of South Africa.

A veteran anti-apartheid activist and a member of the South African Communist Party, he served 12 years in jail for attempting to blow up a police station in Johannesburg. During that time his first wife died, leaving him with one daughter.

Jeanette Curtis became his second wife, a relationship which developed even though the couple were not legally allowed to meet because both were banned.

They fled to Botswana and then, concerned about attacks that had claimed the lives of many anti-apartheid activists in that country, moved to Angola. Marius was teaching there in June 1984 when a parcel addressed to the Schoons was intercepted, convertd into a bomb, and sent on to their home in Lubango, where it killed Jeanette and their daughter, Katryn.

Jeanette, one time archivist at the South African Institute of Race Relations and a an anti-apartheid activist from her university days, met Williamson when he infiltrated anti-apartheid activist circles.