South African diaries of the 1980s (1st volume)

 

A poem from Pietermaritzburg, from  December 21, 1984

 

Where is freedom?
Did freedom ever exist?
Or was it just a trick, a strange, unknown promise
ready to break it at any time.

 

It's hot. Freedom melts in the crucible of power,
while the normal hero moves on, killing and laughing,
the South African people are awakening.

 

In the street, there is a dead man, a second bloody one next to him,
Flies swarm around the place without life,
this callous place,
Screaming and wailing, it was murder. It was murder!

The death of freedom goes around like a dark, unfathomable ghost,
is it the love of freedom that leads us to believe in it?

 

Marinella Charlotte van ten Haarlen

 

The "bogeyman" named Pieter Willem Botha

The Song is you - Jack Denny 1932

Kroonstad, Oranje Vrystaat, Republiek van Suid Afrika

 

Now I am sitting in this horrible hotel with thousands of mosquitoes on the road to Bloemfontein. Literally in the middle of nowhere. And I have to go further. The journey on the back of the pick-up yesterday was arduous.

I just called Harold at the office. Usually, the call went through the switchboard; probably the censor was listening. The line was cut several times. It's about 80 degrees Fahrenheit outside.

Harold told me to come right over. He can hardly believe I'm here. Harold's happy as a clam. If he even knows what a snow king is. Everyone speaks Afrikaans here; it's easy for me. Thank God, I learned. The coloureds speak isiXhosa, Bantu dialects and Fanagalo, which the whites here call KafferKitchen. That's pretty disrespectful. Subhuman is still the friendliest thing the hardliners here think and say about the majority of the population. Many locals seek shade under the trees along the road.

The Department van die Binnelandse Sake casts long shadows not only in the morning sun.

Moment of calm

I've never seen a breakfast like this morning in my life.

Must have been six eggs and a large sausage ring. It's called Boerewors. The meat was delicious, unlike in Europe. Better. Much better.

It was served with fried tomatoes, bacon, toast with salty butter, deliciously bitter jam, over which I drizzled a lime.
It can't be bitter enough.
The moon I saw last night is the same all over the world.

The black woman sat down with me, at the table by the kitchen. The black girl is alone; otherwise, it would not be possible. It is forbidden. Something like fraternizing, after the war. "Slegs vir Blanke!"
Whites only!
Because of Apartheid.
She comes from the town of Pietermaritzburg. In Natal on the Indian Ocean. The air conditioning hums and rattles. On the radio are ancient songs like Bert Lown - Loving You The Way I Do

 

Jambok

 

It's like a colony here. A pretty lovely but evil settlement. A bad colony. White men in blue uniforms are everywhere with their yellow emergency vehicles. There was sometimes the riding-whip pulled, but not against horses, but the black passers-by on the road.

In the night tanks rolled past in front of the window. Army for hours in earth brown cars until the dawn over the Kalahari. I listened to the radio, music, Springbok radio.

The woman who spoke Afrikaans, sometimes whole sentences in Fanakalo, with me, of which I understood only half, meant something like this:
"If you want to start a new life, you have to be strong." I was somewhat ashamed to have the right skin colour for South Africa from fate. It is a lousy dictatorship; I realized that after a few hours.

 

I probably drank a litre of lychee juice for breakfast and a large cup of very bitter, but delicious coffee. And this incredibly beautiful music, which is like honey in my ears.

After my adventure yesterday, I was quite happy that I could listen to music in the morning. This music from Jack Denny never goes out of my ears.

Yesterday I was still in Johannesburg, Egoli, city built on gold. Burning barricades on the road to Vanderbijlpark. Men lying in the street, dead. They were dead. They couldn't have been more dead. Brains and blood everywhere. Bone fragments. The Hiace's windshield shot out. There was a lot of ammunition and casings in the street. Poor guys' bodies were so twisted you'd think rubber men were lying around. Death is omnipresent here.

The almost hour-long approach to Johannesburg, to Germiston (Jan Smuts Lughawe), was gigantic. One could see the spoil heaps. Huge mountains, white and they shone in the sunlight—rays in the middle of the red, very sandy earth of Africa.
Now I am here. The fan buzzed in the same deep sound as the tank engines. It's a frightening noise in the middle of the night.

