Speaker 1: Also media Ah, Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a
Speaker 1: podcast where I the host, Robert Evans, am pretty hungover
Speaker 1: because last night I saw Twisters.
Speaker 2: Molly, Molly Conger our guest for today. Have you seen
Speaker 2: Twisters or Twister? You know the classic film that it's
Speaker 2: based on.
Speaker 3: I assume I've seen the original, you know in snippets
Speaker 3: on T and T as a child.
Speaker 2: You wouldn't forget it. One of the great Phil Paxton.
Speaker 3: Roles So's Twisters Too is like the son of the original,
Speaker 3: The son is the original Twister, like just put they
Speaker 3: just put an s on it, which is fine.
Speaker 2: It's a fine movie. There's not more tornadoes than there
Speaker 2: were in Twister. But Twister, there's about four minutes of
Speaker 2: Twister that isn't actively a tornado like that movie really
Speaker 2: gives you a lot of twisters, and so does Twisters.
Speaker 3: But it's the son of the original Torneo trying to
Speaker 3: reckon with his father's Well.
Speaker 2: That's one of the through lines with both movies is
Speaker 2: that all of both the main character in a Twister
Speaker 2: movie has always lost loved ones to a tornado and
Speaker 2: is trying to fight the tornado for revenge. And in
Speaker 2: this one. They develop a way to kill tornadoes, and
Speaker 2: so that's that's what they're trying to do, is murder
Speaker 2: a tornado and vengeance because she lost all of her
Speaker 2: friends to a tornado.
Speaker 3: It was It's great.
Speaker 4: It was described to me by a friend who saw
Speaker 4: it as Glenn Powell in a very long Wrangler jeans ad.
Speaker 2: Oh he is, so you know how you know, Molly,
Speaker 2: how like some some of those Alex Jones freaks believe
Speaker 2: in like race specific bioweapons, like they made a disease
Speaker 2: that only targets white people or can't hurt Jews or whatever.
Speaker 3: Right, Twister, this time is personal.
Speaker 2: The guy in Twister, his jeans are like they were
Speaker 2: DNA coded for him, Like you couldn't get a fit
Speaker 2: of jeans that tight unless they were literally grown around
Speaker 2: your body.
Speaker 3: Wasn't that Wasn't that a thing for a while, where
Speaker 3: like the denim guys were like wearing their jeans in
Speaker 3: the bathtub and letting them dry to their body. I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't feel like that's the thing anyone would do
Speaker 2: on a regular basis.
Speaker 3: No, it was like you know, the guys who like
Speaker 3: blogged about you know, they didn't wash their jeans. They
Speaker 3: put them in a freezer instead.
Speaker 2: I don't understand jeans, guys. I never liked jeans. But
Speaker 2: this movie's great. It's got a really good truck. They're
Speaker 2: all ram trucks, unfortunately, but one of the trucks is
Speaker 2: really good. It shoots fireworks at the tornadoes, which winds
Speaker 2: up being a critical part of fighting the tornadoes.
Speaker 3: Well, how else would you get whatever you put it
Speaker 3: in the tornado tornado? Yeah, I mean, I guess you
Speaker 3: could feed it to a cow. I know the Twister
Speaker 3: likes to eat cows.
Speaker 2: They only feed things to the tornado in the way
Speaker 2: that is the most dangerous they could possibly do. Although
Speaker 2: one of the other through lines in the Twister universe
Speaker 2: is that automotive glasses invulnerable, cannot be harmed.
Speaker 3: You are cyber trucks.
Speaker 2: It's great stuff, great movie. What's different about them is
Speaker 2: the first movie is like Oklahoma porn, and that you're
Speaker 2: watching Oklahoma be destroyed, and that's great because it's a terrible.
Speaker 3: Place people like you especially Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this one. It's like Oklahoma porn. But they
Speaker 2: love Oklahoma, although they do they do have the tornado
Speaker 2: attack a rodeo which is a great seat.
Speaker 3: I hope Party Bus the Rodeo Bowl was safe.
Speaker 2: I think the well No, actually, the bulls get sucked up.
Speaker 2: A lot of things get sucked into tornadoes in this movie.
Speaker 2: There's a high body count. It's great, good movie.
Speaker 3: I enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: I got very drunk and now my head hurts. How
Speaker 2: are you, Molly?
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm doing great today.
Speaker 4: Robert, would you buy the Glen Powell jeans?
Speaker 2: No, because those jeans would clearly only fit Glenn Powell.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh, and you're at a phase of your life now
Speaker 3: where comfortable pants are an affordable luxury.
Speaker 4: I like to think Glenn Powell's either three D printed,
Speaker 4: made from AI or the ink might have just run
Speaker 4: out a little bit.
Speaker 3: I'm googling Glenn Powell. I don't know what.
Speaker 2: He's one of those guys who's handsome in a way
Speaker 2: that like I can't like, there's nothing about him that
Speaker 2: I can say is like not good looking, but also
Speaker 2: it's off. It's upsetting, kind of like Anthony Starr from
Speaker 2: the Boys, which which works for the role that he's playing.
Speaker 2: There's just something a little bit uncomfortable about how good
Speaker 2: looking he is, and Glenn Powell he's like he's got
Speaker 2: like resting family annihilator face, one of those guys who
Speaker 2: there's a terrible crime lingering inside you somewhere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, did this man exist before? If never? He doesn't
Speaker 3: look familiar to me at all.
Speaker 2: He's I don't know if I'd seen him in anything
Speaker 2: before Twisters.
Speaker 4: I always he has kids three d No, He's been
Speaker 4: everywhere for like the last year. It's been very big
Speaker 4: in my group chat. We've been talking about why why
Speaker 4: this man is being forced upon all of us? And
Speaker 4: now he's reached you, Robert, he's getting to me.
Speaker 2: I gotta say, honestly, downgrade from Bill Paxton. But what
Speaker 2: isn't a downgrade from Bill Paxton? That man had a
Speaker 2: great face? Oh Bill?
Speaker 4: And now and now that is the cold open, cold
Speaker 4: open has done.
Speaker 3: That's is it done?
Speaker 2: Oh shit, Molly, today we're talking about apartheid. Oh and
Speaker 2: we're back apartheid. I hardly know, Tiede. That doesn't the
Speaker 2: joke doesn't work that way.
Speaker 3: It worked in writing speaking.
Speaker 2: I really work in writing because is not a thing
Speaker 2: you know, or a name or anything like that.
Speaker 3: Molly.
Speaker 2: This is not just about apartheid, right, I mean, it's
Speaker 2: set during apartheid. I'm not just going to do an
Speaker 2: apartheid episode because I don't know if that just doesn't
Speaker 2: feel like the behind the bastard's way to do this part.
Speaker 3: I didn't have a childhood we can examine.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, well arguable. But you know, you have your
Speaker 2: new pot cast Weird Little Guys coming out where you
Speaker 2: talk about all of the weird little guys trying to
Speaker 2: ruin life for everybody else, these crazy little Nazis who
Speaker 2: become mass shooters and terrorists and commit all sorts of
Speaker 2: wacky crimes and also are like always into bizarre shit.
Speaker 2: Besides that kind of stuff, it.
Speaker 3: Turns out they're usually perverts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're usually some usually sex crimes, usually some sort
Speaker 2: of pervert shit.
