BOOK EXTRACT | No acknowledgment for those who risked their lives against Pagad

Case files recording the details of explosions that rocked Cape Town from 1996 to 2001 are still stored in the huts that were used as the bomb squad’s base, piled high in cabinets and cupboards among the decommissioned explosive relics. By the squad’s estimate, there were thousands of incidents and call-outs, and at the height of the campaign there were bomb scenes to examine every day.

“We were called from early in the morning to late at night,” said one of the experts. At the same time, the unit had dwindled to just half a dozen bomb techs. As the number of explosions picked up, things soon became unmanageable for the small team. 

The unit had always been busy, responding to emergencies such as suspicious packages and cases of arson-linked extortion (a common gang tactic), but as the fear and insecurity sown by Pagad grew in intensity it became near impossible to keep on top of the work, particularly when attacks on civilian targets meant every unattended bag or parcel triggered a call-out. On some days, more than a hundred incidents were referred to the unit.

“We dealt with every item as a bomb,” said a senior bomb tech. So jumpy were city residents that the noonday cannon shot from Signal Hill, which emits a hefty thump, resulted in a call to the unit that a bomb may have gone off. 

An experienced bomb tech who attended many of the Pagad incidents explained that, technically speaking, a pipe bomb is not actually a bomb. It is an improvised explosive device, widely known as an IED. It creates a confined explosion catalysed by a chemical reaction. But that makes it no less effective or lethal. Pressure builds in the device due to a chemical reaction until the container “can no longer maintain its integrity” and it blows apart, spraying shattered pieces of the body of the device and any shrapnel inside it. Over time, the designs became more sophisticated, and bigger.

“The more complicated you make [the device], the more complicated it is for the bomber,” said the tech. “What difference does it actually make if a piece of shrapnel is travelling at 200m per second or 1,000? It will still kill you.”

By far the greatest number of injuries the disposal unit witnessed were not caused by the blast itself: 80% of the wounds were the result of “primary shrapnel”, including nails or ball bearings placed inside or packed around the device, as well as “secondary shrapnel” in the form of flying shards of glass from shattered windows. In a confined space, the blast waves from a pipe bomb cause even more devastating injury and damage. That was the case in the August 1998 Planet Hollywood bombing, where the device was placed inside the restaurant.

It was terrible. The place was covered with body parts, blood and glass. We left the body parts to the forensic guys, although flesh often contained shrapnel that we wanted to take a look at

“It was terrible,” said the unit men who attended. “The place was covered with body parts, blood and glass.” This site took an inordinate amount of time to investigate. Bomb techs had to crawl around among the gore and debris looking for minuscule bomb fragments that might provide vital clues to identify the device used, how it was made, and ultimately who made it. “We left the body parts to the forensic guys, although flesh often contained shrapnel that we wanted to take a look at,” said an experienced bomb tech. A lot of people had already been on the scene — first paramedics, then politicians, police officers and detectives — which meant it had been progressively contaminated before the bomb techs could get to work. Even in the Planet Hollywood case, the bomb techs felt people suspected them. Bomb disposal experts were brought in from the US to supervise. After three days of shadowing the local team, the FBI advisers reported that the South Africans were doing a good job. It was an important reprieve and a vote of confidence. But things were only getting tougher for the unit. 

They feared attacks on their homes and there was increasing evidence that they were being followed. In late 1998, some of their cars were damaged: tyres were slashed, windscreen wipers broken off and graffiti etched on the paintwork. “People had got to know who we were. It was not very difficult: we drove the same old vehicles, we were at every scene, and there were only a few of us,” said one. 

“The intelligence people told us there was a real threat to our lives,” said an old salt from the unit. Team members were sometimes followed back to the office from bomb scenes, so security was stepped up. The group began to drive in convoys or request protection from other police units, and they took precautions when they left home or arrived back after work. This was the time when one police investigator, Bennie Lategan, was killed in an assassination and another, Schalk Visagie, badly wounded, so there can be little doubt their fears were justified.

