Thursday, June 29, 2017

The Truth Teller - The Impimpi...Why Now?

The year I got sick 
It has taken years of chronically and often life-threatening illnesses to strip away slowly at everything that I held dear in my life.  And suddenly I was facing an adjustment disorder.  I have my own psychology degrees, so it has been a case of healer, heal thyself.

Apart from ill-health, there has been enormous financial strain with added expenses which have made us fly kites under a carpet.   It is not easy to start a new life at the age of 61 for my husband, starting from scratch in a country he had not lived in for over 20 years.  

With what I thought was an amazing opportunity, I got an online computer job writing web content for the SEO of a pharmaceutical company – yes, writing about Viagra and all the generics for erectile dysfunction.  No one else wanted the job, so I took it.  I know one hell of a lot about impotency and soft and flaccid penises now.  The remuneration was wonderful and for a month, we were starting to float.  The following month, the person in charge dropped the ball and all the writers were fired, without pay and with immediate effect.  After chasing the story down it was found that the pharmaceutical house was nothing but an online drug dealer.  So that went out the door.  Back to flying those kites under the carpet.

Then I got very sick. I was drowning in my own fluid.  Discovery are amazing – they have come to the party and I am being home nursed with drips and all the paraphernalia I need.   While I have been lying here, writing and thinking and pondering and reflecting over the last three weeks, I have had to take a good long hard look at what I want from life.  Being one in ten million people with this disease does not make me special – it makes me a problem.

The crying and the grieving has been done.  It is time to dry the tears and get on with the business of living.  My spirit does not belong in this body. I am like the old lady struggling to move down the street, but her shadow is a young girl dancing with abandon.

I made the decision to share my life, every bit of it - the nice, the good, the ugly, the bad, the not too bad and the not too nice; leaving nothing out…telling the truth 100% of the time.
There are many reasons for my decisions. Some are:
  • Giving the abused child of my heart a voice 
  • Allowing my soul to soar with freedom
  • Making myself transparent
  • To be truly authentic I must be brutally truthful about everything that has been, is and will be in my life 
  • To allow those who have been damaged by part of my own past to come to terms with their healing as well 
  • To show that child abuse affects a person their whole lives but that there is a way to become a survivor
  • To become a ferocious activist for prisoners - particularly for those who are incarcerated for crimes they did not commit
  • To inspire, help, encourage and provide my own brand of quotes for people to use to reflect on their own lives and to just have a good laugh
  • To do what I love and love what I do and that is to write – so the books will come, the blogs will come and … we shall see what the good Lord Himself has in store for me.

There will be those who will not like what I write, but that is their business and not mine.  They do not have a gun pointed at their heads forcing them to read what I write.   But I do know now that there will always be thousands more people who will appreciate truth rather than the bullshit that is spoken so often

I want my life to have meaning and I want to leave a legacy with my stories for my grandchildren to know who I was one day.  What better way than to tell my own truthful stories. 
I am now a freedom writer!  And probably an impimpi as well!

