BERNADETTE, WIDOW OF MURDERED FARMER DAVID HALL, TESTIFYING TO THE SOUTH AFRICAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION:

“POLICE NEGLIGENCE IN FARM MURDERS ADDS TO THE PROBLEM”

Caption above: two of the five farm-attackers went on trial: they were acquitted and can never be tried again, because somehow, the SA Police Service (SAPS) ‘had lost the forensic evidence’. The widow testified that she was ‘treated like a criminal by the court’ . She was never informed of her rights as a witness before or during the trial… Now, the widow often sees her husband’s murderers in town, she testified to the South African Human Rights Commission on 15 September 2014.

by Ernst Roets, Afriforum, 17 September, 2014 –

“FOCHVILLE — 20 February 2012 began as an ordinary day in the lives of David and Bernadette Hall. The Halls were milking cows on their farm, Buffelshoek, near Fochville.  There they were overpowered by five black male attackers at 6am.

Bernadette was tied up and assaulted with a blunt object. David was less fortunate. 

• After a fight with the robbers, who were just too many for him, he was finally on his knees. The lawn outside the dairy is where David breathed his last breath.  (Bernadette testified in court that two shots were fired through his brain while he sat on his knees in front of his murderers).
• The community was furious. Lt-Gen Zukisa Mbombo, Commissioner of Police for the North West Province, said at the time that ‘the police would not stop their search until the suspects were behind bars.’

DAVID WILL NEVER SEE HIS CHILDREN GET MARRIED…

“He will never have the privilege to stand back and see what he achieved in his life,” said Bernadette this week, testifying at the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC). “He will not see his children get married and he will never meet his grandchildren.”What is even worse, is the fact that the assailants are still walking around as free people and that Bernadette sees them from time to time.Below: she testified that ‘their faces are engraved in my brain”….The case was not thoroughly investigated. Several forensic pieces of evidence, including a jacket, cigarette butts and the cables that were used to tie up Bernadette, were found at the scene. Initially, the police did not confiscate these items  until they were confronted about it by farmers in the community. This proved to be in vain …(Two of the ) attackers were caught and charged with murder in court.  (above) There, however, the State could not prove a case against them because there was “no evidence against them:”Nobody knows what became of the (forensic) evidence that was found at the scene.  Virtually the only evidence against the attackers was the fact that Bernadette identified them during an identification parade.  “I was there. I saw how they murdered my husband. I know who they are,” she later said. “

NO FINGERPRINTS TAKEN OF ESCAPE VEHICLE:

The Halls’ vehicle in which the attackers fled, was also found, but no fingerprints were taken on the vehicle.

The two assailants were acquitted.  And – because of the legal principle “autrefois acquit” (double jeopardy) these assailants can never be charged with the same crime again, even if the evidence should suddenly emerge.

I WAS TREATED LIKE A CRIMINAL DURING THE TRIAL: WIDOW

Above: Bernardette Hall testifying at the Human Rights Commission, 16 Sept 2014 (video on YouTube Afriforum)

“I was treated like a criminal during the trial. It was very traumatic,” she explained. Her rights as a victim were never explained to her. Nobody helped her to prepare for the trial. In the court, she was attacked and humiliated by the assailants’ legal representatives.

But Bernadette is still on the farm. “Why do you not move to town?” one of the human rights commissioners asked her. “To farm is in my blood,” she replied.
“Since I was a little girl, I told my parents that I wanted to be a farmer. Nothing can replace the smell of rain and soil on the farm. One does not suddenly decide that you want to farm. “Farmers are born; people are not made into farmers.”

And then the dramatic statement: “I would rather stay on the farm and be killed than stay in town. I will not survive it.”

Today Bernadette is actively involved with AfriForum’s campaign against farm attacks. She not only supports it, but also takes initiative and arranges her own actions.

PROSECTION ALSO GUILTY:

It is clear, though, that the police are not the only culprits in the fight against farm murders, but that the prosecution authority is just as guilty. The SAHRC was very much aggrieved by Bernadette’s story. Yet, she is no exception.

Nearly all the victims with whom AfriForum are communicating, complain that their cases are not followed up, that files and evidence disappear, that investigators do not answer their phones or do not return calls and that victims are treated like criminals in court. AfriForum has undertaken to submit a further report in this regard to the SAHRC.