Speaker 3: The first couple of groups I've written, I'm like, I
Speaker 3: did not choose a trio of child sex perverts on purpose.
Speaker 3: It's just always there. Yeah, it's the you.
Speaker 2: Get, like Twitter and stuff loves to make fun of
Speaker 2: like middle aged kinks who are like really into whatever
Speaker 2: their weird kink is. But like, I do think that
Speaker 2: being able to talk about it in a way that
Speaker 2: is cringe worthy to ninety percent of the population probably
Speaker 2: helped stop you from I don't know, like setting off
Speaker 2: a bomb in a post office, Like you need to
Speaker 2: do something with that pervert energy that's not just perversion,
Speaker 2: otherwise it can curdle. Now, we don't know what perversion
Speaker 2: the object of our episode for this week has, but
Speaker 2: this is we are going to talk Molly about a
Speaker 2: weird little guy and this is appropriate, a weird little
Speaker 2: guy of apartheid. And this guy is appropriate both because
Speaker 2: of your show and because the like on the week
Speaker 2: we record this. One of the big news stories is
Speaker 2: that a right wing paramilitary mob supported by members of
Speaker 2: the Kanesset has laid siege to an IDF base in
Speaker 2: Israel and defensive soldiers who carried out gang rape and
Speaker 2: torture on Palestinian prisoners. You know, the gist of the story,
Speaker 2: not that this is a story you should just get
Speaker 2: the gist of You should read some reporting on it.
Speaker 2: But the gist of it is they won. Those guys
Speaker 2: got released, and that's pretty bad. There was some talk
Speaker 2: that like is Israel heading down the road of a
Speaker 2: civil conflict, but they just caved on. It's totally fine
Speaker 2: if our guys like the kind of shit they were
Speaker 2: doing to some of these captives. Was like, there was
Speaker 2: a debate in the Kannesset about it, and one lawmaker
Speaker 2: was like, is it legitimate to shove a stick into
Speaker 2: someone's rectum? And another parliamentarian was like, yeah, if he's
Speaker 2: a Hammas militant, everything is legitimate. And it's disagree. I
Speaker 2: disagree with that if they are Hamas militants, but they're
Speaker 2: they're usually not like you're just picking people up off
Speaker 2: the street, you know, we know that in a lot
Speaker 2: of these cases, it's a lot of people who are
Speaker 2: getting grabbed for absolutely no reason, which is always, by
Speaker 2: the way, always the case when a government is grabbing
Speaker 2: a bunch of terrorists and torturing them. It's always some dudes,
Speaker 2: you know, and ladies and whatever kids, But it's it's
Speaker 2: usually not the scary thing they say.
Speaker 3: It is they found a way to make prison break uncool.
Speaker 3: Like normally a mob storming a prison would be no
Speaker 3: storming prisons. Yeah, not this, but really, they really wrecked it.
Speaker 3: They really wrecked it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like how a lot of
Speaker 2: people are hating the Olympics, which normally I'm in favor of,
Speaker 2: but they're doing it for all of the weird, crazy
Speaker 2: gross reasons like, no, no, you don't hate the Olympics
Speaker 2: for that, not because some lady want a boxing match.
Speaker 2: You hate the Olympics for all of the good reasons
Speaker 2: to hate the Olympics, not because.
Speaker 3: It's you know, satanic grooming of your children. What comes
Speaker 3: of it?
Speaker 2: You were ruining the things that I have been hating
Speaker 2: long before you did. Anyway, it's bad to torture people.
Speaker 2: There's no justification for what we're seeing in Israel now,
Speaker 2: which is you know, I think a dark turn. This
Speaker 2: stuff has been going on for a while. The reporting
Speaker 2: on the torture at that base had come out through
Speaker 2: like New York Times had done a story on it,
Speaker 2: as well as some like local Israeli papers, So it's
Speaker 2: been like pretty heavily reported. And this kind of thing,
Speaker 2: it's the inevitable result of building an apartheid state, right.
Speaker 2: You saw a lot of shit like this in South
Speaker 2: Africa because you had these chunk of the population who
Speaker 2: were you know, terrorists carrying out what they saw was
Speaker 2: liberatory acts of terrorism. You know, Nelson Mandela like was
Speaker 2: a terrorist, right, Like That's that's the reality of the situation.
Speaker 2: And whenever you have that the apartheid state is going
Speaker 2: to respond by demonizing the chunk of the population that
Speaker 2: those terrorists come out of and doing horrible, horrible things
Speaker 2: to them, including generally horrific acts of police violence. Right.
Speaker 2: The police are kind of going to be oftentimes your
Speaker 2: kind of ground level enforcers of the very worst parts
Speaker 2: of this society. And that's true everywhere you know, stuff
Speaker 2: like this happens. We could talk and we have talked
Speaker 2: in the past about the use of dogs against black
Speaker 2: detainees by US police during the Jim Crow era, right,
Speaker 2: And obviously aspects of that continue on for today, but
Speaker 2: a lot of how dogs were used to do violence
Speaker 2: to black people, particularly during the Civil rights era, is
Speaker 2: directly relevant to stuff that happened in apartheid South Africa. Right.
Speaker 2: Every single time you have kind of any sort of
Speaker 2: apartheid regime being held in place, and it's always held
Speaker 2: in place by police, there's always really really fucked up
Speaker 2: dog stories.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: It happens every single time, and it's actually going to
Speaker 2: happen in this story because the subject of our episodes
Speaker 2: is a he's a guy who winds up as a
Speaker 2: security guard. He's probably a serial killer. It's probably fair
Speaker 2: to call him a serial killer. He's definitely a serial murderer.
Speaker 2: And he was also a dog cop and apartheid South Africa.
Speaker 2: His name, Oh yeah, no yet we are we'll be
Speaker 2: talking about and of all the dog cops South African
Speaker 2: apartheid era dog cops might be the worst dog cops.
Speaker 2: These guys pretty ugly stuff. His name was Lewis ben Shore. Now,
Speaker 2: because this isn't apartheid episode, it is going to be
Speaker 2: bleak as all hell, and because this is an episode
Speaker 2: about South Africa, thankfully, it will also involve ridiculous names.
Speaker 2: So we do have that coming for us, right, Molly.
Speaker 2: I will promise you some very silly names.
Speaker 3: And we can pronounce the Dutch as badly as we want.
Speaker 3: We're not going to do well, We're not going to.
Speaker 2: This first name might got our bad Guy's full name
Speaker 2: was cybrind Jacobus loudwick Us van Schure, which and.
Speaker 3: We're not looking up how to actually pronounce that. Well, no,
Speaker 3: we're not.
Speaker 2: He doesn't deserve it, although I will tell you load
Speaker 2: Wickus is where we get the Lewis, which I guess
Speaker 2: makes sense, like if I knew a load Wickss, I
Speaker 2: would probably call him Lewis, because that's that's a that's
Speaker 2: quite a name to have to say. Although I do
Speaker 2: think I'm getting the wickest part right, just because I
Speaker 2: watched the movie District nine in preparation for this, you know,
Speaker 2: which really really reminded me how much CGI has aged
Speaker 2: in the last what has it been twenty years? Anyway,
Speaker 2: cybri and Jacobus Loadwikes fan sure was born at some
Speaker 2: point in nineteen fifty one in South Africa. This is
Speaker 2: one of those guys where we really don't know a
Speaker 2: whole lot about his childhood given where he lived much
Speaker 2: of his life. He may have been born in East London,
Speaker 2: which is a city, not a part of London, because
Speaker 2: South Africa. You know, when British people had their time
Speaker 2: running South Africa, they just kind of named a bunch
Speaker 2: of shit after places they had left behind because it
Speaker 2: was too well and dreary, which is what they did
Speaker 2: to a lot of the world's.
