NICOLA MILTZ
In the heart of Bedfordview – a known hotspot for underworld activities – an intimate crowd gathered at Doppio Zero restaurant to listen to the author in conversation with journalist and broadcaster David O’Sullivan last Thursday night. Coincidentally, it marked eight years since the underworld assassination of controversial Teazers strip-club boss Lolly Jackson in May 2010.
The date and place were not lost on the captive audience, who listened as Wiener and O’Sullivan dissected the book. It was a closed, by-invitation-only launch for a select few. Many of them were somehow connected to the non-fiction crime book – be it as family members of slain victims, or crime-fighting figures, or even as people closely associated with criminal underworld figures.
In this follow-up to Wiener’s 2011 book, Killing Kebble: An Underworld Exposed, she takes the reader on yet another uncomfortable journey through the complicated corridors of crime, politics, sleaze and power. O’Sullivan jokingly boasted that his copy of Killing Kebble was signed by self-confessed hitman Mikey Schultz.
He made reference to the host of shady characters inhabiting the new book, the corruption and weaknesses within the criminal justice system. “It’s Ian Fleming, 007 stuff,” quipped O’Sullivan.
The names dropped we’re all familiar with from countless news broadcasts over the years, outlining the unsavoury criminal escapades of criminals such as Radovan Krejcir, George Louca and the various crime bosses themselves who aid and abet the continuation of the vicious cycle of crime.
The most compelling phenomenon is how underworld crime happens under our noses in the middle of quiet suburbia, in innocuous places such as the restaurants and neighbourhoods we frequent, suggested O’Sullivan.
He singled out the bizarre kidnapping and murder of supercar specialist Uwe Gemballa in 2010 at an “innocuous whack house near Edenvale High School”.
He and Wiener spoke of murders, bizarre attempted assassinations, corrupt criminal investigators, crooked cops, informers and corrupt politicians.
Wiener spoke about the day she received an interesting phone call when she was sitting at a regular coffee shop. It was not a number she recognised but it was a voice she had heard before.
“Mandy, it’s Radovan.” The convicted prisoner was calling her from prison in the middle of the day.
This is the murky world that Wiener has inhabited for two years, the time it has taken to research and complete the 450-odd page exploration into the gangster world of South African crime and intelligence, and the associated crooked protectionism that exists.
Present at the launch party were well known controversial corruption buster and private forensic investigator Paul O’Sullivan (no relation to David, he made sure to mention); axed Gauteng Hawks head Shadrack Sibiya and Lolly Jackson’s spokesperson, Sean Newman.
Paul O’Sullivan said: “I give the book 10/10. It is a genuine representation of what’s going on in the criminal underworld.”
Ministry of Crime is a disturbing expose of just how broken the criminal justice system is. But in the author’s own words, her intention is to inform and reveal truths, not to leave the reader depressed and without any faith in the criminal justice system.
“Instead of feeling a sense of despair, I’d rather the reader comes away informed and aware of what happens,” she told the audience.
In researching the book, she often sat across from thugs, gangsters, police generals, prosecutors, lawyers and family members of those who had been killed. She said: “I felt I had the book in me,” and became increasingly concerned about the state’s inability to combat organised crime.
“There are still excellent police investigators, prosecutors and law enforcement officers. Although the book highlights the weaknesses, the system does work in certain areas.”
She highlighted that that day’s sentencing of Sandile Mantsoe for the brutal murder of ex-girlfriend Karabo Mokoena as a case in point where justice was swift and seen to be done.
Asked by O’Sullivan how she gets to the truth from all the “shady characters with their many skeletons”, she said: “I don’t make a judgement on their version. Some people don’t like the fact that I give criminals a platform. I see it as a way of getting to the truth.
“There is never one truth, there are always different versions of the truth. I try to get the reader to make up their own mind without me making any judgements.” She sees it as her responsibility as a journalist to be the conduit for different versions of the truth.
Her publisher, Andrea Nattrass from Pan Macmillan, said at the launch: “Each time Mandy and I have worked on a project together, we have had to contend with deadlines… which have added to the pressure. Court cases have been concluding; weddings have been happening; babies have been imminently due or recently delivered; and moving house has been on the cards.
On this book, the deadline kept getting tighter as Mandy was able to secure “just one more interview” with one of the often elusive characters who feature in the narrative. For many of these people, it was the first time that someone had requested to hear their side of the story, and it was intriguing – and not infrequently, rather hair-raising – to see how ready they were to share their version of events with Mandy.
She said Ministry of Crime was the result of many months of writing intertwined with extensive interviews and research.
“I think Mandy has done a masterful job of keeping a complicated storyline wonderfully readable, despite the level of detail required along with the natural convolutions of the narrative,” said Nattrass.