Monday, June 26, 2017

Framed Heinrich van Rooyen's life in Prison

We must find a way to un-frame him 
  
As most know, I have been visiting Heinrich van Rooyen at St Albans prison for a while now, every second Sunday if I am well enough to go.  But I had to go on Sunday, sick as I was with staphylococcus pneumonia but dressed warmly, masked and had a drip up. I also took my nebuliser with me just in case.
Heini was looking good and as usual overjoyed to see us.  We were also asked if I could see another prisoner who has a problem with his parole hearing and when I looked into his eyes, I saw that there was no killer there at all.  I am going to see how I can help him chivvy the legal aid board that deals with paroles.  But that will be a story for another day.  His name is Marius, and as I have experienced, a gently and soft man in the wrong place.
Because this was a good staff complement this week, everything went quite smoothly and we did not have to wait long to see Heini.  There was a bit of a scuffle because inmates have to sit on iron benches and visitors on wooden benches and my wheelchair could only stay on the side of the prisoners.  Not that it bothered me in the least.  I have met a lot of wonderful inmates during this time and they have all been kind to me, far more kind and considerate than the wardens.  But again, this particular group of wardens who work every second weekend really show their humanity and compassion.
In the visitors area is a shop that gets put up and taken down after visiting hours.  No one may bring any food into the prison and everything has to be bought from that shop.  Now here in lies a slight problem.   The shop is not allowed to make money out of the inmates.  There is a court order that the shop is not allowed to profit 0ff the inmates.  It can be found in the Correctional Services Act 11 of 98; Section 121, 122 and 123.  The shop should not be allowed to make an internal policy that is not in line with the law.   This law deals with goods  sold to inmates.
Every time I go there, I go with my scrap of paper that has written on it what the prisoner needs to purchase.  The prisoner is not allowed to go buy but the visitors are and in a wheelchair it can become something of a problem.  Nevertheless, we always buy bananas, tomatoes, Russian sausage, pies, niknaks, suckers and cheese.  Nicknaks and suckers are what you can use to trade for something someone else has that they need and you don’t have.  This internal policy of St Albans should be stopped.  
Over the last month, prisoners are being transferred without their permission (they must want to go) to other prisons (Kirkwood and Middelburg) but are not allowed to make a phone call home to let their families know that they are moving to another prison because the wardens cut the phone lines. This is an illegal transfer. More forced transfers are expected but because of no phones they are unable to complain to their families.  They can’t phone their lawyers.  If you go to the psychologist or the social worker to make an official call, you are being told that they are not allowed to make the call for you, although they are subsidised by the state monthly to make official calls for us.    This kind of treatment of the inmates proves that they don’t want any information to get out, just as I put onto my FB page today on St Albans.
The procedure on transfers states that an inmate must have written a request to be transferred.  Such an application needs approval and that inmate must provide an address of a next of kin that is staying close to that prison.  That is the ONLY reason the inmate would want to be transferred.  This is also apparent with what was done with the beaten up inmates on the Boxing Day 2016.  Many that were injured were just shipped out to other prisons so that there would be no coordinated procedure for ascertaining what had taken place.  It was blatantly obvious that AFTER the situation was under control, the wardens and dogs pushed and shoved the inmates into a corner where they could not get out and they were set about with batons, leaving an alleged 3 inmates tortured to death.  While I do not condone the behaviour of the inmates to stab wardens, there does come a point at which the oil boils over when no human rights of prisoners are given to them and they are in lockdown constantly and are never allowed out for exercise.  The frustration levels must have been the culprit here, but the wardens did not have to beat or torture people to death after they had secured the situation in three separate passages.
At least the inmates are paying for their crimes.  These warders make mob justice and corruption appear legal.  I have the names of the wardens responsible for this atrocity.   The inmates think that those wardens are just murdering gangsters and the inmates feel above them in their value structures. They belong in prison more than a lot of inmates.
Then I had a full blown asthma attack.   The St Albans Investigating Officer was fast to find a plug for my nebuliser and to help set it up and put the medication in.  The prisoners were concerned and the Investigating Officer was concerned.  The kindness I was shown on Sunday by the Investigating Officer and the prisoners was a sight to behold.  I wish I knew the investigating Officer’s name so I could thank him properly, but I will do that when I go back to visit Heini. As you can imagine, once the breathing was under control, we left a few minutes earlier than normally.  I did however, have the chance to speak with Marius Rondganger about his parole.  His case is also a travesty of justice.   And before I end off, let me tell you what Heini told me about his court case.  “At the end of the first half of my trial, Terry Price informed me that Judge Nathan Erasmus that we have to bring an application that he, the judge must be changed.  During the break, the whole atmosphere changed.  Terry convinced my family that it was necessary to change the judge.  He heard from a Judge friend that Nathan Erasmus told that judge that he’d found me innocent.  This was a trick forcing us to keep Erasmus.   That was the biggest mistake because from there everything went south.  The decisions made around all the Trial within trials were so biased he could not even give a reason why he denied my application to appeal.  This was total bias.  Terry Price’s move cost a man his life and his family 1 million 8 hundred thousand rand in legal fees.  For what?  To put an innocent man in prison for two life sentences and 28 years with no leave to appeal?”

It is a not so well-veiled secret as to why the 2005 murders of Victoria Stadler and Jessica Wheeler and by whom.  Most people in Knysna know who did it.  I have been told the names as well.   Drugs, dealers, young girls, lack of money and gangsters are the recipe for murder.  Who murdered those girls?  Why won’t the Independent Police Investigative Directorate open the case again?  Are they shielding their own or will it be too much of an admission of ineptitude if he is released and he can sue them for wrongful arrest and imprisonment?   The police want Heini to go back to court and the Judiciary want Heini to go back to the cops!!!  And in the meantime the years of sitting in prison continue unabated with little hope of a decent closure for this family.  They have all been punished. 