Speaker 3: Bringing a little bit of.
Speaker 2: Home, Yeah, bringing a little bit of home along with
Speaker 2: your terrible cuisine. Now, I hope most listeners are at
Speaker 2: least broadly familiar with the concept of apartheid in South Africa,
Speaker 2: which literally means separateness in Afrikaans what became South Africa.
Speaker 2: The country started as a colony of the Dutch East
Speaker 2: India Company in the seventeenth century. The mission initially was
Speaker 2: purely capitalist in the most mercenary sense imaginable. The most
Speaker 2: notable early official was a guy named Jan von Reibek,
Speaker 2: who arrived in sixteen fifty two to set up a
Speaker 2: refreshment station for passing cargo ships. His job was to
Speaker 2: make money delivering as much quality agricultural product into the
Speaker 2: holds of company ships as possible, but greed led the
Speaker 2: company to take more and more good farmland, which pissed
Speaker 2: off the people who had been living there for you know,
Speaker 2: a long time and didn't care much for the fact
Speaker 2: that all these white people were now saying, you can't
Speaker 2: walk around here, you can't hunt here, you know, like
Speaker 2: you can't like we've got this now, we need it
Speaker 2: for our boats to take away. So they launch raids
Speaker 2: on company farms and there's some small battles between guards
Speaker 2: and local warriors. Much of the violence is centered around
Speaker 2: or in response to, cattle raids by the indigenous Kokoy people.
Speaker 2: Van Rybeck felt like the problem could be solved by
Speaker 2: making it more of a pain in the ass for
Speaker 2: the Kokoi to access their ancestral lands. So in sixteen
Speaker 2: fifty nine he had his forces start to build a
Speaker 2: giant fence. As is always the case, whenever you build
Speaker 2: a fence with guard towers, you're gonna do some fucked
Speaker 2: up shit, right, Like, no story that started with let's
Speaker 2: build a giant fence ever ended very well, and this
Speaker 2: fence is no different from that. Since fences are hard
Speaker 2: to build, he listed the aid of Mother nature and
Speaker 2: planted a huge hedge of wild almond trees and thorny
Speaker 2: scrubs across sections. He didn't want to bother using work.
Speaker 3: Gangs on what is he maleficent like building a big
Speaker 3: thorny hedge.
Speaker 2: It's a very Disney racism fence that Yan is created here.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess that's eco friendly, right? Was he
Speaker 3: using species? Yeah?
Speaker 2: You can't fault him for being green. I will say
Speaker 2: that he at least is an environmentally friendly architect of
Speaker 2: the earliest stages of the apartheid system. As an article
Speaker 2: on the hedge fence by Zobeta Jaffer notes, quote, for many,
Speaker 2: this hedge marks the first step on the road to
Speaker 2: apartheid and symbolizes how white South Africa cut itself off
Speaker 2: from the rest of Africa, dispossessed the indigenous people, and
Speaker 2: kept the best of the resources for itself. Now, Dutch
Speaker 2: colonial possessions didn't stay limited to the land they'd taken
Speaker 2: in Van Reibeck's era, and over the next century and
Speaker 2: a half, white colonizers, who came to call themselves Boers,
Speaker 2: moved towards the interior. They eventually collided with a migration
Speaker 2: of Bantu people, and great violence proceeded from their clash
Speaker 2: that ensued. For you know, they had a war. They
Speaker 2: had wars and stuff alast for the Boers and for
Speaker 2: everyone else. Really, the British were also really interested in
Speaker 2: having some of this land and will to deploy better,
Speaker 2: more competent violence to do it. They took the Cape
Speaker 2: Colony in seventeen ninety five, abolished Dutch as the language
Speaker 2: of administration because fuck you guys, that's why.
Speaker 3: And by the.
Speaker 2: End of the eighteen hundreds, you know, things are sailing
Speaker 2: along well. The British empires giant. They got a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of South Africa. Everybody's happy, except for nobody is
Speaker 2: actually very happy. Now I should note that while the British,
Speaker 2: there's some things you can say that they like improve
Speaker 2: race wise during the time they're in charge of South Africa.
Speaker 2: For you know, for instance, they end slavery right like
Speaker 2: within the British Empire, which includes this, slavery becomes legal
Speaker 2: in the mid eighteen hundreds. But they also pass some
Speaker 2: of the first race laws, like a lot of the
Speaker 2: laws that become the undergirding legal parts of the apartheid
Speaker 2: system start as British colonial laws. So it's a mix
Speaker 2: of things. The whole story is bigger than we're going
Speaker 2: to get to in this episode, but this paragraph from
Speaker 2: journalist Heidi Holland's book The Color of Murder does a
Speaker 2: decent job of setting up the next few moves. Around
Speaker 2: eighteen thirty eight, clinging to a dream of racial exclusivity,
Speaker 2: but leaving behind their homes in the fields they had cultivated,
Speaker 2: the Afrikaaners set out to escape the British by migrating
Speaker 2: northwards across the Drakensburg Mountains into Natal and over the
Speaker 2: Orange River into the Transvall the great tracks some bloody
Speaker 2: nineteenth century battles with Zulu warriors and their defeat in
Speaker 2: the war with the British seventy years later helped create
Speaker 2: a fierce nationalism among the Afrikaaners. The concentration camps of
Speaker 2: the Anglo Boer War, in which men, women and children
Speaker 2: perished at the hands of the British, left Afrikaaners a
Speaker 2: profoundly defeated tribe with a defensive psyche that was to
Speaker 2: have disastrous repercussions in later years. Now, we've talked in
Speaker 2: this podcast about how one of the first modern concentration
Speaker 2: camps was set up by the British during the Boer
Speaker 2: War and they were in turning, they turned black South
Speaker 2: Africans and Boers, right, and they killed a significant chunk
Speaker 2: of the Boer population through these camps, Like these were
Speaker 2: really terrible places, thought until they read Heidi's book about
Speaker 2: how that chapter played into the apartheid government. Right, it
Speaker 2: makes sense when you think about these sense the fact
Speaker 2: that any reading you do of like white culture in
Speaker 2: South Africa during apartheid, there's this constant sense of life
Speaker 2: under siege and this constant sense of aggrievement. Right, we
Speaker 2: are owed something that we don't have. We are owed domination. Right,
Speaker 2: we are owed almost this vengeance because of the things
Speaker 2: that have been done to us. Right, the sense of
Speaker 2: persecution is a major fueling factor for apartheid, Right, Like
Speaker 2: the fact that the British kicked the shit out of
Speaker 2: them is a big part of why they're going to
Speaker 2: be so shitty for so long. Right, it has a
Speaker 2: it's that kind of like I have now been bullied
Speaker 2: and I am going to go find someone weaker to
Speaker 2: bully the helly the hell out of right, Like, that's
Speaker 2: a big part of the actual psyche of apartheid.
Speaker 3: It just seems like they should have taken that beef
Speaker 3: with the British back home, like go do that in
Speaker 3: the English channel or something.