In June 2000, a device placed in a bin near a Sea Point restaurant exploded after a false bomb threat was called in. Police intelligence believed the device was aimed specifically at the bomb squad. At one point, unit members began to sleep under the parade room table on inflatable mattresses, not returning home for days. Ironically, said a bitter ex-member, requests for their homes to be upgraded against attacks were turned down while senior police officers not involved in the investigations had their homes secured at taxpayers’ expense. An additional room was eventually constructed in Pinelands to serve as accommodation so squad members would be immediately ready for any call-out. 

The psychological strain on core members of the unit became immense. Their rundown base contained a small recreational room and it was there that inevitable tensions surfaced. “We would leave ranks and titles at the door then get shitfaced,’” said one. The informal debriefings and interactions would occasionally be resolved physically. A few minutes later, the men would walk out of the room having forgiven each other, ready to respond to another call. “We would basically laugh and then we would cry,” reported another.

The makeshift bar was also the scene of bleak humour. One of the team remembered how, over a beer, they decided to nickname a gang member and bomber “Flipper”. That individual had been severely injured when a fire extinguisher filled with explosives blew up prematurely, and he was found alive and waggling what remained of his arms. Humour was a coping mechanism and one of the ways to survive. During a compulsory group psychological debriefing, the psychologist left in tears after being told about “Flipper”, and screamed at the members that they were sick and beyond help. 

There were a lot of quiet heroes in the bomb squad. The techies tended to avoid the eye of the media, unlike their sometimes publicity-hungry colleagues in the detective service, many of whom cultivated images as hard-bitten case-solving policemen. Two colonels, Bernie Posthumus (now deceased) and Robbie Reijnders, led and improved the effectiveness of the unit in the teeth of the bombing campaign. If you look at the grainy police photos taken at bomb scenes you can often make out the same individuals with heads down searching for fragments of evidence. In the beginning they dressed in civilian clothes, often in the police civvies “uniform” of leather jacket and jeans, a handgun bulging under the belt.

One figure present in many of the photos is a stalwart of the Cape Town bomb squad, Frank Gentle. While only a warrant officer, he stands out as a key individual in the unit’s response. A tall, dark-haired chain-smoker, Gentle closely monitored the unfolding bombing campaign. Although there had been previous attacks on police stations, the January 1999 explosion outside Caledon Square in the city centre seems to have jolted the unit. It was partly because the city’s central police station was targeted, but also because 11 bystanders were wounded — most of them Muslim. Gentle, “puffing like a steam engine” on box after box of Chesterfields, according to someone at the scene, was enraged. He was described by former colleagues as having an ability to say the most inappropriate things, but always with a smile on his face.

“He could tell you to bugger off and make it feel as if he was doing you a favour,” recalled one hard-bitten ex-member. It was an important skill in a unit where rank counted less than elsewhere in the police. Gentle seems to have been the person almost all bureaucracies produce, a behind-the-scenes operator who works hard and has expertise. He was described to me by a former colleague as a “110% bomb technician” and a true gentleman. Gentle brought enthusiasm and drive to the bomb disposal business and was always the first to volunteer for risky assignments. A former member of the riot unit, he transitioned into bomb disposal as democracy dawned.

“He always taught you the right way to do things. He had also been a direct product of George Hammond’s unique teaching methods at the bomb school.” In the bomb squad, as Gentle knew, the right way could be the difference between going home in one piece or being picked up in pieces. 

Gentle, who died in 2021 at the age of 51, has never been publicly recognised for his role. He and the other squad members were not promoted and did not receive any form of acknowledgment for their actions. After the Pagad campaign, during which they accumulated hundreds of hours of overtime, they were informed that the “time registers were simply going to be zeroed, as the police weren’t going to pay their accumulated overtime and couldn’t very well give everyone a few months off”.

Gentle was later recognised by a different unit and promoted to lead the president’s explosives team.