‘Martha knew in general terms what had happened, but she had all kinds of detailed questions about the affair. She was clearly excited about something, and what I was telling her was just making her more excited. Then she asked me if I had heard of the Laagerbond. I told her I hadn’t. I asked her what she was up to, and she said she would tell me, possibly very soon. She said it was something big, something I would want to write about. She said she could trust me to get the story out, however difficult it was.’
‘You mentioned that that was the first you heard of the Laagerbond. You heard more later?’
‘Yes. Not much, just rumours. You know about the Broederbond?’
‘Only a little. Tell me.’
‘The Broederbond is a secret society set up after the First World War to further the cause of Afrikaner culture in South Africa. Of course, when it was founded the main threat was from the white English-speaking South Africans. But it was the Broederbond that developed the concept of apartheid; all the important members of government were in it and by the 1980s there were at least 10,000 members. It was the Afrikaner establishment. It became a kind of government think-tank; most of the policies of the National Party were dreamed up by Broederbond committees.
‘Now, the rumour is that the Laagerbond is some kind of ultra-secret cell within the Broederbond itself. It has a limited membership and it has power. Power over what, no one knows. Conspiracy theorists love it, but no one has been able to turn up any hard evidence. No one is even sure who any of the members are, although there seems to be some agreement on the founder.’
‘Who was that?’
‘Dr Nico Diederichs. He was Minister of Finance in the seventies and then state president. He was an important Broederbonder who studied in Nazi Germany in the thirties. He died in 1977 but apparently the Laagerbond still exists. A friend of mine tried to write an article on it a couple of years ago, but ran into a brick wall at every turn.’
‘Any idea what the purpose of the organization is?’
‘None.’
‘I read a reference to it from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission records, in which it mentioned that a Colonel Retief was a member.’
‘Colonel Retief? That wouldn’t surprise me. He was one of South Africa’s spymasters during the seventies and eighties. He was probably involved in recruiting Beatrice Pienaar. A useful man to have as a member.’
‘What about the Broederbond? Does that still exist?’
‘After a fashion.’ George smiled. ‘It’s changed its name to the Afrikanerbond. It’s not secret any more, it even has its own website, and it seems pretty harmless. Its aims are to promote Christianity and the Afrikaner way of life.’
‘Just before she died, Martha wrote a letter to her mother saying that she had written some notes in a page in her diary marked “Laagerbond”. Caroline saw her copying something down from a briefcase belonging to one of two men who visited Cornelius at their house. One of these men was called Andries Visser. He had a limp. Do you know him?’
George sucked on his pipe for a moment. ‘There was an Andries Visser who was a senior bureaucrat in the Ministry of Finance. He had a limp.’ The eyebrows waggled. ‘Actually, he was a protégé of Nico Diederichs, if I’m not mistaken. He was always influential, but kept himself in the background. He’s almost certainly retired now, I haven’t heard anything about him for years.’
‘So he could be a member of the Laagerbond?’
‘He could well be,’ said George. ‘And the other man?’
‘Caroline couldn’t remember his name. She said he had a white beard and sticking-out ears. That’s not much of a description to go on, I know.’
‘It’s enough,’ said George. ‘That will be Professor Daniel Havenga. He was a friend of Cornelius, and Martha for that matter. A professor of journalism at Stellenbosch University. And the man who recommended Beatrice Pienaar to Cornelius.’
‘Another member of the Laagerbond?’
‘Who knows?’ said George. ‘You say they were visiting Cornelius at Hondehoek?’
‘Yes. Caroline says that her mother was agitated by what she had read, and scared. Martha’s letter mentioned a page in her diary marked “Operation Drommedaris”. Any idea what that might be?’
George shook his head.
They sat in silence, both of them assessing the new information, making connections. Calder glanced at the older man. ‘Were they planning another Muldergate, do you think?’
George drew on his pipe, mulling the idea over. ‘It’s certainly possible,’ he said eventually. ‘Visser could have organized the finance. Havenga was an expert on the media. The Laagerbond was set up by Diederichs who was intimately involved in the first scandal. He was long dead by 1988, but his protégé could have carried on his work.’
‘Remember Cornelius was in the middle of trying to take over the Herald in London.’
‘And he was making all those US acquisitions.’
‘But if Muldergate was such a disaster, why would the Laagerbond risk another scandal ten years on?’ Calder asked.
‘South Africa had changed by 1988,’ George said. ‘Things were more repressive: after three years of a state of emergency the government had much more of a grip of things. During the original scandal Eschel Rhoodie behaved like an international playboy: he charged apartments and boondoggles to the Seychelles to his expenses, and it was that as much as anything else that brought him down. Visser and Havenga could have learned from his mistakes. If the Laagerbond was set up as a secret cell within the establishment but not actually within government, it might be very difficult to find any trace of its actions. When Rhoodie eventually talked, he hinted that there was much more going on that he couldn’t disclose. Perhaps there was.’
‘But wouldn’t the ANC have found out about this when they came to power in 1994?’ Calder asked.
‘Not necessarily,’ George said. ‘The security establishment were diligent in destroying evidence. Some of it came out during the TRC a few years later; a whole new government department that no one had heard about called the Directorate of Covert Collection was discovered then, for example. But that was just a glimpse; a lot more is still hidden. There were rumours that Diederichs stashed significant sums from the sale of gold bullion in Switzerland. By the 1980s the defence budget had ballooned to many billions of dollars. Under the Defence Special Account Act this was protected from public scrutiny, so it was the source of funds for the purchase of weapons secrets from the likes of Israel and Pakistan. Why not for buying up foreign media?’
‘And the Laagerbond lives on?’
‘That’s the beauty of it,’ George said. ‘By then many Afrikaner nationalists realized that apartheid’s days were numbered. But because it’s not part of the government the Laagerbond can carry on supporting the Afrikaner cause after the fall of the regime.’ George puffed hard at his pipe. He frowned. ‘I can see why in many ways Cornelius would be the perfect person for these people to back. He’s really South Africa’s only international media entrepreneur. But I can’t see why they would think he would listen to them. He was always a major thorn in the side of apartheid, not a supporter.’