Speaker 2: You go fuck up the bread, Like, come on, guys,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna throw it
Speaker 2: out here. Take Manchester. You probably take Manchester. They don't
Speaker 2: have that many guns anymore. I bet you guys have
Speaker 2: more guns. Go take Manchester. You know, nobody's gonna complain.
Speaker 2: If somebody is like, hey, you want to come to
Speaker 2: a free Manchester from the Bower's rally, I'm going to
Speaker 2: say no, let them have it.
Speaker 3: I'm fine with that. That just doesn't sound like my business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not my business. So something happens to Manchester.
Speaker 3: Some what are they called menkunions, They're going to be
Speaker 3: really Matt Robert, Oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, No, there's gonna be a lot of
Speaker 2: Mancoonian terrorism in Johannesburg. But that's not my problem either. Now,
Speaker 2: British victory in the Boer War came not long before
Speaker 2: the outbreak of World War One, and if you know
Speaker 2: your colonial history, you know that the British Empire didn't
Speaker 2: have a long healthy life after at that point. Right,
Speaker 2: South Africa becomes independent pretty early. It's the same status
Speaker 2: Canada has obviously as Americans. It's Molly and i'ed divine
Speaker 2: right to not know how the Canadian government actually works.
Speaker 2: So I don't actually know if the British have any
Speaker 2: power in Canada anymore. I don't think so. I'm pretty
Speaker 2: sure you guys are have your training wheels off, but
Speaker 2: I'm not going to check that out.
Speaker 3: Swans in Canada belong to the.
Speaker 2: King too, belong to one of the kings. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't understand it at all. I also feel like,
Speaker 2: you know, well, actually the Canadians beat us in the
Speaker 2: one war we had with them.
Speaker 3: But whatever, I don't think they could do it again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think they. I don't think they'd win
Speaker 2: this time, right, I don't know. Maybe if it was
Speaker 2: like no, I think the Great Lakes I think actually,
Speaker 2: if I'm remembering the documentary operation Canadian Bacon well enough
Speaker 2: or was that the name of that John Goodman movie.
Speaker 2: I got to look this up now, Molly, have you
Speaker 2: seen this movie?
Speaker 3: I think you're making it up.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, it's a John Goodman movie where a
Speaker 2: bunch of yokels from the Great Lakes region invade Canada.
Speaker 2: It's a classic. I need to watch it with Garrison.
Speaker 2: The film is just Canadian Bacon, Okay, Okay, So that's
Speaker 2: kind of.
Speaker 3: A mouthful for a title.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, Canadian Bacon's a fine title. It's a good
Speaker 2: movie anyway.
Speaker 3: So yeah.
Speaker 2: South Africa gets its independence pretty early in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 2: more or less, but domestic peace is elusive. There are
Speaker 2: tensions not only between black and white, but between English
Speaker 2: speaking whites and Boers. Eventually, the Afrikaaners won in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty eight and the National Party came to power, pushing
Speaker 2: a program of enforced racial separatism backed by state violence.
Speaker 2: And this is kind of when apartheid officially slides into
Speaker 2: being right. You had aspects of that enforced by racial
Speaker 2: laws that had pre existed it back to the colonial era.
Speaker 2: But it's the National Party that comes to power with
Speaker 2: the problems that basically, we are going to make, you know,
Speaker 2: separate white and black people, right like that, that's our program.
Speaker 2: One of the first architects of the system is a
Speaker 2: guy named Hendrik ver Ward who became leader of the country.
Speaker 2: He started out as he was the education minister. Initially,
Speaker 2: I think he used to be a teacher, and he's
Speaker 2: a very racist guy described in a speech his belief
Speaker 2: that black citizens could never be more than huers of
Speaker 2: wood and drawers of water. So that's a good basis
Speaker 2: for a stable society. Race becomes a strictly managed legal category,
Speaker 2: marked an ID card, something that delineated when and where
Speaker 2: people could travel and exist legally. Now this is not
Speaker 2: a natural state of affairs. It doesn't work very well
Speaker 2: for very long in any of the places in the
Speaker 2: world that try versions of this, and it always has
Speaker 2: to be enforced through state violence. In South Africa, the
Speaker 2: government developed a wider variety of tools, civil and military
Speaker 2: for this purpose. One of these tools was Section forty
Speaker 2: nine of the Criminal Procedures Act, which established a legal
Speaker 2: obligation for police to interfere in criminal activity and define
Speaker 2: the degree of force they were allowed to use to
Speaker 2: do it. Section forty nine and its predecessors had existed
Speaker 2: in various forms in South African law back to the
Speaker 2: colonial era, but the most significant amendment of the apartheid
Speaker 2: era in nineteen seventy seven. It read as follows. If
Speaker 2: any person authorized under this Act to arrest or assist
Speaker 2: in arresting another, attempts to arrest such person, and such
Speaker 2: person resists the attempt and cannot be arrested without the
Speaker 2: use of force, or flees when it is clear that
Speaker 2: an attempt to arrest him is being made, or resists
Speaker 2: such attempt and flees, the person so authorized may, in
Speaker 2: order to affect the arrest, use such force as may,
Speaker 2: in the circumstances, be reasonably necessary to overcome the resistance
Speaker 2: or to prevent the person concerned from fleeing. Where the
Speaker 2: person concerned is to be arrested for an offense referred
Speaker 2: to in Schedule one, or is to be arrested on
Speaker 2: the ground that he is reasonably suspected of having committed
Speaker 2: such an offense, and to the person authorized under this
Speaker 2: Act to arrest or to assist in arresting him cannot
Speaker 2: arrest or prevent him from fleeing by other means than
Speaker 2: by killing him, the killing shall be deemed justifiable.
Speaker 3: So they just sort of codified what cops already do
Speaker 3: when they shoot a fourteen year old boy in the back.
Speaker 2: Yes, and this is a you noted, not so different
Speaker 2: from how the cops. The law treats police in the
Speaker 2: United States. Now, that is a process that developed here
Speaker 2: becoming more normal, not that cops haven't always used violence,
Speaker 2: but it becoming as normal as it is for police
Speaker 2: to shoot fleeing people. That has become more normal, right
Speaker 2: as laws have been added to the United States and
Speaker 2: his court cases have kind of increased the amount of
Speaker 2: immunity that police have in situations like that. Apartheid South
Speaker 2: Africa pretty early on codifies a system of immunity that
Speaker 2: allows cops to shoot people in the back.
Speaker 3: The difference is it doesn't allow it. It sounds like
Speaker 3: it man did al.
Speaker 2: Well, it could be argued to mandate it, right.
Speaker 3: Because whereas American police, you know, over and over again,
Speaker 3: this goes to court court say no, if cops don't
Speaker 3: want to do anything, they don't have to. They're not
Speaker 3: obliged to intervene. They're not obliged to help. But I
Speaker 3: thought you said that they are required to interact.