_______________________

Autrefois acquit: double jeopardy: “ Double jeopardy is a procedural defence that forbids a defendant from being tried again on the same (or similar) charges following a legitimate acquittal or conviction. In common law countries, a defendant may enter a peremptory plea of autrefois acquit or autrefois convict (autrefois means “in the past” in French), meaning the defendant has been acquitted or convicted of the same offence.[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_jeopardy

https://www.afriforum.co.za/police-negligence-farm-murders-adds-problem/

https://www.afriforum.co.za/polisienalatigheid-plaasmoorde-dra-tot-die-probleem/

ANC regime ignores trauma suffered by Somali captives Debbie Maritz and Bruno Pelizzari

– Their Somali captors ‘abused the captured Afrikaner Christian woman while the couple were held captive from  Oct 26 2010 to June 21 2012

Nothing illustrates the ANC-regime’s lack of compassion towards its 3,4-million Afrikaner citizens better than the uncaring way in which they treated Somali captives Debbie Maritz and Bruno Pelizzari – showing no concern for their well-being during their captivity; refusing the prosecute the Somali pirates when they were captured by the Dutch Navy – and ignoring the couple’s traumatic plight thereafter…

September 22 2014 – by Adriana Stuijt a.j.stuijt@knid.nl  ” The lack of compassion with which this white couple was treated by the ANC-regime after their 20-month ordeal at the hands of Somali pirates, is indescribable.
They were simply expected to ‘get on with their lives’ – even though they are poor. The couple did not even get sufficient trauma-treatment from their ‘government’ nor did they receive any financial compensation for their ordeal.

The couple have since split up, undoubtedly from the stress: as ‘whites’ they have to somehow survive in a country where ‘whites’ like them aren’t even allowed to hold down fulltime jobs – by law.
Debbie Maritz has been particularly traumatized: she told the Afrikaans news media that she was raped repeatedly by her captors and that they never gave her anything to wear except the swimsuit she was captured in. They treated this kind-hearted Christian Afrikaner woman with contempt. The Afrikaans woman reportedly now is in dire straights, trying to survive on the tough streets of Boksburg, unable to forget the terror of her ordeal. 

Yet when the Dutch marines moved in and rescued Peter Eldridge – the Richard’s Bay-based owner/skipper who had lodged himself in a tight corner of tchained himself to the yacht, determined not to get captured, the impoverished couple were worked for him as the crew were marched off at gunpoint during the firefight. Now that five of the Somalis, captured during the firefight, have been convicted and sentenced ten years in a Dutch prison, shouldn’t the Dutch government also be held partially responsible to try and get the couple – but especially Debbie – back on their feet?

Then there’s the South African regime – which has refused to prosecute the five captured Somali pirates after the Dutch Navy had offered to turn the pirates over to the South African authorities. That’s not surprising: the ANC regime also openly refuses to help any Afrikaner even when they are slowly starving to death in little squatter camps. At least one-third of the Afrikaner nation of 3,4million people are suffering severe poverty, according to Solidarity Helping Hand charity, which is struggling to keep these families alive.

These ‘whites’ are not allowed to work, not allowed to own land, must hand over any meagre profits of businesses they may be running to “ANC-cadre partners”, the Afrikaners are not allowed to even educate their own children in their home language of Afrikaans… Nothing highlights the lack of concern shown towards the Afrikaners by the ANC regime better than their horrendous neglect of the badly traumatized Debbie Maritz after she and Bruno were rescued by Somali military forces.

The South African regime couldn’t even be bothered to negotiate for this impoverished Afrikaner couple’s release.

I call on the international community to please help Debbie Maritz and Bruno Pellizari. Debbie is a badly traumatized woman whose ordeal was described far too briefly to the international community: after they had made their money out of the dramatic story of their release… everybody just ignored her, including her own government…

‘Somali security forces have rescued a South African couple kidnapped by pirates in the Indian Ocean’. http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/06/21/12343356-south-african-sailors-freed-by-somali-pirates-after-20-months?lite
http://sabahionline.com/en_GB/articles/hoa/articles/newsbriefs/2012/06/21/newsbrief-01

Video: Cruel court order forcibly removes 300 homeless Afrikaners to a rubbish-tip without clean water or schools – in high-crime Muncieville where they are threated with rape and murder…

Afrikaans story on http://krugersdorpnews.co.za/239694/video-hof-beslis-wit-plakkers-moet-uit/

What the court-order entails is that 122 very poor white families with an average monthly income of R300 from private donors, and without transport, will have to move with their 74 children and 24 elderly, first watching their well-built shacks being demolished — and upon arrival have to raise corrugated iron shacks overnight at a trash-dump in Muncieville, where there is no running water, no electricity nor any safety for the group.