It is my Own Fault ... an awakening !

Without fail, every chronically ill person is asked “But you don’t look sick” and every cancer patient universally knows they have cancer before the diagnosis.  I seem to have filled my head with inconsequential things. Is sick supposed to look like these downcast people begging at the robots or walk around with a sour face all day.  It is those who are sick that really live and those who have health, forget to live.
People don’t like to hear negative things and most want to only view the good things like what restaurants, coffee shops and general good pics of braai’s and weddings.  Who would want to see what it is really like for thousands of people who have cancer or another misunderstood, little-known about rare disease with no cure?  It makes sense that these rare diseases are called orphan diseases by the medical profession.  No one will fund research for a disease that affects only 1 in a million.  We just become the cadavers that will have autopsies to see if that adds anything to the science of medicine.  But despite this all, the only outlet I have to communicate with the outside world is through social media. 
 I had an awakening when I realized that it is my own fault that no one understands why I am not well.  It is because I fake being well so well that I could win an Oscar.  I fake being well so that I cover up a shameful illness – shameful because it is so rare that only 1 in 10 million have it and no one knows anything about it. Discovery told me that out of their 3 million clients, I am the only one with this dreaded disease.   I know more about it because I am a participating patient.  I do not just lie there being a patient and allowing the doctor to shrug his shoulders or send me off with a prescription and telling me that he will pray for me.  Every event, whether it is being pushed in a wheelchair (which I call my wheelbarrow) through Woolworths food market, or going out to an outdoor coffee shop where there won’t be many people so I don’t have to wear a mask, or to visit my mother but before I do I have to make sure I do nothing else beforehand so that I don’t turn that one visit into a vomiting sick event.   I also want to be out there in the coffee shops, out there in the sunshine mixing with friends and associates.  I too want to be able to plan something, knowing that I will be well enough on that day to do whatever I have planned.  I too want to wake up just one day feeling good.  Just one day!  I fight every day – to just get through the day, sometimes taking it moment to moment and other times when I am lucky taking it one hour at a time.  There are some things that make it even harder to bear living with a condition that is life-threatening:
·        A cold for you is a nuisance.  A cold for me is life-threatening
·        Every infection I get I wonder if this is the one that will kill me
·        People tell me “But you look so good, you can’t be ill” as though I am making a mountain of a molehill.  Don’t people know what steroids do to one’s body?   We are no longer skinny and slim but the product of Mr Michelin and Mrs Oros
·        I can’t plan anything in advance because I don’t know how ill I will feel in an hour from now let alone in a week’s time so friends forget about me – the person me and not the social media me.
·        I have very few people I see because the circle of friends moved on and left me behind
·        Every moment I am in the company of someone else I put on a show of being normal that could easily win me an Oscar Nomination
·        No one knows that my every word, my every action and sometimes my thoughts drain me of life-giving energy
·        I have spent more time in hospital over the last 7 years than I have spent at home
·        My body has changed so much that I do not recognise myself.  My hair went grey overnight and a vertical hernia down my abdomen makes me look 12 months pregnant.  So other people see me as a fat, grey-haired old woman when inside of me the fire of living still burns bright.   My body no longer fits my spirit
·        I feel guilty because my mother at 84 looks after me when I get bad.  It should be the other way around.
·        I am so tired of pretending I am well that I am withdrawing into myself and becoming a hermit.  I live alone inside my head and what goes on in my head I share on FB or I blog.
·        I am tired of people telling me to get well soon – I want to scream at them and tell them I will never get well but I don’t.  They mean well.
·        I am tired of doctors that don’t care – who brush me off with a prescription for the new symptom I have.   I want a physician who is interested in this rare disease. I have been everywhere in this country and we don’t even have an immunologist.
·        I want people to know that I have overwhelming fatigue – not just tired, but overwhelming that sometimes it takes too much energy to talk or even to breathe.
·        One reason I write about my illness is because so many others are in life-threatening conditions and they need a buddy too; so I run support groups for others so they don’t feel like they are paddling up shit creek without a paddle – that there is someone in the boat with them.