Speaker 2: That's how the laws. I don't think anyone. I've never
Speaker 2: come across cases people being punished for not shooting someone
Speaker 2: in the back. But there's basically the law says you
Speaker 2: have to intervene if you are one of these kinds
Speaker 2: of people authorized by this act and you think that
Speaker 2: you come across a crime, right, and you are allowed
Speaker 2: if you choose to to use lethal force if someone
Speaker 2: tries to run away from you, right, So not just
Speaker 2: self defense, but if someone is fleeing arrest. And this
Speaker 2: law another way in which it differs from kind of
Speaker 2: how the US treats stuff like this, because obviously our
Speaker 2: cops do this shit all the time. In South Africa,
Speaker 2: the law can extend to a wider variety of white citizens,
Speaker 2: including people working as security guards for local businesses.
Speaker 3: Right, Oh, that's not who you want doing this. No, No,
Speaker 3: it is not good. No, it is.
Speaker 2: Not and it is not going to end well. One
Speaker 2: South African legal expert analyzing this law before it was
Speaker 2: amended in nineteen ninety eight, noted as described in a
Speaker 2: study by Cartha Ghizy Sammy Kistan of the University of
Speaker 2: on Pretoria in response to the confirment of such open
Speaker 2: ended powers on the arrestor to shoot and kill. For instance,
Speaker 2: a young child who had stolen or was reasonably suspected
Speaker 2: of having stolen an item of such relatively trivial value
Speaker 2: as an apple and who had fled an arrest could
Speaker 2: be shot.
Speaker 3: Oh no, So like at this point, we're talking like
Speaker 3: CBS door security guard run to cops just shooting children.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you jack an apple and the rent a cop
Speaker 2: can empty a nine millimeter into your back, perfectly legal.
Speaker 3: I feel like that's going to escalate.
Speaker 2: Really, it's going to happen a lot. Now. This brings
Speaker 2: us back to our weird little guy for this episode,
Speaker 2: Lewis van Schore. Now, I found very little that's verifiable
Speaker 2: about his childhood. In early life, his father was a
Speaker 2: cruel authoritarian who bullied him. He's basically said by some
Speaker 2: people who knew him that, like his dad never gave
Speaker 2: him a break. He was probably an abused kid, right,
Speaker 2: It's probably fair to say he was abused as a kid,
Speaker 2: he would certainly have been exposed to outrageous levels of
Speaker 2: racism because he is a white kid in apartheid in
Speaker 2: South Africa. I will say, I'm not sure this guy
Speaker 2: is actually particularly racist for white people in apartheid South Africa.
Speaker 2: I do actually have to note that I don't think
Speaker 2: he's motivated by racism. We'll talk about this because this
Speaker 2: is debatable. I think this guy's just a serial killer
Speaker 2: and the best way to do that is going to
Speaker 2: be getting into law enforcement and apartheid South that's the
Speaker 2: easiest way to get away with murdering people. But I
Speaker 2: think it's the murdering he's motivated by more than the
Speaker 2: color of the people he's murdering, right.
Speaker 3: Just a great opportunity, It's just a.
Speaker 2: It's really easy to get away with murdering poor black
Speaker 2: people in apartheid South Africa if you're a cop, and
Speaker 2: that's why he wants to be a cop. That's my
Speaker 2: take on it. But we'll see where you land. So,
Speaker 2: schooling is not something that interests Lewis, and he drops
Speaker 2: out at age sixteen to join the police. He starts
Speaker 2: carrying a gun immediately as soon as he drops out
Speaker 2: of school. He is a an armed police officer as
Speaker 2: a teenage boy, I a problem with that system. Really
Speaker 2: bad idea, but worst person to give a gun and
Speaker 2: a bad's The fact that he would get to carry
Speaker 2: a gun seems to have been a major part of
Speaker 2: why he wanted to do this, right. He specifically became
Speaker 2: a cop because he wanted to walk around with a gun.
Speaker 2: Van Shure was big. He's a physically powerful guy. Basically,
Speaker 2: everyone who meets him, even as an old man, is like, yeah,
Speaker 2: he was like physically a very imposing man and he
Speaker 2: is never afraid of violence. The police in South Africa
Speaker 2: in those days had a special use for men like that,
Speaker 2: enforcing the increasingly unpopular apartheid system through hideous violence. Now,
Speaker 2: as in the United States, a great deal of police
Speaker 2: racial violence was accomplished using dogs, and Van Shure was
Speaker 2: quickly promoted to work as a handler in the dog unit.
Speaker 2: South African police had established dog units, initially for detective
Speaker 2: work in rural areas and gold mines. After nineteen ten,
Speaker 2: many of the first detection dogs were used for tracking,
Speaker 2: and by the nineteen thirties there were several hundred police
Speaker 2: dogs in service and a breeding program. I do love
Speaker 2: that a dog, right.
Speaker 3: Perfect, she's mad.
Speaker 2: No poor dogs, although these are the dogs they breed
Speaker 2: in South Africa to be race violence dogs are pretty
Speaker 2: brutal animals.
Speaker 3: You do have to say, do you know what kind
Speaker 3: of dogs they were fond of?
Speaker 2: They start with like German shepherds, but they kind of
Speaker 2: breed their own, like these are our South African doing
Speaker 2: race violence.
Speaker 3: Dogs, right, Oh, they made they made special ones.
Speaker 2: Everyone kind of does. You know, when you get when
Speaker 2: you develop your own system of race based dog based
Speaker 2: race based violence, you're gonna make your own dogs for
Speaker 2: Everyone's a little different. The kind of racism you want
Speaker 2: to do in the you know, Mississippi with dogs might
Speaker 2: be different than the kind of racism you want to
Speaker 2: do in Pretoria, you know, or in uh or wherever. Yeah, right, exactly, the.
Speaker 3: Head you know what you want to use native flora and.
Speaker 2: Fauna, exactly exactly. Thank thank you for understanding, Molly.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to see a picture of these dogs.
Speaker 2: It's like I'm just trying to talking about dogs using Yeah,
Speaker 2: so no police dogs. There's initially like if the police
Speaker 2: us like the dogs are just for tracking, right, and
Speaker 2: if they're used to harm suspects. There's like penalties and
Speaker 2: stuff that have to be paid. But you know, Molly
Speaker 2: speaking of using dogs to brutalize captive populations. You know,
Speaker 2: our audience is kind of a captive population. And here's
Speaker 2: these ads.
Speaker 3: And we.
Speaker 4: What was happening there? What are you doing? Did you
Speaker 4: did you forget what you were doing? What happened?
Speaker 3: Nothing?
Speaker 2: We're back, We're back, We're here, We're here.
Speaker 3: Why not?
Speaker 2: So? There were initially penalties when police dogs were used
Speaker 2: to harm suspects, but as dogs who would you know,
Speaker 2: were like they started using dogs more more less for
Speaker 2: like crimes out in the bush, and more for like
Speaker 2: gang crime, and then for crowd control, for breaking up
Speaker 2: particularly strikes and riots. And once that happens, the kind
Speaker 2: of the prescription against using dogs to hurt people goes
Speaker 2: away very quickly.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Professor Sandra Swartz studies the use of dogs and apartheid policing,
Speaker 2: and she claims, quote things changed fast with the increasingly
Speaker 2: heavy hand of the apartheid state in nineteen sixty one
Speaker 2: and SAPs study toward Europe shifted the focus of canine policing.
Speaker 2: Sharpville had occurred and the police wanted a different kind
Speaker 2: of dog, one that could impose physical and psychological order
Speaker 2: on the African population. These crew dogs, mainly German shepherds,
Speaker 2: were imported, bred and donated. The force was multiplied with
Speaker 2: an emphasis on force. Yeah, they have this big protest
Speaker 2: riot thing, and they're like, we need to tear some
Speaker 2: people up with dogs, Like that's how we're going to
Speaker 2: keep a lid on this whole.