•  To add insult to injury, this highly vulnerable group of Afrikaners must be moved by December 16 – renamed to “Reconciliation Day,’ under the ANC-regime but which the Afrikaners however commemorate as the Day of the Vow: 
• The Krugersdorp News interviewed the group shortly after they got the news of the shock-court order and their confusion, deep anger and outright fear is seen clearly on this video http://youtu.be/Wzj1CliwNvo 

These 122 Afrikaner families which have fought since 2009 to try and stay together as a cultural Afrikaans community, now are being forcibly removed. The ANC-regime now is going to force these Afrikaners to go and live on a rubbish-tip at the high-crime black squatter camp of Muncieville.

• Importantly, as has happened before at other forced removals of whites into black townships, the black residents of Muncieville also are ‘not pleased’ and have been threatening the Afrikaners with murder and issueing threats that their ‘women and children will be raped’. There was only one Afrikaner man seen on the video clip at Coronation Park squatter camp in Krugersdorp who said it may be a ‘good thing to be moved to Muncieville’.

Whites not welcome in Kagiso: http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2010/11/17/whites-blacks-fight-over-rdps

The threats of murder and rape also are based on fact: many black townships like these are infamous for its ‘jackrolling’ youth gangs which roam the streets looking for vulnerable young girls to rape, impregnate and infect with AIDS -deliberately. They call it their ‘fun’.

^{jackrolling youth gangs: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/teenage-soweto-girl-filmed-gang-rape-shows-330499}

Valiant, disabled gold-medalist athlete Irene van Niekerk, 16, has lived at Coronation Camp for past 7 years:

One of the residents of the Coronation Park internal refugee camp for homeless Afrikaners in Krugersdorp camp is the valiant young Afrikaner athlete Irene van Niekerk – direct descendant of the South African boxing champion Jimmy Abbott. Irene, despite having lost 8 toes in a fire-accident, still is a star athlete at her school.
She has been interviewed often by foreign journalists and is a charming girl, a natural story-teller. Her motto is: ‘ never give up’.

The Van Niekerks are the direct descendants of the Welsh goldminers who worked at the Witwatersrand mines from the 1920s and were imported by the British colonial government. Their extended family used to live at the Honeydew smallholdings near Randburg, north of Johannesburg. They  have always been known as the ‘ultimate survivors’ who were never wealthy, but formed a tight-knit community which helped each other in their daily battle to survive their tough working-class lives. Many ‘upperclass’ Afrikaners look down on them – often deriding these less-educated Afrikaner groups with the name ‘ma-plotties’ which translates to ‘lowlife black smallholders’ — for their survivalist, non-conformist lifestyle. It would be similarly derisive to calling white working-class people in the USA ‘trailer trash”.

News also arrives from other areas in South Africa that the ANC-government has clearly taken a high-level policy-decision to remove many of the sonamed ‘poor white squatter camps’ out of the public eye as much they can: the estimated 900.000 to 1million ‘poor whites’  are beginning to draw a lot of unwanted, international attention. There are ethnic-cleansing plans for ‘poor whites’ in other municipalities in South Africa such as Reitz in the Free State and Boksburg (below) – forcing these ethnic-Afrikaners from their life-long cultural areas into cultural groups where they are not only hated and being threatened, but their children also lose their links to their cultural heritage.

ANC is breaking the International Genocide Convention:

It is against the International Genocide Convention of the United Nations to deliberately alienate the children of cultural minorities – such as the Afrikaners – and force them to accept the culture of the majority. But that’s exactly what the ANC-regime is doing through their deliberate impoverishment of the Afrikaners – which forces them out of their own cultural backgrounds.

• They are denied any means of survival under their Black Economic Empowerment Laws which each year bar more and more ‘whites’ (ANC-code term: “Previously Advantaged Race Group”) from formal employment.

Ablution block at Kroningspark was their lifeline: now being taken away

Yet the tough-minded Van Niekerks and the 122 families who depend on them, all managed to survive everything thus far:  because they could fight it out together at the Kroningspark – with the local ablution block with its clean water as their lifeline to survival and staying healthy.