It is a frightening sound amid the silence.

And the song is in my ears again.

Tea in the shadow of Steve Biko

 

The editor took his time. He tells about the 1950s when he travelled across Europe. It's almost noon, we eat sandwiches with mayonnaise-chicken and drink coffee, lemonade, with lychee juice, which cures everything here. Then rooibos tea with milk and sugar. Nobody in the newsroom trusts anybody.

There's something in the air.

He spoke to me for a long time and gave me a phone number. A black woman served us tea with lemon afterwards.

A serious man who thought I should arrive first. The mistrust is all about Muldergate. -I'm supposed to call him in the next few days. He invites me to a Braai. And the Boerendans.

The Boer is a chain smoker of the worst kind. He smoked Lexington, 30 cigarettes was enough for half a day.

They say he's not getting on with the government in Pretoria.
There's a climate of fear. It's deliberate.

Which sane person can get along with Nazis who made skin colour the criterion of their politics?

He was arrested several times. I was warned that at any moment a jamboree unit could descend on the newsroom. Some wacko kept coming forward.

And, please?

My youthful recklessness amazes me. But it's an honour to fight against the Nazi edge.

SAP came and took away plenty of unpopular editors.

On the street, everything seems peaceful. SAP patrols.
Why not, thought the man with the riding-whip in his hand. The right hand was always sitting loosely on the holster of his pistol. Ever since the Potgieter Commission, the police's behaviour has been more like that of an informer.

"The murder of journalists is not unusual here when we think of Steven Biko."

I didn't know much about Biko. The editor gave me a folder with articles, Afrikaans and English.

Pieter Botha was like the bad man who came for you and nobody else.

I sit for hours at the Wawiel Bridge, reading, at the monument from the Anglo-Dutch Boer War.
There were concentration camps here that the British set up during the Boer War.

Here are still Nazis.

What do people do to themselves?

Living mummies are coming back from Angola. Soldiers who are only alive because they eat, breathe and drink and sleep, their eyes are blank. A few minutes ago, some of them passed me in a wheeled tank called "Casspir". Direction Welkom, Thabong, which sounds like a swearword to the soldiers.

It gets dark over the thorny bushes, which form the end of the Karoo at the edge of the city.

 

The hunt is on

 

"I'm here

16.06.19, 03:23 - +225 78 62 77 78:❤❤❤❣❣❣❣❣❣❣❣ ??"

 

An international gang has spread through social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others, organised from Africa. The Internet giants are very secretive when it comes to explaining what is being done to the victims in unspeakable verbal brutality by the offenders.

​

Now, however, after a victim filed a criminal complaint with the Justice Minister of the Scammer Paradise Ivory Coast, things look terrible for the perpetrators. Unfortunately, no statement was initially received from the police authority in Abidjan. This issue changed in the course of our research.

 

The concept is always the same.

 

​False French identity card of the "Anne Marie Giradet"

 

 

 

A beautiful blonde, a man's dream come true, lolls on a sofa and plays the princess. The photos originate from an internet account on Instagram. Unfortunately, the real person does not respond to inquiries.

Maybe the blonde is already dead, and this to make the identity theft perfect. In fact, behind the photos of the pretty woman, countless Africans are hiding, busily whispering love and collecting money from Abidjan's Internet cafés on the Ivory Coast.

 

We have followed the story when Veith V. (name changed by the editors) contacted us. What we found out is hard to believe. Politicians seem at a loss. It is not enough to support the criminal investigation department in Côte d'Ivoire in the development of security structures to send millions in development aid when Germans become the primary victims of this mafia-like structure. In the course of our research, we decided to investigate the sources to serve us, to disclose. These are the photos of a certain Gladis Zanier, who seems like a phantom.

In this context, it must be made clear that what good is the hard copy of a Marshall Plan for Côte d'Ivoire if formed rabble robs and mocks the donors?

It is not the Nigerian Mafia; it is an independent group in the sense of a criminal organisation.

 

Since the person in the photo, who has been listed under no less than 40 different names in numerous scammer forums since April 2019, does not resist, it is not clear whether the person is still alive at all, which is displayed there. Under these circumstances, it seems logical that the perpetrators assumed the identity of a dead person. Whereby one can imagine, given the brutality of the deeds, that they would not even shy away from killing a person to get an identity with which they can continue their business model. The Belgian Missing Persons Register does not provide any information on this. A question to the Federal Police is dealt with in the 2nd part of this article.