Speaker 3: No one likes apartheid thing, rather get shot.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, of course, like almost certainly, yes, absolutely, I'm
Speaker 2: much less scared of of well, like a normal dog bite,
Speaker 2: I'm much less scared of than a bullet, But a
Speaker 2: mauling by a German shepherd, I think I would prefer
Speaker 2: taking my chances with a round of nine millimeter.
Speaker 3: One bullet hole you can you can stitch that up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, geez, I mean, neither of them is a great option.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I've seen I've been around too many really
Speaker 2: bad dog fights, you know, to want to now, I'm
Speaker 2: not running them. You know, I'm not running them.
Speaker 3: Okay, clarification, Robert.
Speaker 2: They just happen a lot.
Speaker 3: You know, you live at Robert dogfight ring.
Speaker 2: People don't take care of their dogs. Everyone's on methamphetamine.
Speaker 2: Not me, but everyone else. A lot of dogs have
Speaker 2: a lot of fights, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: What you're telling me is that you did method a dogfight.
Speaker 4: That's basically what I got from that as well.
Speaker 2: There's pieces of that in my life, Mollie, but not
Speaker 2: the whole picture in Oklahoma. It wasn't in Oaklan. I mean,
Speaker 2: I saw dog fights in Oklahoma, but I was too
Speaker 2: young to be doing.
Speaker 3: Met Molly.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy six, midway through Lewis's policing career, dogs
Speaker 2: became targets of gorilla attacks on the police. A school
Speaker 2: uprising that year began with the killing of a police
Speaker 2: dog and some like So. I can't obviously the dogs
Speaker 2: aren't at fault, they're dogs, But I also can't blame
Speaker 2: people who are being mauled by dogs from murdering police dogs.
Speaker 2: And they would do it regrettably, respect They would do
Speaker 2: it pretty brutally. They necklaced some of these dogs, which
Speaker 2: was a method of actually it started out. It was
Speaker 2: a way that like it within sort of like black
Speaker 2: communities in South Africa, if you had other black people
Speaker 2: kind of like talking to the cops right like rolling
Speaker 2: on folks, you would necklace them, right, and they it
Speaker 2: extends to you know, they do it to some captured dogs.
Speaker 2: Eventually they do it to other people too. But it's basically,
Speaker 2: you fill a tire with gasoline and you stick it
Speaker 2: over a person and you light it on fire. It's
Speaker 2: a way of saying, don't do what this guy did, or,
Speaker 2: in the case of the dogs, don't do what this
Speaker 2: dog did. Now, I think the people who might be
Speaker 2: thinking of talking to the cops probably understand the message.
Speaker 2: I don't think the dogs do. But nobody's nobody. When
Speaker 2: you're fighting a you know, effectively trying to overthrow your government,
Speaker 2: everything you do isn't going to be squeaky clean, right.
Speaker 2: It's an ugly, ugly thing.
Speaker 3: And it's like data Toulpicard. Sometimes terrorism is the answer.
Speaker 2: Sometimes terrorism is the answer. Although I do think maybe
Speaker 2: you didn't need to necklace the dogs, but I'm not
Speaker 2: going to I'm mon, throw the apartheid government of you.
Speaker 2: You know, you guys did what you what you thought
Speaker 2: you had to do.
Speaker 4: For necklace dog apologists.
Speaker 3: Yeah, these dogs were evil.
Speaker 2: The dogs weren't evil, they were being used for an
Speaker 2: evil purpose. And if you're the person being mauled by
Speaker 2: the dog. I understand that, like you're not going to
Speaker 2: think about the animals.
Speaker 3: As well, base And to be fair, none of those
Speaker 3: dogs that none of them meet a fine end. I
Speaker 3: mean even still today no modern American policing g average
Speaker 3: police dog dies from being left in a hot car.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it happens a lot. I just don't understand how
Speaker 2: that happens anywhere? Do you people not know? Like it's
Speaker 2: the same thing when people do it to babies, Like
Speaker 2: what is how are we still having this problem?
Speaker 3: Anyway?
Speaker 2: Whatever, Lewis is not a particularly noteworthy dog cop, and
Speaker 2: without access to detailed police records, only a few of
Speaker 2: which still exist, we have to turn to other documented
Speaker 2: history for an idea of the kinds of things Lewis
Speaker 2: was doing with his police dog. I found a story
Speaker 2: related in an article by the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced
Speaker 2: Study based on a lecture by Professor Sandra Schwart. This
Speaker 2: story is from nineteen ninety eight, so four years after
Speaker 2: the official end of apartheid, but a lot of like
Speaker 2: the different things that were put in place for apartheid
Speaker 2: legally or still in place, and we can assume this
Speaker 2: represents maybe a less extreme example of the kind of
Speaker 2: violence Lewis would have been involved in. Police of the
Speaker 2: East Rand dog unit arrested three Mozambican immigrants looking for work.
Speaker 2: The police initially demanded a bribe, then turned the suspects
Speaker 2: in debate by passing two dogs who didn't bite to
Speaker 2: bring in Rex, a proper South African police dog who
Speaker 2: knew how to hurt. The resulting video showed the tasting
Speaker 2: blood method, a shocking video of snarling savagery and a
Speaker 2: terrible failure for the immediate post apartheid state. The video,
Speaker 2: complete with laughter, was regularly shown at police brise until
Speaker 2: it was leaked to the media and policemen were arrested
Speaker 2: and imprisoned. The incident strongly reflected the broken relationship between
Speaker 2: the citizenry and the police, the brute power of the
Speaker 2: state and the state's power of the brute bad dogs
Speaker 2: on the loose, said Swart. And so that is they
Speaker 2: have this tasting blood method of like basically letting the
Speaker 2: dogs like rip people up in order to get them
Speaker 2: into a frenzy. And this video of police shaking down
Speaker 2: people for bribes and then having their dog maul them.
Speaker 2: Police are like prep playing it at police gatherings for
Speaker 2: each other as like entertainment, Like you guys will watch
Speaker 2: our colleagues fuck up these dudes with their terrifying dog
Speaker 2: like that's that's that's how apartheid cops. You know, all
Speaker 2: these guys had been apartheid cops. That's how they like relaxed,
Speaker 2: you know, so like that. These are the kind of
Speaker 2: people that Lewis is. This is who we're talking about,
Speaker 2: right right.
Speaker 3: It's not regrettable violence for them. It's it's like a
Speaker 3: foam lobby.
Speaker 2: But it's a perk of the job that you get
Speaker 2: to have a dog rip a person to shreds. You know,
Speaker 2: that's why you take this gig. He described his job
Speaker 2: with the police in one interview as handling attacker dogs,
Speaker 2: which he's sicked on people he always described as protesters
Speaker 2: and criminals. Nearly all of these people, he admitted, were black.
Speaker 2: He said of this that it was quot hunting, but
Speaker 2: a different species. And I don't fully know what he
Speaker 2: meant by that. I think I know what he meant
Speaker 2: by that, but there's actually a couple of things he
Speaker 2: could mean there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that really works on two terrible lives.
Speaker 2: Yes, are you saying it's like hunting a different species
Speaker 2: than you normally hunt.
