Betrayal. Jonathan Ancer
spy. But as a result of threats of violence against her and Gregory, she continued to be his courier, and assisted him in typing up and sending secret letters and deciphering radio transmissions.
The 45-day secret trial ended on 29 December 1983 with Judge President George Munnik finding Gerhardt and Ruth guilty of high treason. The next day, the day before he handed down his sentence, Judge Munnik took the unusual step of calling a press conference to explain his judgment. On 31 December 1983, exactly a year after the Commodore flew out of South Africa to New York, Munnik told Gerhardt: ‘The crime you have committed is one of the most serious in the calendar … You abused the trust your country, superiors and colleagues placed in you. You went into this trade of treachery with your eyes wide open and as a military man you could not have been unaware of the consequences of what you were passing on, the damage it would do, but also you could have not been unaware of the possible consequences if you were caught. Your crimes are against the state, against the safety of the state and the people in that state and, as such, makes the circle of those affected the largest one possible in the context, the whole people of this country.’
Gerhardt’s freedom was taken away from him, but not his life, as he had feared. Judge Munnik said Gerhardt would have been hanged if the state had proved the information he passed on to the Soviets had led to the death of a single South African soldier. Gerhardt was given a life term, and Ruth was handed a ten-year sentence. Both were denied leave to appeal against their convictions and sentences.63 Even though the trial was held in secret, it was still a show trial and a guilty verdict was a foregone conclusion. Perhaps his lawyers saved Gerhardt from the noose but it’s possible that Gerhardt was spared because of his high profile and his usefulness to the West in case of future prisoner exchanges.
General Herman Stadler wrote in his case notes that in the wake of the Gerhardt saga the country’s various intelligence agencies did some ‘hard introspection’ because of the ease with which Gerhardt had spied. ‘We also had a hard look at our capabilities as far as counter-espionage, overt as well as covert intelligence gatherings, were concerned, and how we could bond together to make it more effective.
‘Questions were also raised, i.e. what about other Gerhardts? What about his “spy network”? Why had he been able to get away with his treasonable acts for so long? I do not think any government or its intelligence agencies would ever be able to state categorically that they do not have an agent of some sort in their midst. After all, the elaborate tradecraft measurements are specifically applied to prevent an agent from being exposed.’
Soon after he arrived in prison Gerhardt was informed that the South African Navy had stripped him of his rank and he would not be getting his pension. He missed out on the rip-off ritual, where the insignia of disgraced officers are torn off their uniforms in a ceremony of shame. Losing his rank, though, meant very little in comparison to his other losses: his freedom, his wife and his children – Ingrid and Tom, who were young adults living in Ireland, and Gregory. Gregory was just five years old when his parents were arrested – almost the same age as Dieter Gerhardt had been when he watched the police drag his father away to an internment camp during the Second World War.
Gregory was with his mother when she was arrested.64 Up to that moment his life had been idyllic. He used to walk through the dockyard with his dad and his dog Dima, who chased cats. He spent hours on the busy dry docks, inspecting the ships, submarines and workshops with their smell of creosote, grease and epoxy resin. He watched the sailors in blue-and-white uniforms, and ate boiled beef for lunch in the canteen. The office secretaries, especially Betty Foster, his father’s PA, adored him. He hiked at Silvermine, catching snakes and paddling in the dam, looking for tadpoles in the rooibos-brown water, or spent lazy days on Noordhoek Beach. But his carefree, sheltered life came to a halt the evening the security police arrived to arrest his mother.
‘I’ve only got one compacted memory of what apparently happened over two to three days: one civilian lady, two men arriving at our place, and my mother in a state of shock. As we left the house I spotted my father – he had a beard and was standing on the side of the house. Then we were driven off in a car. The separation on an airfield in Pretoria departing from a twin prop. An unknown couple that received me. Absolute disorientation and solitude,’ says Gregory.
The next day, when Ruth was taken back to their house at the Simon’s Town Naval Dockyard, General Coetzee told her that Gregory was going to be looked after by a dominee and his wife. She shouldn’t worry, ‘they were good people’. Gregory has only a few memories of the couple. ‘I remember very kind people, struggling to give me comfort. I remember their Citroën. What a strange car, I thought. I remember a farm, funnily enough that I was knocked over by a ram. There are only very few images left.’
He was there for a few weeks before he was taken to live with an uncle and aunt in Johannesburg. While his parents were awaiting trial, he went a few times to the prison. The visits took place through armoured glass. ‘I remember the nervous excitement, the tension, sadness, the desperateness of my mother seeing her own child and vice versa, both unable to give or take comfort. Hand on hand, separated by cold glass. The harsh contrast of vulnerable human beings and the interlocking, sterile containment system.’
Having to manage the aftermath of the arrest was a massive burden for his parents’ relatives and friends and it was subsequently decided that he would go to Switzerland. ‘Independent of political views and statements, I am grateful I had the initial support of my aunts and uncles. It was they who held me in trust until I found a stable harbour with my foster family, the Meneghins, in Basel, Switzerland.’ He was allowed to see his mother one last time in prison before leaving South Africa. ‘It’s the mothers who suffer most in a separation process,’ he says.
Ruth remembers Gregory being brought to the prison. A warder, in a small yet powerful gesture of humanity, allowed the boy to sit on his mother’s lap so she could say goodbye. In those few minutes Ruth tried to explain to her son why she was going away. Gregory had always been upset seeing black children selling newspapers when it rained. They were barefoot and shivered from the cold. He had also been distressed when he found out that Negro, a black man his parents employed, had been separated from his children. Ruth told Gregory that she had done something so that in future no children had to stand in the rain and sell newspapers and freeze and that people like Negro could live with their children. She told him that sometimes people had to do the right thing even if it meant making sacrifices. For her, though, the sacrifice was unbearable: she would be separated from her little boy.
When he arrived in Switzerland an aunt there was quoted as saying that it had been difficult to explain to Gregory why his parents had been put away but that his loyalty to them was unshakeable.65 He remembers the horrified expression on his aunt’s face when a bulletin about his mother and father was broadcast on TV and the reporter mentioned the possibility of his father being sentenced to death.
Gregory adapted quickly to the language and culture of his new homeland. ‘The sensation of pain and loneliness was repeated with every separation but usually settled after around three months. The patterns became familiar: from my biological parents to the dominee couple, to my dad’s brother’s family in Johannesburg when I was five, to my mother’s brother’s family in Zürich at the age of six, to my foster family in Basel when I was seven.’ His foster family – his new mom and dad – provided an unconditionally loving anchor in his life, free of political and personal contaminations. From being an only child he became part of a big family with three older brothers and a sister. There were lots of adventures, from the playground to boy scouts, carnivals and skiing holidays.
Over the years he was granted two visits and returned to South Africa to be reunited with his parents in the high security prison. ‘I remember the announcements at the intercom, the wait until the warders would open the massive prison gate, the security screening, several gates that had to be passed. The prison guards: left, right, on top, walking on a grid. The medical examination room where the meetings took place with both my parents. There was strict supervision, the precisely limited amount of time.’
The visits were brutal reunions, reigniting the hibernating parent–child relationship