• It is very clear that the ANC-regime is busy with a massive ethnic-cleansing campaign against the most vulnerable, poorest segment of the Afrikaner community. Exactly how how vulnerable and endangered the Afrikaners like the Van Niekerk’s extended clan have already become – read our daily updates on http://www.censorbugbear.org/farmitracker/reports  Following is the translated report from the Krugersdorp News:

South Gauteng (‘Transvaal’)  High Court orders forced removal of 300 poor Afrikaners to a rubbish dump:
August 7 2014 – 300 poor Afrikaners -including 74 children and 24 elderly – forced to move to garbage-dump at violence-driven Muncieville squatter camp:  The Van Niekerk clan – descendants of boxer Jimmy Abbott of Randburg – have heard in the High Court that all 122 households will have to move to the garbage-tip at Muncieville by December 16, 2014, sonamed ‘Reconciliaton Day”. The Krugersdorp ANC-officials have allocated a garbage-dump at the crime-ridden black Muncieville squatter camp where they will be given some building materials so that they can ‘rebuild their community’.
—  Reported by Krugersdorp Daily newspaper Jacobus Myburgh en Amoryn Golden 7 August 2014     “What future will our people have here? We are going to die of misery (at Muncieville)’, said Kroningspark resident Maryna Lin. Some of the camp-residents attended the court hearing on August 4 2014 where the unidentified judge ruled that ‘all 122 households have to be moved by Reconciliation Day 16 December 2014.’ The Van Niekerks have fought their legal battle since 2009 to keep their community together at Coronation Park. The local ANC-regime wants to turn the site into a R22million ‘dreampark’. “We have been allocated a garbage dump at Munsieville. Give us rather another piece of land such as the Donaldson Dam near Randfontein where there are trees and playgrounds for the kids,’ said George Abbott. His wife Irene said ‘even that large open piece of land next to the Afrikaans High School Bastion would be suitable’. An atmosphere of fear now hangs over the camp residents. Several mentioned that Muncieville is far away from hospitals and schools, and that the white children would be at danger, having to walk long distances to school. There are no water- or toilet-facilities. What kind of future will we have there. We will die of misery.’ The residents also face having to lose all their basic donations for food and clothing. George van Niekerk says he gets about R300 a month and is afraid that their donors would not want to support them at Muncieville – a place where they know they are not safe: they have received death-threats from Muncieville residents before, and threats that ‘we will rape your women and children.” Adri Prinsloo 54 has lived at Kroningspark for more than a year and said she’d rather to to sleep ‘hungry’ than dirty – there are no ablution facilities at the garbage dump where the government wants the Afrikaners to go and rebuild their shacks. The oldest resident is the (grizzled, weather-beaten) Hannelie Grouws – she’s lived there for 15 years. She fears for her life and said the Muncieville squatters ‘will not accept us’. “Poverty doesn’t mean we aren’t proud, we want to keep ourselves clean at least’.
Her biggest worry is where they will sleep the first night after their first removal. “They are breaking down your whole house here at Kroningspark and then you have to rebuild it on the dump-site at Muncieville,’  she said. Residents are also expected to pay for their own transportation costs to the site – and none of them have that kind of money. Kroningspark was conveniently located at walking distance to town facilities. Some still have subsistence jobs which helps them survive nearby — and will have to try and find the money to transport them to work somehow if they are dumped in Muncieville.  Mr Van Niekerk said the ‘municipality has undertaken to provide corrugated iron sheets, nails and tools to ‘help them rebuild a new life’.

_________

sources:

Afrikaners of South Africa face genocide: http://beforeitsnews.com/survival/2013/03/afrikaners-of-south-africa-face-genocide-2467028.html

^{jackrolling youth gangs: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/teenage-soweto-girl-filmed-gang-rape-shows-330499}

^{Whites not welcome in Kagiso: http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2010/11/17/whites-blacks-fight-over-rdps}

^{Court orders forced removals of 122 Afrikaner squatter families to rubbish-dump in Muncieville – http://krugersdorpnews.co.za/239694/video-hof-beslis-wit-plakkers-moet-uit/}

Amazing South African gold-medalist athlete from a white squatter camp: http://beforeitsnews.com/sports/2013/04/amazing-south-african-gold-medalist-athlete-from-a-white-squatter-camp-2504658.html

Boers are dying in camps – again: http://censorbugbear-reports.blogspot.com/2014/04/boers-are-dying-in-camps-again.html

Murdered South African children are shot, stabbed, torched, hacked with machetes, bludgeoned with knobkieries, girl-babies are abandoned and toddlers die from sexual-abuse…

— In 2013, South Africa was rated as having more than double the world average for child homicides by the World Health Organization.