·        I see a world that needs love – a reflection of me.

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

The Heinrich van Rooyen Case is a Political Hot Potatoe

Framed 
Worried that the murder of two young women in 2005 would negatively affect the tourism to Knysna, a businessman co-opted private investigators, Christian Botha and Daryl Els to conduct the investigation so that the person responsible for the murder of the two young girls, Victoria Stadler and Jessica Wheeler could be put behind bars as soon as possible.
With single minded determination, the police decided that the murderer was the popular DJ and spun their investigation around Heinrich van Rooyen.   The police did not bother to look at any other suspects other than van Rooyen and to put him behind bars,  the police botched the crime scenes; putting an innocent man in prison for 12 years now.  He has 2 life sentences and 28 years.
There is no justice for three people in this situation, not for innocent Heinrich van Rooyen but for Victoria Stadler and Jessica Wheeler as well.   This is a three times miscarriage of justice.  And the murderers still walk the street, although one of them is in prison for another murder committed.  These murders involve drug lords and dirty cops; each protecting one another.
Since visiting Heinrich in prison, I have come to learn of another man, Marius, who is in prison for life for a crime he did not commit.   The same cops were involved in that case too.
And to further muddy the waters for the dirty cops, Fred van der Vyver was also arrested for the murder of Inge Lotz by the same cops. Fred was later found not guilty.
I know this is perhaps not the right thing to say at a time like this, but with the corruption in the Knysna Municipality that has been going on since the DA took over, and the dirty cops; karma came in the form of fire to Knysna. And the innocent suffered for it, just as Heinrich, Marius and Fred suffered at the hands corrupt police.  And no justice has been done for Wheeler and Stadler.
It makes no sense when Heinrich van Rooyen’s people are told to go back to court with the new evidence that he was framed while the judiciary tell them to go back to the cops to investigate again.  The cops say that Heinrich’s case is closed and no further investigation will take place.  This is a serious miscarriage of justice and a political hot potatoe.  Will the police admit that their own people tampered with evidence so as to frame an innocent man?.  It is better to keep him in prison for life so that he does not become another embarrassment for the police

Monday, June 12, 2017

Why Heinrich van Rooyen Smiled when He was Sentenced



I asked him "Why did you smile when you were sentenced Heini?

 He answered - "If I did not smile I would have cried.  I had to think of something to make me smile.  The judge said that if the death penalty was still enforced in South Africa he would have no hesitation in giving me the death sentence.  And I thought to myself "And you would be sending an innocent person to his death".  Then he gave me two life terms and 28 years and I thought ... they have screwed with all the evidence to make me appear guilty but they have not managed to find me guilty of setting the car alight and those extra years is for malicious damage to property". 

 I have been in prison for 12 years.  I have to keep hoping because without hope no one can live inside like this.   I have to pin my hopes on Alan D Elsdon who is trying to get the police to re-look at the corruption and the perjury of the detectives in my case.  Christian Botha, the Private Investigator, does not believe I am guilty. Why would I rape and murder women who were available to me.  And why just two of them ... if I were a serial killer then surely I would have gone on a killing spree.  I can't even kill a chicken.  

 I am sentenced to life in prison without the right to appeal for the killing of two girls I knew.  One, Victoria, I had only met a few days before and I played pool and danced with her.  She gave me a lift to the entrance to the suburb I lived in. The other, Jessica, I was having a clandestine love affair with.   She had a boyfriend and I had the mother of my children.  Neither of us wanted our partners to know about it".  

 If we had a jury system as they do in England, Heinrich van Rooyen would NEVER have been found guilty and the police who perjured themselves would have found themselves in prison. 