Speaker 3: Or a different species like you.
Speaker 2: Then you wouldn't say it's like hunting but a different species,
Speaker 2: because usually hunting isn't the same species as you. Right,
Speaker 2: most people don't hunt the same species they are.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't actually understand entirely what he was saying there.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's a different species of hunting, you know, I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, it's that's not good. It's not good on
Speaker 3: any level.
Speaker 2: He's not good at any level. And it's confusing wordplay.
Speaker 3: Doesn't normally hunt people, but he doesn't see black people
Speaker 3: like he does.
Speaker 2: He does hunt people, but they are all black people. Now,
Speaker 2: this is not an episode on the use of police dogs,
Speaker 2: but I do find the subject fascinating. And before we
Speaker 2: continue with Lewis's story, I want to read one more
Speaker 2: quote about his job by Swart. Quote, police dogs were
Speaker 2: creatures poised between citizenry and state, between technology and sentience,
Speaker 2: agency and training, between good and evil, and always between
Speaker 2: nose and teeth. And I think that's a great quote
Speaker 2: about police dogs, but I also think it describes Lewis
Speaker 2: pretty well, right, right, is this he is this creature
Speaker 2: positioned between the citizenry, the citizenry and the state and
Speaker 2: kind of reduced to animal violence in order to serve
Speaker 2: a role protecting the state from its citizenry, you know.
Speaker 3: And this sort of like barely contains like snapping its
Speaker 3: jaws at the end of it, barely.
Speaker 2: Barely capable of thought, right, Like, that's Lewis, and that's
Speaker 2: these these dogs that are bred just to maame people.
Speaker 2: Numerous friends and family members describe Lewis as not a
Speaker 2: bright guy and someone who is often prone to violence.
Speaker 2: His colleagues on the force may believed that this may
Speaker 2: have been something he did out of insecurity, that he
Speaker 2: was so violent because he thought he was dumb. One
Speaker 2: colleagues said he was not a clever bloke, but he
Speaker 2: would go to Helen back to get his man. It
Speaker 2: was his way of proving that he was as good
Speaker 2: as the others, right, Like, I don't have smarts, so
Speaker 2: I'm going to have to compensate by being extra fucking aggressive.
Speaker 3: I've met some cops, right, that's a cop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds about right.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: The picture of biographer Heidi Holland paints of Lewis suggests
Speaker 2: a man who was perhaps performatively macho, if not reflexively so.
Speaker 2: On the sports field, the hulking Lewis was able to
Speaker 2: show his physical talent more convincingly, playing flanker for the
Speaker 2: Police rugby team and earning provincial colors in the Eastern
Speaker 2: Capes Tug of Wars squad. He also starred in four
Speaker 2: wheel drive challenges, racing over hillsides and beaches and his
Speaker 2: superpowered land Rover with its monster mag wheels and heavy
Speaker 2: black roll bar. Dressed in shorts with the ever ready
Speaker 2: holster on his hip, Lewis felt happy, according to his
Speaker 2: first wife, to keep fit, he ran cross country barefoot.
Speaker 2: A beer swilling man's man. He was by all accounts
Speaker 2: well liked in the police force and in East London's
Speaker 2: white community generally. I hate that this guy is a
Speaker 2: barefoot runner too.
Speaker 1: I'm so.
Speaker 3: Did you say that the police force has a Tug
Speaker 3: of War team? They do? Yes? Yes, Molly. Is this
Speaker 3: a traditional South African sport?
Speaker 2: Yes, it's the only sport that South Africans love. That's
Speaker 2: probably not true. But I'm not feeling very charitable towards.
Speaker 3: South Africa today, or should you on any day? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think it's I think it's actually it's the Eastern
Speaker 2: Capes Tug of Wars squad, so that might be just
Speaker 2: a Tug of War squad that he was also in.
Speaker 2: And he's on the police rugby team.
Speaker 3: Okay, so he's just playing like like just been like a.
Speaker 2: Local yeah, kind of sporting league thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's good for men to have hobbies.
Speaker 2: It's good for men to have hobbies. Considering what this
Speaker 2: guy does for a job. Yeah, you really want him
Speaker 2: on his hobbies as much as possible.
Speaker 3: It's good for men to have some hobbies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, always a good idea. Lewis is well liked because
Speaker 2: the white residents of East London understood that their prosperity
Speaker 2: and comfort was undergirded by violence done by men like him.
Speaker 2: So what if he was stupid and boorish, which he was.
Speaker 2: Lewis was a serious You could call him a serial monogamist.
Speaker 2: He's married four times before age forty, so he's not
Speaker 2: great at being married, and he meets it.
Speaker 3: Do these all and divorce? Oh yes, yes, okay, they're alive. Yes,
Speaker 3: they are alive.
Speaker 2: They are alive. You're not going to be surprised to
Speaker 2: hear that. There's some spousal abuse in this story.
Speaker 3: But oh, he wasn't a kind.
Speaker 2: I feel like I barely even need to say that.
Speaker 2: Obviously I'm going to He meets his second wife, Beverly,
Speaker 2: while she's married to someone else. One member of their
Speaker 2: church later told that journalist Heidi he would go on
Speaker 2: fishing trips with Bev's husband and then stake away to
Speaker 2: be with her. So he's like, driving this guy out
Speaker 2: to the woods to go fish and then just runs
Speaker 2: back home and a fuck his wife.
Speaker 3: Seems the least efficient way to do that.
Speaker 2: He's an enormous man.
Speaker 3: You have not like normally a fishing trip is a
Speaker 3: good alibi, but you're will him.
Speaker 2: Somehow the tactic worked. So maybe Bev just didn't like
Speaker 2: smart men.
Speaker 3: It's just like bruised idiots like us. Yeah.
Speaker 2: She leaves her husband for for Lewis, and the couple
Speaker 2: gets married in nineteen seventy eight. They set up a
Speaker 2: home with Beverly's three young sons on a small farm.
Speaker 3: So he seems like the kind of guy who would
Speaker 3: be totally chill raising another man's sons. I think that's issues.
Speaker 3: He's actually fine with this, Like all of the kids say,
Speaker 3: he never hurt us. So he's a wife beating, serial killer,
Speaker 3: apartheid enforcer, but he's a good step dad.
Speaker 2: And I don't think good, but like not bad in
Speaker 2: any particular way.
Speaker 3: I can still be surprised.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I kind of was like, oh boy, I
Speaker 2: bet this kid's doing guys doing some fucked up shit too.