Above: Yet South Africa has signed and ratified the African Charter for the Protection of Children – but clearly are not protecting their children…

In 2011 and 2012 only 1,720 child-murder cases actually reached South African Law Courts:

During 2011 and 2012, only 1,720 child-murder cases actually reached South African law courts. Many cases never are investigated after the post-mortem, reported the South African Medical Research Council: noting that ‘child-murder cases following a post mortem investigation often end there — and are not investigated by the police’.

—  While South African children already are being murdered at a rate more than twice the world’s average by 2009, many cases are never even investigated by the SA Police Service after the post-mortem findings.
—  Some of these facts were revealed on 5 August 2014 in a reply to a parliamentary question, asked by Mike Waters MP of the opposition Democratic Alliance party.

The reply from the ruling ANC-party’s Minister revealed that the number of murder cases reported against children in the law-courts have soared:
— In the 2011/2012 SAPS-bookyear a total of of 793 child-murder cases were heard. But last year these rose to 827.

—  The Minister of Police, Nathi Nhleko also shockingly revealed in his reply, that these child murders were committed using firearms, knives, knobkerries, fire, machetes (he didn’t say, but should have said, that many girl-babies were abandoned or died from sexual assault due to witchcraft-practices).

— Important to note here is that ANC-minister Nhleko’s sampled data only takes into consideration those child murder allegations that have actually reached the law-courts between 2011 and 2013. It’s not known how many people were actually sent to prison from those cases – that’s the next parliamentary question to be posed.

“A Multitude of Child-Murder cases Never make it to Court…”

Above: MP Diane Kohler-Barnard commented that ‘it is certain that there are a multitude of child murder cases that never make it to court due to bungled investigations and a generally over-stretched South African Police Service (SAPS). The true number, including those cases that aren’t even reported, could be significantly higher. In fact the South African Medical Research Council (SAHRC) has found that cases following a post mortem investigation often end there — and do not become subject to police investigation. It is deeply concerning that many parents have to deal with a criminal justice system that does not produce the justice they deserve. Every single one of these murders must reach a court of law and hopefully a successful conviction. We also need to improve the SAPS’ ability to stop these murders from taking place.
“We will be submitting further parliamentary questions to ascertain:
— How many of these murders resulted in successful convictions;
— How many were acquittals; and
— And how many never made it to court on account of lack of evidence or bungled investigations?
“We must do everything we can to stop the murders of our children and to ensure that the perpetrators are successfully prosecuted.”
Statement issued by Dianne Kohler Barnard MP, DA Shadow Minister of Police, August 5 2014

World Health Organization: Child-homicide rates in South Africa is more than double the world-average:
(2013)  August 2 2013 SAPA and Independent Newspapers

Above: State-Mortuary samples from 2009 already showed that 5.5 of every 100,000 children were murdered in South Africa at that stage. (‘official’ population:  51million)

Pretoria – Aug 2 2013 SAPA – South Africa’s estimated rate of child homicide is more than double the global average, says a study published in the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Bulletin released this week. In 2009, 5.5 among every 100 000 children under 18 were killed. This was double the WHO estimate of 2.4 murders among every 100 000 children, but closer to the rate in other sub-Saharan countries. The samples were from South Africa’s state-run mortuaries between January and December 2009. The WHO conducted a retrospective study of female and child homicide cases.“The epidemiology of child homicides in South Africa” is the first such study in South Africa. Most of the 1,018 children killed in 2009 were boys.
—  The authors also said “South Africa was in desperate need of policies that adequately addressed the problem of male teenage violence.
“The most used murder-methods killing South African children were stabbing, bashing with knobkieries, slashing to death with machetes, and among girls: infant abandonment.
And many of the child murders ‘involved sexual assault” (*and baby-rape).

————————

Sources:
http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/sa-s-child-murder-shame-1.1556828

DA statement on Child murders August 6 2014:
http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page72308?oid=670817&sn=Marketingweb+detail&pid=90389&utm_source=Politicsweb+Daily+Headlines&utm_campaign=745c3f4bd9-DHN_Aug_6_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a86f25db99-745c3f4bd9-130023369

Map of African countries which have ratified the African Charter to Protect Children:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Charter_on_the_Rights_and_Welfare_of_the_Child

Die Sirkel – South Africa’s top-secret, derelict nuclear-bomb facility in Pretoria:

PELINDABA, South Africa. During the early 90’s South African President F W de Klerk abandoned his predecessor P W Botha’s  top-secret nuclear-bomb production programme.