The actions are characterised by the intention to drive people, the identified victims, to their deaths without restraint. The perversion knows no bounds.

The tracks lead around the whole globe—one of them to Liège in Belgium.

These perpetrators operate with false identities with which they pretend to love through the Internet, in bad German or English and thus cheat Europeans out of millions - every month.

Politicians seem to react with absolute disinterest and are no longer able to control the situation.

How could they?

 

Ivory Coast is a carefree El Dorado for romance scammer. Far away from Europe, hate and greed play the most significant role in this system of corruption and nepotism, of never-ending rip-offs or blackmail.

In Germany, filing criminal charges against the perpetrators is pointless. It's like the victim wants to hit Africa with cotton balls. The path taken by Veith V. to petition EU parliamentarians to support the unconditional prosecution of the perpetrators seems to make more sense.

In Abidjan, they pretend that a Scammer is just a little group of pesky cybercriminals. They sell the identities of their victims to the Darknet for further processing. The colleagues from ABC (Australia Broadcasting Company) made a remarkable film about the machinations. Only a few victims ever manage to get out of the mills of the blackmailers. A mafia-like structure has developed, which has grown over the years. An occasional raid here or there. Everybody earns money from the ever bubbling revenues of "Romance Scamming", including the owner of the internet cafés, the local politician, the hotels through which the gangsters pass and many more. The corrupt links between African perpetrators recruited from the alleged 419 scam mafia from Nigeria and Ghana are too strong. Interesting is that in specific forums you can buy the scripts that the scammers use. This follow-up happens after the total robbing of the victim. The Excel tables are also passed on here, which record the chats in keywords.

 

The whole course of such an acquaintance shows a frightening contempt for Europeans. It is not aggressive begging, but pure hatred of Europeans who are supposedly rich, who seemingly have the money in the bank. The victim lives in constant fear of being deprived of the pretended love if he does not pay. Now and then there are diffuse threats.

 

From the chat: "?????????????

19.06.19, 03:07 - +225 78 62 77 78: ??????

19.06.19, 03:08 - +225 78 62 77 78: ??????

19.06.19, 03:11 - +225 78 62 77 78: "Tell me, if I were in the same apartment, would you have the courage to let me go a day without food"

Day and night, the terror goes around a supposedly starving child. The howling smiley, overflowing with tears, is the 1000 times sent a greeting of perverted inhumanity.

 

In the poor districts of the capital Abidjan, a subculture has formed that produces romance scammers. It is done with the utmost brutality against the identified victims after an initial love murmur poorly transmitted by the google translator. It is psycho terror by day and by night in several shifts and different ways. It is always the same victims who are chosen by the perpetrators. The only thing the African scammers do again and again is to invent a new excuse.

The trace led first to the Nivelles area in Belgium, and from there to Liège, where the persons took a false identity. After that, the trail ended. False identity is a basis for the business with love from Africa. Everything else is prefabricated text modules that the perpetrators use. Preferably from Germany, when the cow has to be slaughtered later. The perpetrators can add to the money, forge letters of invitation, send people who want to escape to Europe, the exploitation of the chances is all-encompassing and very profitable because the sexed people then have to take drugs with them.

​

There's a whole industry that makes up the stories; unfortunately, people still fall for. The scammers' hunting pattern is the same: a man between 40 and 60 years of age, whom they observe for quite some time on the social network timeline. Then compliments are exchanged for sometimes stupid comments, for the wallflowers of social media, which the scammers unerringly find. A cold blonde beauty, plus a child who lives in a sparse apartment.

The pictures should have given Veith to think immediately. These were in Belgium was photographed. This could be seen from the furnishings and clothing can be reconstructed later. Also, the surroundings had been shot in Europe. But the love-drunk did not pay attention to this, and it was in the calculation of the perpetrators. In this respect to convince that he was only there to meet new demands every day. He transferred ever higher amounts, 1.500 euros, times a thousand. Sometimes 500, sometimes 800 euros, sometimes 300. It wasn't enough. Never.