Heinrich van Rooyen says he danced and played pool with Victoria Stadler the night she was killed

"You know what Dianne?", said Heini, "Victoria came into the club (Stones) at around 6pm the night she was killed.  She had asked me the day before what time I get to the club and I had said around 6 or 7.  She had a "kind of" boyfriend that she needed because she needed accommodation for another week in Knysna before going to visit her grandmother in George.  Anyway, there was the ou that does various things in the club and it was only Victoria and I there so we decided to play a game of pool.  While we were playing, believe this or not, but Christian Botha and Daryl Els walked into the club to ask about Jessica's murder.  They were there, the same time and we discussed who could possibly have wanted Jessica dead".  "Fuck Heini ... you serious?" I said while I thought how the web of conspiracy surrounding the murder of Jessica and Victoria wrapped itself around Heini, while the police fingered him from the start and then contaminated evidence to tie Heini to the murders.   
"We danced that night together and at the end of the evening she drove me to the garage at the entrance to Hornlee.  I told her I would walk the rest of the way because it was not safe for her to drive in Hornlee on her own", he told me.   "And that was the last time I saw her", he said.  
I was visiting Heinrich yesterday, Sunday, and he had been very down the week before.  His family had come to visit him the previous week and he had seen his two boys and his mom and dad.  There was this big build up to see them and then suddenly nothing - nothing to look forward to.  If I had to crawl, I was determined to see him because I knew that he would be feeling flat and low after his family visit. 
If you have read my previous blog on The Chilling Details of Victoria's Last Hours, you will know what happened after Heini walked away from her car when a witness saw three men get into her car.  There was a witness to her last hours and the evidence was given to the police. The self-same policeman, Potje of the new evidence that came to light in 2012 stated that the matter had to go back to the courts, while the Judiciary stated that the police had to investigate the matter.  Three years later, Potje stated "The matter is therefore considered concluded".   No investigation was done into the perjury of the police nor the fluffing of evidence to frame Heinrich when Potje at that time said an unofficial investigation would take place but it was a matter for the courts. 
In fact, the police and the judiciary are doing and have done nothing about the injustice of putting an innocent man in prison for life for a crime he did not commit.    
Below is an article written by Yolande Stander for Herald Live on 14 November 2015.  
WHILE police and the justice system are satisfied that former Knysna DJ Heinrich van Rooyen murdered two girls in Knysna 10 years ago, there are those who still believe their killers are still at large.
A decade ago tomorrow, the partially burnt body of Victoria Stadler, 20, was discovered near the Noetzie forest outside the holiday town. She had been strangled.
About a month earlier, the body of Jessica Wheeler, 19, was found in the St George’s Anglican Church grounds on October 13 2005. She had been suffocated and raped.
The killings became known in the press as the “waitress murders”.
East London-based private investigator Christian Botha, who was hired by a Knysna businessman in 2005 to look into Wheeler’s murder, said this week he had never been convinced that Van Rooyen was the killer.
Botha was hired as the businessman believed the crime would have a negative impact on the town’s festive season.
Van Rooyen was arrested, tried, convicted and handed two life sentences for the murders in 2008.
This followed damning evidence linking him to the two girls, including the discovery of his DNA in semen found on both victims.
But Botha said he was one of the last people to see Van Rooyen and Stadler together.
“I was there in Knysna before Stadler was murdered. I questioned Van Rooyen at the nightclub where he worked about Wheeler’s death and Stadler was sitting right there at the bar. I can’t believe that while knowing he was a person of interest in a murder case he would go out and kill another young woman hours later,” he said.
Botha has also come across information which suggested the two murders were not related at all and that others were responsible.
In Wheeler’s case, Botha is convinced a man he believes was known to Wheeler killed her and that his footprint – a Hi-Tech boot – was left behind at the churchyard.
Botha said this footprint had never been lifted by police.
He said he had also come across a petrol attendant who said she had seen Stadler – after dropping Van Rooyen off in Hornlee on the night of her murder – with three other men in her car. “She asked for R50 of fuel and drove off.” Botha says he believes these men killed her.
While Van Rooyen has enjoyed significant support over the years, the girls’ families are “100%” convinced the right man is behind bars.
Both victims’ mothers, Dusty Wheeler and Hannetjie Stadler, said that they had no doubt Van Rooyen had killed their daughters.
They shared how they were still battling to come to grips with the horrific way in which their children had been taken from them.
“It is 10 years, but we have not forgotten our lovely daughter. She never had the chance to live the life she deserved. We still love and miss her terribly,” Dusty Wheeler said.
Stadler’s mother said every time the murders made headlines, she relived the pain of losing her daughter.
On November 10 she shared a poignant message on her Facebook page: “Time has flown. Today, 10 years ago, I started looking for you and I couldn’t find you. The sun set for you before the moon rose. Victoria, I miss you. Rest in peace.”
Van Rooyen has maintained his innocence, both throughout the trial and over the last 10 years in St Albans Prison in Port Elizabeth.
There have been several attempts to secure his release. Claims of new evidence surfaced when author Alan D Elsdon was researching the murders for a book he plans to write.
He spent three months going through evidence gathered during the initial investigation and trial.
He claimed to have tracked down a witness from the night Wheeler was murdered who revealed that the killer was someone who had testified against the DJ.
Elsdon did not want to discuss the details of the evidence.
He said he had spent another few days in Knysna looking into the murder last week and had gone to see Van Rooyen last Sunday. He said he planned to continue his efforts “in search of the truth”.
Police spokesman Captain Malcolm Pojie said a decision had been made not to reopen the case.
“The information handed in [by Elsdon] is old and was taken into account during the initial investigation . . . The matter is therefore regarded as concluded,” Pojie said.

Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Heinrich van Rooyen - The Don Juan


We have the affidavits and the eye-witness reports proving that Heinrich van Rooyen is not guilty of the murders of Jessica wheeler and Victoria Stadler in Knysna in 2005 (see diannelang.blogspot.co.za for details – Horrific Details of Stadler’s last hours show Heinrich van Rooyen is NOT the murderer).
The Judiciary say that we must get the police to investigate.  The police say we must go back to court.  And in the meantime, an innocent person has been in prison for 12 years.   The ineptitude of both the police to investigate their own corrupt police who framed Heinrich and the judiciary who gave him 2 life sentences and 28 years without leave to appeal is beyond belief and completely unacceptable. The 28 years was for malicious damage to property and rape, neither of which Heinrich is responsible.  He did not rape anyone and nor did he set the vehicle of Stadler alight.
However, it is we, the public, who are the ones who can make this change by shouting loudly from the rooftops that the behaviour of the police and the justice system is corrupt and incompetent.  It is our taxes that pay for this service and we are the ones who must call the shots.  If we say nothing and do nothing, then we are saying that their behaviour is acceptable and that it is fine for innocent people to be imprisoned.   Heinrich was framed to protect drug lords, cops and businessmen in Knysna.  
It has been said that he was not like by a few men before he was put into prison.  Let me explain why this idea is being promulgated.   Heinrich van Rooyen was a Don Juan.  He was a DJ at a popular nightclub and as such, he was constantly in the face of the young population of Knysna and the many tourists.  He was (and still is) charming and could charm that panties off any woman he pleased.  Why would someone who was constantly being solicited and offered kisses, oral sex and intercourse on a plate, rape and murder one or both girls. 
It makes no sense at all for a man who is offered sex at every opportunity to have to rape someone, or even bother to murder the female afterwards. All the young women, including Jessica and Victoria, were constantly vying for his attention.   It is my opinion that the men who said they did not like him before he went to prison were most likely jealous of the attention he was paid by young females.   

Being a Don Juan does not make you a murderer!

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Horrific Details of Stadler's last hours show Heinrich van Rooyen is NOT the murderer

