She walked up to me as I was drinking my coffee. I was watching the entrance, waiting for a former police intelligence operative who called herself Amber. Smiling as she neared me, she pushed her hand towards me and simply said: “Dennis.”
We had an appointment. I was at the rendezvous for the first of our two meetings ahead of the scheduled time. I did not indicate what clothes I would wear, neither did I describe what I looked like. The experienced intelligence operative that she was, Amber had researched me and knew what I looked like. Our interview was facilitated by David Africa, author of Lives on the Line, the recently released riveting book that gives a fascinating insider’s view of how police intelligence in the Western Cape infiltrated and smashed the heart of the urban terrorism group, People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) in 2000.
The watchful Amber is mindful that some hardliners in Pagad to this day desire the most brutal form of retribution against her and thus she cannot be identified. Amber was reared on the Cape Flats and went through the so-called coloured apartheid education system. She possesses the gift of looking at groups under investigation and intuitively identifies deeply placed individuals who can be turned to spy on their unsuspecting group members. One of her biggest coups was to identify a key man who could be turned into a source of reliable information about the terrorist organisation that wanted to turn the toddler democracy that was South Africa into an Islamic republic.
Pagad started off seemingly innocuous as a group that wanted to protect Cape Town communities against gangsters and drug lords. However, this was a front to draw in ordinary people who were not aware that the group was urban terrorists who wanted to overthrow the government. Pagad became notorious as they ruthlessly eliminated anyone who stood in their way. Dangerous threats were levelled against police officers including David Africa and Anwa Dramat, members of the judiciary, as well as a senior cabinet minister, Dullah Omar, the minister of justice. They were becoming a very dangerous threat to democracy, even placing pipe bombs at popular restaurants.
The police were aware of a prominent Pagad killer who used to be a drug addict whom the leader of Pagad’s hit squad or G-Force, Abdus Salaam Ebrahim, had spotted and recruited in 1998 at a Pagad drug rehabilitation centre in Athlone. “Abdus was good at recruiting recovering addicts. He’d take them on hikes. He’s win them over with ideology. Once he was inside their heads, they joined the G-Force and were turned into killers.”
Ruthless, efficient and prolific, this killer diligently carried out Pagad’s instructions. Police intelligence officers in the Western Cape, however, could not figure out who this man was.
The police first heard of his killings as officers listened to and transcribed recordings of intercepted conversations between Pagad terrorists. Yet they had no face, no idea of who he was, where he lived, and how he operated, or from whom he got his orders to kill.
On Sunday, August 4 1996, in a brazen act of “f*ck the government” defiance, Pagad marched to the Salt River house of notorious Hard Livings gang leader Rashaad Staggie. He was lynched. Gruesome photographs of him being set alight made headlines across the world. The ANC government under then-president Thabo Mbeki demanded an immediate breakthrough against these terrorists.
They believed I was available for sex. I added excitement to their fantasies by phoning them from payphones. I claimed that I was doing so to keep my husband from overhearing our conversations. Each time I phoned one of them I went into a role that my cover at the time required. I could sound sexy, nervous or demure
— Amber
Police intelligence was frustratingly short of reliable information from deep inside Pagad. The urban terrorism group had a chilling, effective rule: those caught spying for the enemy, which was the government, would be eliminated. Not only them, but those close to them like family members as well.
Amber recalled how she had recruited and managed a few low-level sources inside Pagad. In those days before cellphones she used a series of public telephone call boxes in Cape Town’s southern suburbs to stay in touch with them. None of them knew her identity and believed she was a married woman who had marital problems and was looking for a lover.
Said Amber: “They believed I was available for sex. I added excitement to their fantasies by phoning them from payphones. I claimed that I was doing so to keep my husband from overhearing our conversations. Each time I phoned one of them I went into a role that my cover at the time required. I could sound sexy, nervous or demure.”
Yet the big catch was not near being landed. Pipe bomb explosions, murders and threats escalated.
In 2000 came the crucial break that crime intelligence desperately needed. In our interviews, Amber talked about this accomplishment for which she will never be publicly acknowledged or honoured.
What happened was that Amber sensed potential in a certain Pagad member and with Africa arranged a meeting with him. He climbed into their vehicle armed with a gun. “When he started talking we realised with a shock that we were in the car with the faceless, nameless killer we had heard on the tapes. We remained steady.” This terrorist admitted during that meeting to having been directly involved with killing 30 people. According to Africa’s book, this killer stopped counting when he reached this number in his unbridled orgy of mass murder.
At that first tense meeting they did not sway this man to become a source inside Pagad. A second meeting was held. There they presented him with “evidence” that could earn him a lifetime in jail, away from his family. He then agreed to become a source and was given the code name Riverside. He later became a state witness at the Pagad trials and his crucial evidence led to major convictions that decimated Pagad. Riverside and his immediate family were subsequently given new identities and relocated abroad.
Dramat later became the head of the Directorate of Priority Crimes Investigation (Hawks). An officer of integrity, he was forced to resign by the machinations of a pro-Jacob Zuma faction in SAPS when he showed an interest in investigating state capture.
Africa went on to become an internationally recognised expert in intelligence and has, among others, worked for the UN in Iraq. He is the executive director of the African Centre for Security and Intelligence Praxis, a think-tank specialising in national security and intelligence.
And Amber? Why did she choose that code name? Chuckling, she said, she chose her it from the English traffic rhyme that says the colour amber warns people to get ready. “I warned Pagad that I was coming. They didn’t listen,” said one of the unsung heroes of our democracy as she walked away from our second interview — still a SAPS member. Years after Pagad was broken her life is still on the line.
• Dennis Cruywagen is the author of Brothers in War and Peace and The Spiritual Mandela. A former deputy editor of Pretoria News, he is a Nieman Fellow, as well as a Mason Fellow at Harvard University
For opinion and analysis consideration, e-mail Opinions@timeslive.co.za
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