Death Flight: Apartheid's Secret Doctrine of Disappearance

“They must never return… This was the only answer.” – Colonel Johan Theron, Delta 40 co-founder In the late 1970s, as the apartheid government fought a desperate and dirty battle to stay in power, its security forces devised a chilling new tactic. A shadowy, top-secret unit called Delta40 was established, tasked with the murder of hundreds of ANC, PAC, and SWAPO members. Victims’ bodies were flung from aircraft into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South West Africa. Death Flight provides the first detailed account of these sinister missions. Seasoned investigative journalist Michael Schmidt traces the journey of Neil Kriel, Delta 40’s first commander, from his boyhood in Rhodesia to his dark deeds as an apartheid operative in the 1980s. Schmidt also tracks down Kriel’s partner, Colonel Johan Theron, and several other veteran Special Forces operators. Based on the detailed analysis of flight logs, and numerous face-to-face interviews and textual sources, Death Flight sheds shocking new light on one of apartheid’s darkest chapters. But it also reveals to the broader public for the first time what Schmidt calls South Africa's "Pact of Forgetting," a hitherto unknown series of top-secret negotiations over 1997-2003 between the country's Deputy Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma and a handpicked group of Cabinet ministers with a coterie of old apartheid warchiefs under Minister of Defence Magnus Malan – the ultimate result of which was the scuppering of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission’s recommendation for some 300 prosecutions for apartheid-era offences committed by all sides to the conflict. “Those were extremely sensitive operations that must never go in[to] any book…”– Colonel Charl Naudé, commander of Barnacle, Delta 40’s successor “Death Flight is a daring mission to salvage the ghosts of those who were thought to have been eternally dissolved, by apartheid Special Forces, deep in the oceanic waters off our shores. It is destined to become an invaluable tool, connecting the dots in the quest to ensure that no victim of the deadly hand of apartheid is left unaccounted for." – Nkosinathi Biko, son of the murdered Steve Biko, and board member of the Steve Biko Foundation, in the foreword “… full of information but also packed with incredible scenes, worthy of a spy novel… absolutely breath-taking.”– Miriam Lewin, Argentine journalist, survivor of two illegal detention centers, and author of two books on the Argentine death flights, Skyvan and Final Destination “Gripping and important… very well researched.” – Jakkie Cilliers, military expert and author “An intriguing read that lays bare the inhumanity of Apartheid crimes. It does so despite the best efforts of the criminals to hide their crimes. May we never forget the lives lost in the struggle for our freedom.” – Lukhanyo Calata, son of the murdered Fort Calata, journalist and co-author of the book My Father Died for This “... Schmidt is, as befits a good journalist, a strong storyteller... Schmidt relies on the evidence during the Basson trial and the evidence before the TRC, but also has several first-hand sources and in-depth interviews that, in my opinion, leave his book's credibility beyond doubt. This is an excellent piece of research.” – Max du Preez, in Vryeweekblad “In Death Flight, Michael Schmidt relies on an impressive base of facts and voices out of the innermost inner circle to pinpoint... with day, date, name, rank, aircraft number how prisoners, possibly hundreds of them, were murdered and their bodies thrown away in the deep sea like harmful waste. The story is actually terribly banal. The deeds were not the initiative of deviant individuals but official military actions, planned, approved and politically implemented according to standard prescriptions.... Were these officially calculated performances not a crime against humanity?” –former Constitutional Court judge Johann Kriegler, in Rapport