I’d like to tell you about another incident that stands out from that year on Valentine Farm — and it involves Briony’s ultra-wealthy boyfriend, John Bredenkamp. By then, Briony was living in London as John’s mistress. She’d had a child by him, Matthew who was now 8, whilst he remained married always promising her he would leave his wife. With no intention of it in my opinion.
John was Zimbabwean and had made his fortune through his company, Casalee International — ostensibly a tobacco business, but in reality deeply enmeshed in arms dealing and all manner of corruption with the Mugabe government.. He was a larger-than-life character, after school and into adulthood he tried repeatedly to recruit me to work for him. At one point — I think it was 1993 — he offered me three million rand to buy property on his behalf just before the South African elections. His idea was to buy up property that would be in demand by embassys after Apartheid was over.
I always refused. I don’t want to climb onto a moral soapbox here… but I will. I had no interest in working for someone whose wealth came from dealing death and destruction, whether through tobacco or through the weapons he sold. Having seen the way my own father behaved and the toll it had taken on me and my mother I had no sympathy or affectionfor adulterers either. There had been various exposés on him over the years, but that’s not the point of this story.
It was early one morning at Valentine Farm. Mikey had been up since four or five, but I’d managed to get him back to sleep. He was only three at the time. My aircraft, KAJ, was in the hangar a stones through away, along with Niels’s Piper 210.
I knew that John had been in town over the weekend, staying at Nooitgedacht which John was in the process of buying. Niels and John had become quite close, and Niels’s wife, Carey, always gravitated toward money — so they were entertaining him and convincing him to buy Nooitgedacht from Wood Creations. Now that the company had split they would loose access to the beloved farm and getting John to buy it was their way of securing future access.
That particualr morning, I heard Niels taxi to the top of the runway and begin his pre-flight checks. Even from the house I could hear one of his magnetos wasn’t running right. Sure enough, a couple of minutes later, there was a knock at the door. Niels stood there, and I knew exactly what was coming.
“Um, listen, I’ve got a bit of a problem with my plane. Do you think you can fly us to Joburg? John has a really important breakfast at the Sandton Sun.”
After selling his tobacco-slash-arms-dealing empire, John had gone “legit” with a sports management company called Masters International. He had some big names on the books — Ernie Els, Nick Price, Francois Pienaar. The breakfast was being held in his honour before the Sun City Million Dollar golf tournament, or something of that sort.
I told Niels, “Yeah, sure,” then went back to Terry. “I’ve got this thing I need to do,” I said as I kissed her goodbye.
I flew Niels and John to Lanseria, where a limousine was waiting to take us to the Sandton Sun. We sat at a table, John to my left, and celebrity after celebrity came over, greeting him warmly. “Hi, John. Thanks for all you’ve done for me,” and so on. He sat there graciously acknowledging their praise.
At one point, everyone else drifted away and I found myself alone with him. Across from us, at a table for two, a man sat eating breakfast alone, wearing a Stetson hat — an odd sight in Sandton. John glanced over at him and said, “Do you know what that guy does for a living?”
I shook my head.
“He kills people,” John said matter-of-factly.
I was stunned. Then someone else arrived at our table, and the conversation was over.
That night, I told Terry about it. We couldn’t decide — was he trying to threaten me? Impress me? I’d never fallen under his spell, even as a teenager, and he must have sensed the disdain with which I regarded him. Who knows?
And who am I to sit in judgement? But I’ve never been able to relate to someone who built their fortune through tobacco, arms, and corruption. Maybe that makes me a moralist. It certainly makes things awkward, since I’m uncle to his son.
The funny thing about this incident is that many years later I would use it to gain just a little pleasure in a sea of pain but that's another story.