| Notes |
- The Sunday Times, Cape Town, Sunday 14 Mar 2004
A Family Affair
There's a skeleton in every family cupboard. Caspar Greeff dusts off his and goes to jail to visit a cousin and a namesake
#I met Cousin Caz one summery Sunday inside Baviaanspoort Prison, where he is serving a life sentence for murdering his wife. His grey hair was neatly combed, his black shoes had been painstakingly polished and his handsome face was smooth; but he was a ruined man, one who had fallen a long, long way.
Before his fall Cousin Caz was a dentist in Kempton Park. He had a beautiful wife and a thriving practice and a big house with an indoor/outdoor swimming pool and three Mercedes-Benzes in the garage.
Now he shares a cell with 15 other men. When I met him he wore an orange jumpsuit with the word "PRISONER" written on it in bold black circles. He ate slap chips out of a Tupperware container, and he sucked XXX mints, which made his breath sweet as he told me of the terrible hand that fate had dealt him - he was, he said, an innocent man incarcerated for a crime he never committed.
Cousin Caz is my second cousin, Casper Greeff. He is family with everything that the word implies - handwritten names in the front of a big Bible, a twisted tree, the voices in your dreams, the DNA in your cells. Blood. Family is reminiscences on Christmas day, fading photos in a shoebox, all those stories about all those characters.
And boy, we had some characters in our family. Aunty Lorraine wore a negligee in the daytime and had the names of her 10 husbands tattooed above her pubic hair. She borrowed my mother's wedding dress for each of her marriages and was buried in it too. My grandfather invented a preparation called Wonderlike Groen Salf" ("Wonderful Green Ointment"), which was a mixture of Vaseline and wintergreen. He invented another preparation called Wonderlike Geel Salf ("Wonderful Yellow Ointment"), a mixture of petroleum jelly and sulphur.
Oupa Sakkie was a bus conductor who sunbathed naked at Graaff's Pool in Sea Point, where jockeys told him which races would be rigged. Ouma wore brown slippers and kept beribboned Maltese poodles and was a nurse at an asylum.
Uncle Paul held the South African pole-sitting record, Uncle Louis is a womaniser who once owned the southernmost fish-and-chips shop in Africa. Cousin Francois lived rough on the pavements of London and wrote a book on how to solve cryptic crossword puzzles.
And then there was Cousin Caz (full name Casparus Johannes Greeff, the same handed-down family name as my father's) who had - four judges concurred - hired a handyman to murder his wife. He then employed the famous detective Slang van Zyl to solve the crime. And solve it Slang did, leading police to the dentist.
Cousin Caz hired Van Zyl barely a year after the tough-guy sleuth had solved a similar case, that of the psychiatrist Omar Sabadia, who paid one of his former patients to murder his wife.
Hiring Slang van Zyl was, I thought, either utterly audacious, criminally stupid, or a measure taken by a desperate and innocent man.
I wanted to meet my second cousin and namesake, find out a bit about him, see whether there was anything of him in me, and that's why I was in Pretoria recently, speaking to Casper Greeff's sister Marie about family matters.
Marie is plump with a lived-in face and a halo of grey hair. She has the voice of a life-long smoker and suffers from asthma. "I've got this little pump that I use for my asthma," she said. "I'm lucky - I get five pompies every day." She laughed.
She was drinking Autumn Harvest crackling wine and on the table next to her glass was a pile of thrillers from the library and some filled-in crossword puzzles.
I told Marie that my father was addicted to crossword puzzles, and that my cousin had written a book on how to solve them. "I do love my crosswords," she said. "And Casper has become quite good at them too."
"I've never met Casper," I said, "but my father visited him in Kempton Park a few times. He told me that Casper had a parrot which used to mimic the sound of the phone ringing. Apparently it was so good you never knew whether it was the phone ringing or the parrot."
"Oh, that was Coco," said Marie. "Later he went to my father - your great-uncle Willie - who taught him to say 'Heil Hitler, jou stuk stront' [you piece of shit]. He also greeted the maid, Nomsa. ' Sawubon a,' he said whenever he saw her. ' Sawubona. '
"I remember your father's father," she went on. "He used to have a teapot under the table, so that he could carry on drinking and didn't have to get up to go to the loo." (When I told my father about this, he said, "No, it wasn't a teapot, it was a bucket. And he used to make me empty it.")
But Marie really wanted to talk about her younger brother - he is 56, she is 65 - in whose innocence she passionately believes. "Casper was such a gentle person," she said. "He's not a killer. He's more a lover."
Casper Greeff was "an excellent, excellent dentist" and an extremely handsome man, said Marie. One of his woman patients told her, she laughed, "that when Casper said, 'open wide', she didn't know whether to open her mouth or her legs!"
These days Greeff is not allowed to practise dentistry, but he is studying for his MA in Biblical Archaeology at Baviaanspoort Prison, where he is the " star pupil".