     The 100 Afrikaner scientists and plutonium-enrichment experts who were building nuclear warheads for the country’s Air Force missiles left their top-secret concrete ‘Sirkel’ facility in such haste that some even left behind their uneaten sandwiches.  Rapport journalist Journalist Erika Gibson and  photographer Alet Pretorius were led around the concrete two-storey building by long-time Armscor worker Tim Smit, who had to light up the scene with a large torch because there’s no electricity inside the building any more.

     It’s this torch-lighting which is providing a very dramatic effect – highlighting the dark secrets of this 45cm-thick concrete building perfectly.  Alet Pretorius has produced some very powerful pictures in this series:

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67l7Ygg8uAA   http://youtu.be/67l7Ygg8uAA 

Alet Pretorius published this dramatic photo-series on her blog, writing: ‘phones and furniture were left behind and the building is eerily quiet .”

• http://havecamerawill.wordpress.com/2014/07/31/abandoned-nuclear-facility/
• http://www.rapport.co.za/Weekliks/Nuus/VIDEO-Ou-Suid-Afrika-PW-se-bom-20140726

Book:

A book was written called ‘Die Bom’ by retired nuclear physicist Dr. Nic von Wielligh. He was closely involved with the ‘Boerebombs’ programme. “Die Bom’ is published (in English) by Litera Publikasies, it is seen as the most accurate version of South Africa’s nuclear weapons abilities.  Von Wielligh’s daughter Lydia von Wielligh-Steyn helped him turn the complicated scientific explanations into layman’s language.

• ORDER FROM:  Litera Publikasies, PO Box 14690, HATFIELD 0028, Phone: +27 (0) 12 362 1561 
• Fax: 088 012 362 1561 Email:theresap@litera.co.za Cell: 27 0 8330397653039765 http://www.litera.co.za/books

Journalist Erica Gibson wrote in Rapport (July 26 2014):

“Very few South Africans know of the ‘Sirkel-facility’ opposite Pelindaba near Pretoria. And very few people know of the ground-breaking work undertaken in this top-secret facility – to build South Africa’s first nuclear bombs.
Pelindaba is South Africa’s French-built nuclear-research institute. The site used to belong to Afrikaans newspaper editor and historian Gustav Preller – whose deputy, legendary morphine-addicted writer/scientist Eugène Marais committed suicide with his shotgun in the shadow of a Karee thorn tree in 1936.

“The Sirkel building is a grey, windowless, concrete block with one entrance. It’s melting into the rough bush growth and the adjacent koppie next to the Gerotek test-site facility. The name of the building came from the circular track where Krygkor/Armscor, South Africa’s weapons-development company, used to test its military vehicles. The turnoff to the building was indicated with the sign ‘werkswinkel’ (workshop) to try and fool accidental passersby.

The security was tight: workers were driven there in white buses with painted windows which drove into the facility where every worker walked to his werk-station, said Tim Smit, managing director of Gerotek who has been at Krygkor for 41 years.Family and friends were not informed about the true nature of their work other than that the job was classified.
Workers at the Atomic Energy Corporation and Armskor were forbidden to meet socially.And they had to pretend to not know one another if they happened to meet by accident.

The head of security of Sirkel building had mounted an Uzi submachinegun beneath his desk for ‘quick use if it became necessary’. Today it’s very likely the country’s most expensive warehouse, a derelict from the heyday when South Africans were developing and testing nuclear-weapons. There’s no electricity in most of the building so our passage was lit with a flashlight by our guide Smit.
The walls are 45cm thick, with heavy electronically-operated doors to the gigantic safe. Nowhere, daylight could enter.

• This is the place where employees( all Afrikaners ) who specialised in enriching uranium at the Pelindaba facility, where using it to prepare charges for nuclear missiles and floating bombs.

Smit said one safe was still found locked up when ‘his people’ were sent in to find out what had happened to the building after (FW de Klerk) closed down the programme.

• “We drilled for a day and a half to get inside the safe,” he told Gibson.

She wrote: ‘The double-storey building’s ground floor was used to prepare nuclear-warheads and associated systems. There were eight dome-shaped isolated explosion-cells which would shoot open the roofs if anything went wrong with a test. There was very little time for any entertainment. The kitchen was small with a dining room where workers ate their sandwiches inside the building. They were not allowed to smoke: one little flame would have created a catastrophic explosion.