...A teenager serving a sentence for theft and housebreaking has come forward with horrific details of what he claims were Stadler’s last hours on 10 November 2005.  He says he was present when the terrified young woman was gang-raped, chocked, doused in petrol and stabbed …
And he claims her attackers were not van Rooyen, but three men, one of whom was a drug lord for whom he was a runner.
The inmate’s statement to a magistrate could exonerate van Rooyen of one of the murders and implicates the prominent drug lord currently serving 20 years for murder.
During the trial, van Rooyen maintained his innocence of both murders and fingered two other Knysna men and an alleged gangster as the likelier suspects.
Christian Botha, the private investigator on the case said that not only did the police fail to investigate the murders thoroughly, but built a case around van Rooyen, having decided he was guilty from the beginning.   He also visited the inmate and said that the youngster showed knowledge of facts related to the crime that were never made public.
The young inmate was standing at the garage to the entrance to Hornlee on the night of Victoria Stadler’s murder.  He saw van Rooyen kiss and hug Victoria, that he got out of the car and walked away.  Three men then approached Victoria for a lift to Knysna and she agreed.  Sometime later, the care returned with three men but Victoria was not with them.  They bought a can of petrol and asked him to join them.  They took the Noetzie road.  Throughout the trip he heard noise from the back of the car and later discovered that the noise had been made by Victoria, who was tied up in the boot.
Parked in the bush, all four of them smoked druges.  One opened the boot, pulled Victoria out and the three others took turns in raping her.  They partly strangled her, shoved her into the car and then poured petrol over her and the car.
Southern Cape Police Spokesman, Captain Malcolm Poje, said the statement was not being treated as a confession but police were investigating its validity.  Poje says though the statement was being investigated, it was up to the van Rooyen family to appeal to the judiciary for the case to be re-opened.  The investigation was not a formal one, as the murder case had been concluded, he said.
State Advocate Christhenus van der Vijver said any allegations would have to be investigated by the police first.  He would not speculate on whether the matter would return to the courts.  Everything relies on the outcome of the police investigation”, he said.
(Information taken from Weekend Argus (Saturday edition) 24 April 2010 and written by Thandanani Mhlanga)
It seems to me that the police and the judiciary are totally inept and corrupt.  Someone makes a confession that they were an accessory to a crime, but the person is not charged.  He makes the same confession to the magistrate, exonerating Heinrich van Rooyen from this murder but nothing comes of it.  The police spokesperson says it is not a valid investigation and that the family are to appeal to the judiciary but the judiciary say that the police must first investigate.  Everyone is passing the buck, while Heinrich sits in prison for a crime he did not commit. 

I am aware that the family approached the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) with evidence that Heinrich was framed, together with affidavits and proof how Heinrich could not possibly have been the murderer of either Victoria Stadler or Jessica Wheeler.  Alan D Elsdon has worked on this investigation for three years and submitted his findings on behalf of the family and nothing has come of it.   It is a disgrace and a travesty that we cannot trust our judiciary or our police to do what they are tasked to do.   They do as they please with impunity and they protect one another.  With Director Trollip dead, perhaps the IPID won’t mind doing what they are supposed to do and that is to investigate crimes committed by police.  Perjury by police is a crime.  And it is criminal to frame and innocent person. 

Monday, June 5, 2017

Heinrich van Rooyen - A Travesty of Justice

I met Heinrich van Rooyen’s children and parents last week.  They had come from Knysna to visit Heini, bringing his two sons with them.  They then came to meet me at my home.  What a privilege … what an honour.   Now that I have met the people who parented Heini, I am no longer surprised by the kind of person Heini is; soft, gentle, compassionate, honest, strong …
Heini’s father was the Head of Correctional Services for Knysna, now retired.  His brother, Franklin, is a warden there.  Heini’s youngest brother is in his final year at Police College.  His eldest son is going to the South African table tennis championships.   His mother is the kind of woman who will work her arse off to see that her family are cared for.   He has an amazing family – so traumatised by Heini’s wrongful imprisonment and yet, so humble, kind, compassionate and gentle.   When you look a little deeper you can see the damage that has been done.  They have been broken.
Although our afternoon was filled with laughter, it was not without private tears shed in my bedroom with his mother.   Through the cops who framed Heini, the van Rooyen family lost everything; including their home and all that money went into the pockets of Advocate Terry Price and his minions.   They are tired, they are broken and they are living a nightmare that they never wake up from.
The fact that Price did not ask or even mention important facts that would have played a major role in the outcome of the case, or question the validity of the so-called ‘eye-witness’ is criminal.    The legal costs for this case to defend Heini came to one million, eight hundred thousand rand. 
How could Terry Price do such a shoddy job of defending him?     Not only did he lose the case when it was so easy for him to have changed the course of justice in the favour of real justice, but he pocketed hundreds of thousands of rands for his pathetic defense of Heini.   That is thievery, in my opinion.   Who to blame?  The lawyers who did not give him the information he needed to defend, or is he just a useless advocate.  The justice system is flawed and corrupt.   I would not employ him to defend me against a peg on my washing line.
Herald Live reports Terry Price thus: “His presence is somewhat larger than life. His booming voice can be heard in the corridors of the courthouse before he is seen…He is hot-headed, cocky and a bit bullish, but his colleagues and clients will tell you that he has a heart of gold and will go to the ends of the earth to prove someone’s innocence”. (Really – I know of two he did not go to the end of the docket, let alone the ends of the earth)… Price was a junior advocate on the team representing Stellenbosch murder accused Fred van der Vyver, who was tried for the 2005 murder of his girlfriend, Inge Lotz.
While the evidence against him seemed overwhelming, his lawyers managed to turn the tables on the police, accusing them of fabricating evidence”.  (So why did he not do the same for Heini?  Is it because he was only the junior and he did not contribute much?)
“In 2007, Judge Deon van Zyl acquitted Van der Vyver of Lotz’s murder”.
Interestingly, the cops who investigated the murder of Inge Lotz and pinned her murder on Fred van der Vyver, were the same cops who investigated the murder of the two girls in Knysna in 2005.    In both cases, they used the same kind of shenanigans.  
Why did Price not turn the tables on the police when it was blatantly clear to everyone that the cops had framed Heinrich van Rooyen?  Terry Price was Advocate in both cases.  Was the defense different for both cases because the van der Vyver’s had more money than the van Rooyens?
Heinrich was sentenced to 2 life terms and 28 years.  He has now served 12 years.   He was arrested on 10 December 2005 and sentenced on 14 May 2008.  
Because he was sentenced after October 2004, he can only ask for parole after 25 years. But, in sentencing Heinrich van Rooyen’s to thirty (30) years imprisonment with no parole, the judge also refused leave to appeal.    The Constitutional Court did not overrule the Supreme Court’s decision.
In Heini’s case, the police committed perjury, broke the chain of evidence, took eye-witnesses who could not possibly have seen anything, let alone Heinrich and planted or failed to find clothing at the crime scene that was only found days later by the cops who were involved in the Fred van der Vyver case.  If cops can plant evidence with impunity, fail to follow accepted investigative techniques and frame an innocent man, under the conditions of his sentence, he becomes a political hot potato.  The police are not going to investigate thoroughly their own, are they?  Are they not going to cover up for their colleagues, particularly since Director Trollip was leading them?  It is not without sadness that Director Trollip has died, but at the same time, without him – who can we blame?   The police who followed his direction MUST be taken to task so that we can right a very bad wrong.  An innocent man is spending his life in prison because of crooked cops.
Who murdered Jessica Wheeler and Victoria Stadler?   They are still walking the streets of Knysna. 

