On the Twisted Trail of Dulcie's Death
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On the twisted trail of Dulcie’s death Evelyn Grœnink Mail and Guardian, January 9, 1998 When Evelyn Grœnink set out to trade fairs named Sport Eco. It would investigate the murder of Dulcie Sep- never have occurred to me to pay any tember, she found herself embroiled in attention to this company had Septem- a Kafkaesque world full of French se- ber’s colleagues in Paris not told me cret service plots and fake publications. that September herself did not trust In March 1990, while investigating these neighbours. Dulcie September’s workplace for the September was a nice woman, but period just prior to her murder, I disco- she never greeted these particular vered something odd. The small com- people. She took great care to ensure pany across the hallway from her Afri- that the ANC’s mail did not get mixed can National Congress office, on the up with theirs. And once or twice, ac- fourth floor of a typically narrow buil- cording to her colleagues, she mentio- ding in the Rue des Petites Ecuris, mo- ned that she thought these people were ved there on the same day as the ANC. watching her. Even though the company officially The above, together with the fact edited a newsletter on sports trade, the that Sport Eco’s editor-in-chief, Pierre editor-in- chief was a foreign reporter Cazeel, was the person who waited for the French state radio and speciali- half-an-hour next to September’s dead sed in South Africa and the ANC. He body for the police to arrive, and that and his colleagues moved out of the September’s colleagues mentioned that building shortly after the murder. somebody seemed to have messed with On March 29 1988, September, a the mail and her handbag, were the former teacher from Cape Town who reasons why I began looking for Sport had joined the struggle out of anger Eco in the Paris register of companies. at the way kids were treated by the I decided to phone Herve Delouche, apartheid education system, was mur- a journalist for a new French monthly, dered by a salvo of five bullets fired J’Accuse, that had shown an interest in straight at her face. She died instantly. my investigation. J’Accuse planned to Her murderers were never found. investigate scandals of the French go- The murder was not seen. Of course vernment and secret services, Delouche it was the South African death squads told me. one heard so much about. Who else ? The first issue of J’Accuse was to The neighbouring office was com- be released in April and, according to pletely French. They published a bi- Delouche, the cover story was to be de- monthly two- page account of sports dicated to my French connection to the 1 2 September murder. delight, but I was confused : I hadn’t J’Accuse was so interested in this stumbled on the slightest suggestion story, it asked me to come and visit that there was anything South African even though I told them I had nothing about Sport Eco. concrete as yet. It paid me a cash ad- My suspicion was, and still is, that vance, assigned three people to assist Sport Eco was an antenna for the me, and, in their new offices, I got the French secret services, and established biggest desk. to keep an eye on the ANC. I had not People brought me coffee and com- arrived at the conclusion that Sport plimented me extensively on my yet Eco was involved in the murder itself, to be written, wonderful article. They at least not directly. But, if it was a even mentioned a prime-time television French antenna, why hadn’t it at least slot ! seen the South African death squad When I met Delouche and my first coming ? That was the question. And J’Accuse contact, Michel Briganti, to what had Cazeel been doing, alone for discuss the new developments, I had al- half- an-hour, next to the body ? ready phoned several established sport My story, as proposed to J’Accuse, and trade publications in Paris. No- was to be about this and other myste- body had ever heard of Sport Eco. rious French tracks that I had stum- I did learn that Cazeel had reported bled on in the previous two years – extensively on the 1982 bomb attack about the French secret service which on the London office of the ANC. De- had repeatedly launched false tracks louche and Briganti nodded pensively : and smokescreens, messing up the po- this could indeed be an indication of se- lice investigation. cret service involvement in the murder About French individuals who ap- of September. peared to play some suspicious role They suggested a high-powered concerning September and her office meeting of the core group of J’Accuse when she was still alive. Such as Mon- to discuss this trail and invited me sieur G, an extreme right-wing mer- to spend the evening at the home of cenary from the French Foreign Le- their editor-in-chief, Jacques de Bonis, gion, who shortly after the murder told in the Rue des Pyrnes. a journalist he had been recruited to De Bonis’s flat was full of boxes, make a map of the ANC office by a sheets and other just-moved-in ar- top French government official. ticles : he had recently arrived from Such as Antonia S, ex-girlfriend to Lyon to take up his new job. another foreign legionnaire, who not De Bonis showed great interest in only told a friend that she had been the Sport Eco trail and jumped up to spying on ANC targets, but revealed phone J’Accuse’s director general – a that she knew on the eve of the mur- man, he says, who knows a lot about der that an attack was going to take the sports business. place in Paris. He talked, showed surprise, put And such as a third foreign legion- down the phone and said : “This is a naire who was adamant that the above- real track. This company dœs business mentioned top government official was deals with South Africa.” directly involved in the murder opera- My French colleagues beamed with tion. 3 The French underworld of right- The idea that Pretoria, or Paris, or wing mercenaries has its base on the both, could have felt threatened by the partially French Comoros Islands. This political activities of the ANC office in base reaches a strong right-wing net- Paris seems far- fetched. work in French cities like Lyon and “Dulcie etait une zero [Dulcie was Marseille. Officially, the French govern- a zero],” an expert observer of the ment dismisses the private military French anti-apartheid movement told grouping as a bunch of unruly adven- me. “She made speeches in commu- turers over whom the state has no nity centres and sold badges and sti- control. ckers. Her political influence was non- But, despite the French concern existent.” over this group’s involvement in coups According to this expert, as well d’etat and other strife on the Como- as to numerous other observers, it was ros and in other parts of Africa – some highly unlikely that the motive for the of them were involved in sanctions- murder could be political. September, busting and arms- smuggling between in other words, would not have been France and apartheid South Africa – killed in a professional, risky and costly some experts say the adventurers can’t operation just because she happened to make a move without the approval of say anti- apartheid things to a few hun- the French authorities. dred people in a small town city hall “How else can the obscure right- every once in a while. wing private security companies, that Pretoria was, in the late Eighties, some of these men manage, continue desperately looking for a thaw in its to operate even in Paris itself ?” as one foreign relations, especially with the source puts it. West : they wouldn’t risk all that just “They have no problems because of to kill Dulcie. “Whœver did it, did their good relations with the army and it for a very special and urgent rea- the foreign secret service, DGSE. The son, a reason that would also be valid Comoriens are sources of information to France – so that they would allow as well as instruments for the DGSE. the operation,” says Alex Moumbaris, Whenever they need the adventurer- ANC activist and former colleague of type for an operation, they recruit Dulcie in Paris. “She was an obstacle them from this bunch.” to something. But what ?” If Monsieur G, Antonia S, and the That was a question I could shed third Comorien – whose name is unk- some light on. September, stubborn nown to me – had anything to do and persistent, alone with her figh- with the murder of September, it is ting spirit and suffering from rheuma- quite unlikely that the French autho- tism in cold, inhospitable Paris, had, rities would not have had a clue about since her arrival in 1984, soon had en- the attack that was going to happen ough of being a zero. She had experien- in Paris : all three have, as various in- ced that the South African question dependent sources confirm, good rela- wasn’t of much real interest to French tions with the DGSE. politicians, whether they were right The big question around the mur- wing, centre or Mitterrand left. The der is, however, not the who but the left would, at official occasions, speak why.