An Alina Becker, the pretty blonde already mentioned at the beginning contacted our victim Veith V. As if by chance in life, the initially loose acquaintance arose, in which a perpetrator acted as a door opener and prepared the deal for the scammers.

At the beginning of July, Veith spoke to our editorial staff after having provided us with all correspondence with the Scammers. The psychological brutality of the chats broke him, which the scammer had cleverly directed directly from twitter, where he had met the "lady", to Whats app. What's App does not comment on such activities on the platform.

Now you can say, why didn't Veith end the chat? No one can escape it. Once in the clutches of the Mafia, it is very difficult or impossible to get out. The perpetrators are not letting up; they are slackening as much as they can. More than 250 calls in two months, thousands of SMS, even when absent, wear a person down.

The intention is to extract every cent from the hated European.

 

"19.06.19, 03:55 - +225 78 62 77 78: ok, so tomorrow you won't bother to transfer the 350 € so we can eat. You'll leave us hungry."

 

The IP number of emails led to Abidjan. To a suburb, Anyana, where there are resorts and a small community of Europeans lives.

 

So far, the first part of the story could be genuine. Even if many things were not conclusive, what the alleged Anne - Marie Giradet presented. The identity card was as false as her name and her ever-increasing vows of love. Allegedly she was French, had lived in Germany for a long time and was the mother of a son, who was called Morane for this case. The image of a European, obviously photographed in Belgium or Northern France, was misused for the story the scammers were preparing. Now children are also being used for monetary warfare. God will also be present in motion set. The child gets sick, collapses from hunger in the shower, the landlord suddenly appears at the door, wants more money for a shabby apartment. In between petty-bourgeois and pompous dreams of the future in one text module. The goods of the alleged beauty are confiscated; next, the strokes of a fate line up, even the French embassy no longer helps compatriots. But a bank manager, who wants to help because the check of the goods was blocked, she cannot dispose of the check in the account. Even the SoFin is surprised by the best-forged account statements.

So she has another reason to continue aggressive begging.

"17.05.19, 16:49 - +225 67 96 85 39: Just a small sum of 500 € to feed MORANE, please, my angel, do it for God's sake."

"20.06.19,

00:25 - +225 78 62 77 78: When I saw you, I loved you. When I spoke to you, I knew that you were the only one stealing my heart, and indeed I fell under your spell. I love you and I'll love you forever..❤❣❣❤????❣❤????❤❤???????❤❣??"

Although the person she pretends to be, not knowing the victim, the ugly scam worked. The perpetrators have excellent knowledge of Germany. It can be assumed that one of the writers lived in Germany for a time. Probably disillusioned, he returned to Africa and shortly afterwards devoted himself to Romance Scamming.

"21.06.19, 00:54 - +225 78 62 77 78: ??????

21.06.19, 00:54 - +225 78 62 77 78: ???????"

No one is stupid to respond to this emotional pressure. It's all about money. Not really about love. Brutal unscrupulous, African slave drivers rape the soul every day anew. The money eventually goes to local warlords who make life pleasant for themselves, only to once again commit a coup that costs Europe millions and demands a new Marshall Plan. The states seem to have no interest in breaking this vicious circle. It's a structural problem.

"05/18/19, 14:14 - +225 67 96 85 39: Are you on your way to the agency to send the money?

18.05.19, 14:46 - +225 67 96 85 39: My angel, I understand, but you must hurry if I want to buy some food for MORANE. That's why I want you to go to the agency quickly and wire the money

18.05.19, 14:50 - +225 67 96 85 39: But then nothing more goes in the agency, which is, as you said then closed, go and send the money now. You know what happens when MORANE is hungry?

18.05.19, 14:51 - +225 67 96 85 39: Tell me you're on your way?

18.05.19, 14:53 - +225 67 96 85 39: Yes, my dear, but if you have the opportunity to send more, then do this-

18.05.19, 16:02 - +225 67 96 85 39: My dear, I see now, thank you very much for helping me. I love you so much❤❤??

Sources:

Interview with Veith V. (name changed by the editorial staff)

Original of the What's app chats

Documents of the offender group

Phone numbers

Ministry of Justice in Abidjan, Ivory Coast

Anyone who has experienced the same or similar things is welcome to contact the editorial office.

(This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Continue in part 2