Friday, June 2, 2017

Medicine Control Council Instrumental in Human Rights Abuse leading to Death and Morbidity


The Medicine Control Council (MCC) closed the laboratory at the Western Province Blood Transfusion Services (WPBTS) that made Stabilized Human Serum (SHS); the immunoglobulins that are made from approximately 40 000 units of blood and that is transfused into a patient who has Primary and/or Secondary Immune Deficiency.   It is also used for burn victims.  The transfusions of SHS save lives and without it, the patients are at great risk of developing a bacterial infection that can be fatal. 
Sadly, because the WPBTS is a non-profit organisation, they do not have the money to build a new laboratory to the specs of the MCC.  And even more sadly, they have decided to not to even try to raise the funds because the cost of a new laboratory is exorbitant.
The cost of immunoglobulin treatment is now imported from the USA and the cost is too high for the sufficient number of treatments per month needed for patients.  The medical aid schemes, Discovery included, are reticent to pay for one treatment a month, meaning that we are only getting half the required dosage to keep us from having a life-threatening infection.  My own particular immunoglobulin treatment is called Octogam.  Most of these treatments are done as an in-hospital treatment due to the severe side-effects it can have and also because the treatments are infusions.
With-holding Immunoglobulin replacement therapy due to the high cost of imported immunoglobulin medication and the resultant shortages that occur is a human rights problem.  We all have the right to life, according to the Constitution of South Africa. 
A statement from the Primary Immune Deficiency Working Group (PIDDSA) of the Allergy Society of South Africa sent this statement out to all the medical aids in the hope of alleviating the situation:
Failure of regular replacement therapy will lead to a dangerous decline in protective antibodies within 1 – 3 months, given a half-life of approximately 21 days of IgG (Immunoglobulin).  A single serious bacterial infection can lead to death or serious morbidity, such as the neurological impairment that may result from bacterial meningitis.  Primary immune Deficient patients cannot discontinue life-saving Immunoglobulin Replacement Therapy.
And what did the Medicine Control Council think the people were supposed to do who need the immunoglobulins to live?   They have contravened the most basic of human rights – and the medical aids are continuing to uphold that human rights abuse.