We talked about the trial and discussed Greeff's late wife Estelle, whose throat was hacked open with an Okapi knife so blunt that she begged the killer, " maak gou, maak gou [hurry up, hurry up]".
I said I was going to visit Slang van Zyl the next day. " Die bliksem [The bastard]!" Marie exclaimed. She gave me some documents relating to her brother's court case - Judge Johan Els's 131-page judgment, the grounds for leave to appeal, and the Appeal Court judgment. We agreed to meet at 7.45 that Sunday morning, when she would take me to visit Casper Greeff, my grandfather's brother's son.
That night I read the documents.
The murder was pretty straightforward, but Greeff's involvement was not cut and dried.
On Monday, November 8 1999, Estelle Greeff let two men into her home - the handyman Elliot Masango and his young accomplice Christopher Njeje. Masango, who had worked for Casper Greeff for several years, strangled Estelle. Thinking she was dead, he and Njeje put her body in the boot of her champagne-coloured Mercedes-Benz and drove to the veld near Cullinan, where they opened the boot.
Estelle was still alive. They hauled her out of the boot and Njeje slit her throat. They dumped the body and drove off.
Two days later Greeff hired Slang van Zyl to investigate what was then still the disappearance of his wife. It took Van Zyl just two days to figure out that Masango and Njeje had murdered Estelle Greeff, and the two were arrested on Sunday November 14. Masango took police to the body and said Greeff had hired him to murder his wife, with whom he had been having marital problems. Greeff was then arrested - but only after he insisted on getting "quiet time" to say a prayer and read the Bible.
Greeff denied hiring Masango - who had been sentenced to life imprisonment at a separate trial - to kill his wife, or in any way discussing her murder with him. However, Judge Els convicted the dentist and Njeje of murder. On February 23 2001, he sentenced them both to life imprisonment.
The day after reading the documents, I drove down Ontdekkers Road to a Roodepoort house where Slang van Zyl has his detective agency, Incom.
The private eye spent some time in the Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB), the apartheid-era "dirty tricks" department of the defence force. The CCB has been implicated in a number of murders. According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, "the objective of the CCB was 'the maximal disruption of the enemy'." A CCB planning document described disruption as having five dimensions - "death, infiltration, bribery, compromise or blackmail, and destruction".
But when I met Slang van Zyl he showed no signs of being an agent of "disruption" - he seemed more like a Hollywood detective. Tall and well-groomed, with a moustache, dark hair and perfect teeth, he shook my hand and said: "You almost look the same [as Casper Greeff]."
His impenetrable brown eyes held mine as he told me about the case.
"Casper is," he said, "not a criminal. He's a gentle, educated and I would say hardworking, ordinary South African citizen. It's obvious that he and his belated wife had marital problems... and I think that what his wife had done to him he couldn't make peace with. And in a moment of weakness he approached a worker and between the two of them they conspired to have her kidnapped and killed.
"H e's not the first guy and he's not going to be the last guy to think that the only and best solution will be actually to get rid of [his wife]."
"Did Casper Greeff pay you for catching him?"
"No. He never paid me and I don't expect him to pay me. My fee at that moment in time would have amounted to about R4 000. But it would have been to a certain extent unprofessional of me to have presented him with an invoice."
Van Zyl talked about his first meeting with Greeff. "The body language was wrong and he was to a certain extent uneasy, but he was quite confident.
"We sat down in his little pub in the house and he poured himself a whisky or a brandy and he wanted to know if I wanted one. I said to him, 'a glass of Coke'. He said to me: 'Listen, I've had lots of problems with my wife in the past. If it was like five years ago somebody could have blamed me.' But he said, 'Now we've sorted things out, we're happy and I just want to tell you I was not involved.' To me that rang an alarm bell immediately.
"You do get a lot of family murders in South Africa. Perhaps it's because they think it's the easy way out, it's perhaps from a financial point of view the cheaper way out. But at the end of the day it's a lot more expensive."
I told Van Zyl I was visiting Greeff in prison that Sunday and he said: "When you see him tell him I give my regards - not from a sympathetic point of view, I'm not arrogant - but I think that people make mistakes in life. I've made mistakes in my life and I'm just glad that I was given a second chance. Casper Greeff is not one of the fortunate ones, but I do hope that he will be given an opportunity at some stage to show to himself and prove to whoever still believes in him that he can be of value to his family and society."
That Sunday I woke up at six and drove along empty highways to Marie's flat. We picked up her friend Amanda, who was also visiting someone in Baviaanspoort - a boyfriend she met as a penpal while he was in jail.
"What's Amanda's boyfriend in for?" I asked Marie, when we stopped at a shop so Amanda could buy a You magazine.
"He's accused of killing his wife."
"And what's he convicted of?"
"Killing his wife. But he's innocent. Everyone is innocent there."
Baviaanspoort Prison is opposite a lush green mealie field, on the way to Cullinan, not far from where Estelle Greeff's body was dumped.