The rooms now contain the remnants of a damaged landmine-resistant Casspir-vehicle and a few written-off Oerlikon air-defence cannons. Its cold inside with narrow, curled passages to bar off the explosion-rooms even more. An emergency shower in one hallway bears silent witness to the radio-active material which was worked into nuclear-warheads.
Every other room is barred with another heavy safe-door. Once workers were inside they were only allowed back out in the late-afternoon when they returned home with the same white buses
with the painted windows.

There were no communication towers outside or on the building to keep the facilitity secret to satellite surveillance.

• Gibson writes; “Die Sirkel was opened in 1981 by PW Botha, then the prime minister, in ‘typical PW Botha style’. He referred to the country’s plow-shares which were being turned into a sword to force the USA and Russia to the negotiation tables.  He saw the bombs as bargaining tools and also to help give South Africa the ability to defend itself against the threatening wars along its borders.
  Botha wanted to give his country the ability to combat the foreign threat from the power base of nuclear bombs rather than having to rely on a power-base of black-politics.
  The nuclear bombs were seen by PW Botha as the key to a peaceful solution from sA’s international isolation.
• SA was fighting a war along its borders while the SA Air Force ‘s antiquated airfleet was sweating blood against the then-Soviet Union’s best fighter jets and powerful air-defence cannons.

Gibson wrote that “South africa found an ally when it built its nuclear weapons in Israel,” however she provides no details on what kind of cooperation was given by Israel to South Africa.

She wrote:

• The two countries had been allies during the mid-1970s and helped South Africa develop its own long-distance missiles similar to the Israelis Jericho-range – and South Africa tested its rockets in 1985 to the great consternation by the international community.

Initially it was only planned to build six nuclear warheads here but Eventually 14 were being planned for. Israel had to quit its cooperation due to heavy pressure from the United States of America.

The first nuclear bomb was completed in December 1982 – a Christmas present to PW Botha. Today the only material left in the safe-rooms are two external fuel tanks for a Mirage fighter jet.
When the Soviet-Union collapsed, the Angola border war ended and P W Botha died unexpectedly of a stroke.

• The country’s new president FW de Klerk took very rapid action: in 1989 the 100 workers at the Sirkel facility heard that De Klerk decided to end the nuclear-arms programme.
  South Africa thus became the only nuclear-power to voluntarily disarm its nuclear weapons and close down its programme. Decades of hard work ended with one pen-stroke.
  It went so fast that some people left there sandwiches behind.
• During the following five years, six completed nuclear warheads and one half-complete, were made inoperative and taken apart.
  The International Atomic Energy Agency in the USA confirmed in August 1994 that all the bombs were destroyed.
  (The nuclear-grade plutonium now is stored at a high-security facility monitored with video-cameras and closed down with safes which are under the direct control of the
  IAEA. The facility was broken into three times but the weapons-grade plutonium – enough to build 14 nuclear bombs —  remained safe).

Gibson wrote that ‘the last chapter in the nuclear-weapons programme of South Africa played itself out when the SA Air Force which was in control of the programme as its end-user, deciced around 1992 to take the weapons from Die Sirkel to an ammo-depot near Roedtan in Limpopo. The decision was never followed up on.

• The two Rapport journalists who visited the facility and photographed it completed their story with the claim that ‘this plan could have been part of a possible rightwing coup’.
  They didn’t provide any proof for this claim either.

A book was written called ‘Die Bom’ by retired nuclear physicist Dr. Nic von Wielligh. He was closely involved with the ‘Boerebombs’ programme. Written in Afrikaans and published by Litera Publikasies, it is seen as the most accurate version of South Africa’s nuclear weapons abilities.  Von Wielligh’s daughter Lydia von Wielligh-Steyn helped him to turn the complicated scientific explanations into layman’s language. http://www.litera.co.za/books

“Many rubbish stories have been publishedover the years about South Africa’s nuclear-bomb programme. “I try where-ever possible to provide the necessary documentation to prove the true version of events.  Where I didn’t have the answers, I also said so, ” said Von Wielligh about his book.

The entire article can be read in Afrikaans on:

http://www.rapport.co.za/Weekliks/Nuus/VIDEO-Ou-Suid-Afrika-PW-se-bom-20140726
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67l7Ygg8uAA