At the prison entrance, next to a trickling water feature, we waited to be searched. Ahead of us in the queue was another of Marie's friends, a pretty young woman with a pixie-like face.
"That's Manya. She's here to see Janu," said Marie.
"Who?"
"Janu Nortjé. He killed an old Dutchman and chopped his body up, then put the parts in suitcases and threw them out of a train.
"Janu is very charming and very good-looking, but he's a psychopath. He's one of the few guilty ones - he admitted the murder and he's got absolutely no remorse."
"How did Manya meet him?"
"Janu injured his knee, and she was his physiotherapist in the prison hospital."
We were searched, then we climbed in a minibus which took us through the prison grounds. We drove past brick buildings which were enclosed behind rolls of barbed wire and electric fences. Clothing hung from iron bars. We stopped near a red, H-shaped building - the maximum security section.
All the brown-uniformed Correctional Services personnel I saw were sucking lollipops. We sat on metal benches in a waiting room with a slasto floor. There was the rustling of plastic bags - everyone had brought something for the prisoner they were visiting. Keys jingled and a door opened.
"Casper Greeff." The warder summoned me and Marie and we entered the visitors' section. The iron door clanged shut.
In the room were many prisoners wearing orange jumpsuits. One of them approached me and Marie. It was Casper Greeff - a middle-aged, grey-haired man with rosy cheeks and hairless arms.
He smiled and shook my hand. We sat down and he said, "I want to bring back some honour to my name and to the Greeff name."
He spent an hour and a half trying to convince me of his innocence, taking me through the court case, attempting to refute the evidence against him.
"The stuff that happened to me is so unreal and so untrue," he said. "There's absolutely no proof of my involvement in Estelle's murder. No! No! There's one single witness [Elliot Masango] against me, and we've got at least 93 points where he was untruthful."
The room was filled with the sound of prisoners and visitors talking. Some of the prisoners were passionately embracing their girlfriends.
Marie was talking to Janu Nortjé, and she pointed at me. The killer, who looked like a rockabilly star, with his tall slender frame and little beard and sparkling teeth, winked at me.
I took a bite of the sausage roll that Marie had bought me, and turned back to Greeff.
"What about the appeal? You lost your appeal."
"My leave to appeal was granted in record time. Then it went back to the same building where the trial was, where all the judges are, where they all drink tea together. I'm not saying they're crooked, but hell!
"The Scorpions set me up," said Greeff. "I was their very first case ever, and they would look bad if I was acquitted."
"Why did you hire Slang?"
"A woman called me. She was supposed to be at my partner Dr Strauss at the time he heard of my wife's disappearance. This woman phoned me and told me how wonderful Slang was and that he would find my wife.
"Dr Strauss later told me he knew nothing about this woman."
My second cousin sat close to me, his blue eyes peering steadily into mine, and he touched my knee whenever he wanted to emphasise a point.
"There's not one fact in this whole thing. Whatever Elliot said was accepted. But he's the liar, he was the lying bastard all along. He ran to the Scorpions trying to get everything he could."
Greeff made various allegations about the judge, about his wife, about the legal system. He talked about points of evidence.
"Do you know about the pubic hair they found in Estelle's panties? They know it's not my hair, it's not her hair, it's not the other two guys' hair. Why did the police not investigate this further? Why was it never mentioned in court?
"People win appeals on one point, like the colour of the shirt they were wearing. I've got a thousand things, but they're keeping me here. If they now let me go they will look like fools."
Our time was nearly up, and Greeff gave me some papers, 31 handwritten pages. Most dealt with the trial and attempted to prove his innocence.
A few pages dealt with his state of mind: "There's never a single day that I lose hope that I will get out of jail. The day I lose hope, I will lose my purpose in life."
He told me again that he wanted me to help "restore some honour to my name and to our family name. It's a great family and it's a great name.
"I'm not guilty - understand. Not, never have been, never will be."
I looked hard then at Casper Greeff, my second cousin, whom I had met in such strange circumstances. I realised that I was a straw at which he was clutching. Is he innocent? Is he guilty? I don't know.
I said goodbye, and walked out into the sunlight. The grass was a brilliant green, and birds were singing. A breeze blew in the smell of pigshit from the prison farm. Someone was playing a saxophone; it sounded flat and off-key.
"What did you say to Janu when he winked at me?" I asked Marie.
"I said you're Casper's cousin from Cape Town."
"Is Janu friends with Casper?"
"Oh ja. They do crossword puzzles together."
Marie's friend Amanda was beaming when we met her at the prison entrance.
"Look," she said, and showed us a Valentine's Day card that her boyfriend had given her. It was the biggest Valentine's Day card I had ever seen - the size of a small child.
A few days later I was back in Cape Town and told my father about my experiences in Pretoria.
"Oh well," he said. "I'm glad you met some of the family."
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(Age 114 years) 