Speaker 2: And like now his kids, like said, seem to feel
Speaker 2: pretty positively towards him, So I don't know.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, I judged unfairly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these are so he's basically has a homestead, right,
Speaker 2: He and Bev are homesteading, right, And this is obviously
Speaker 2: something people in the US do, I do it, but
Speaker 2: it's part of the white South African dream. It is
Speaker 2: a Boer tradition right before, right, right, and this like
Speaker 2: that's a big part of like I mean, it's a
Speaker 2: big part of like the American tradition too, right, Like
Speaker 2: we're going to go out onto some land that he
Speaker 2: used to be someone else's and build a homestead, you know.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy nine, Lewis and Bev had their first child, Sabrina,
Speaker 2: And Sabrina is going to be a very important part
Speaker 2: of this story for reasons that are quite surprising, but
Speaker 2: we'll get to that now. Her sons, Beverly sons, have
Speaker 2: testified that he beat Lewis beat their mother right, although
Speaker 2: they insist again he was never violent towards them. His
Speaker 2: kids are really the only people that he's peaceful and
Speaker 2: kind of supportive to violence is never far from his
Speaker 2: behavior at the best of times, though. One way Van
Speaker 2: Schure made a place for himself in the local community
Speaker 2: was by using his police skills to train dogs for
Speaker 2: other small farmers. One of the small farmers that he
Speaker 2: helped was a guy named Basil Niemann, who was later
Speaker 2: charged in court for sicking his German shepherds on an
Speaker 2: elderly black farm worker. Nieman later ran for parliament. Like
Speaker 2: this story of him going to court for mauling a
Speaker 2: man with dogs gets kind of famous, so he does
Speaker 2: sort of the right wing pivot from getting famous for
Speaker 2: being shitty and he runs for parliament. Lewis campaigns for him,
Speaker 2: like handing out posters that show a growling German shepherd
Speaker 2: and the slogan I'll be your watchdog. Yeah, the meaning
Speaker 2: of those sides was not missed by anybody, right Like, yeah, he.
Speaker 3: Wasn't ted Kennedy running with flyers and say like, you know,
Speaker 3: I'll drive you Gus, I'll drive the legislative vehicle. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, for most of Lewis's life, South Africa had been
Speaker 2: embroiled in the Namibian War of Independence, which his people
Speaker 2: generally called the angle In Bush War. This was a
Speaker 2: hideous little conflict that ranged from the late sixties to
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety, and during parts of it, South African police
Speaker 2: were sent to the border and participated in aspects of
Speaker 2: the fighting. Right, these are police being used to secure
Speaker 2: the border, but the nature of the conflict means that
Speaker 2: they are engaged in combat. Right, at least that happens
Speaker 2: sometimes now. Lewis would later claim that he hated these duties,
Speaker 2: which were dangerous and terrifying. His wife, Beverly, says that
Speaker 2: was nonsense, and that he had actually volunteered to fight
Speaker 2: at the border because he really likes fighting. Given what
Speaker 2: we can verify about Lewis and what comes next, I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure Bev is the one telling the truth here.
Speaker 2: Wanting to fight in the angle In Bush War is
Speaker 2: a very Lewis thing, So I'm gonna guess she's probably
Speaker 2: given us the truth. More or less either way. Lewis
Speaker 2: quits the police in nineteen eighty. He says, because I
Speaker 2: just didn't want to fight anymore, and Beverly is like, well,
Speaker 2: I made him quit the police because he was cheating
Speaker 2: on me constantly, and I wanted him to get a
Speaker 2: job closer to home so that he would cheat on
Speaker 2: me slightly.
Speaker 3: Less and for at that point, girl, just get out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Bev is kind of Bev's a piece of shit too,
Speaker 2: that's it. She deserves the abuse, but she's also going
Speaker 2: to be a terrible person in this story, so her
Speaker 2: judgment's not great.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Lewis does try to do as she asks for a while.
Speaker 2: He gets a job at a carpet store.
Speaker 3: What are those skills does this man have? Yeah, Like,
Speaker 3: there's no attack ons at the carpet store. One of
Speaker 3: the interesting things because he's abusive to her, she is
Speaker 3: much smarter than him. She becomes she's like incredibly wealthy
Speaker 3: by the time she dies, Like she is a wildly
Speaker 3: successful entrepreneur. She just starts and runs numerous successful companies.
Speaker 3: There's an interesting dynamic going on between them. We don't
Speaker 3: get all of it. But he gets a job at
Speaker 3: a carpet company, that his wife owns. But Lewis fan
Speaker 3: sure not the kind of man who wants to work
Speaker 3: at a carpet store, right, Like, he's just not not
Speaker 3: a great salesman.
Speaker 2: Not a great salesman, not a lot of adrenaline in
Speaker 2: selling carpets.
Speaker 3: You know, you can't bully a customer into buying a rug.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think Lewis was the kind of guy who
Speaker 2: would tell you he was made for action. My own
Speaker 2: argument might be that adrenaline and violence are both addictive,
Speaker 2: and he was addicted to adrenaline in violence. But you know,
Speaker 2: whatever you say about him, Lewis was good at violence.
Speaker 2: So before long he started looking for another career path.
Speaker 2: He applied for work as a daytime security guard, but
Speaker 2: this was hardly any more exciting than the carpet store.
Speaker 2: Desperate for action, he asked to rejoin the police. And
Speaker 2: this is one of the more interesting but unexplained parts
Speaker 2: of the story. The cops turn him down. Now we
Speaker 2: don't really know why possible. You know, he's in his
Speaker 2: like thirties, something like that, forty closing in on forty.
Speaker 2: And you know, by this point it's the early nineteen eighties,
Speaker 2: mid eighties, and the apartheid regime is facing like a
Speaker 2: lot more condemnation from the international community, and the gorilla
Speaker 2: war rights has kind of from within has stepped up
Speaker 2: several notch and a lot of these gorilla a lot
Speaker 2: of attacks, right, A lot of the terrorist attacks on
Speaker 2: the state are inspired by police violence. Right, Like the
Speaker 2: people who are trying to tear down the system get
Speaker 2: angry because the cops do something brutal and they carry
Speaker 2: out an attack.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: There is a decent chance people on the force were like,
Speaker 2: Lewis was a great cop, you know, a decade ago
Speaker 2: or whatever. But we are in a different world now
Speaker 2: and if we have him on the force, he's going
Speaker 2: to do something that gets us bombed, right, which is
Speaker 2: probably true. You know, like that's not an un what
Speaker 2: it would be the.
Speaker 3: Best idea any of those guys ever had.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we really do. He is not the man
Speaker 2: for this hour. Now, that doesn't mean the racial regime
Speaker 2: in East London had no job for him, though. Eventually
Speaker 2: he was advised to seek work at a company owned
Speaker 2: by a former police major, Falcon Security. Now this is
Speaker 2: not a mall cop outfit. It's purview proceeded directly from
Speaker 2: a number of the social changes that had swept South
Speaker 2: Africa in the last few years. As I said in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy seven, the criminal Code is amended to basically
Speaker 2: allow security guards to murder people for unning away. Up
Speaker 2: to the end of the seventies, most security firms had
Speaker 2: just provided silent alarms and then police would come in
Speaker 2: to actually investigate and maybe arrest people. But this caused
Speaker 2: the cops to waste a lot of time on false alarms,
Speaker 2: and the police are like, we don't want to do
Speaker 2: this anymore. Lewis's boss at Falcon, Major CJH. Cloat, who's
Speaker 2: also a former cop, was one of the entrepreneurs who
Speaker 2: sailed into the gap with a new kind of full
Speaker 2: service security form firm. Major later told a reporter I
Speaker 2: know Van Schure was was the kind of bloke that
Speaker 2: liked to use his firearm. That I know because I
Speaker 2: killed one and he used to say, ha, I'm ahead
Speaker 2: of you.
Speaker 4: This is this is not lego Ghibli and those rings
Speaker 4: just murderer kills.
Speaker 3: You're just murderers. You are not in a sure so
Speaker 3: they're just they're making like what like furgated neighborhoods like
Speaker 3: a It hasually small businesses. I think I think it's
Speaker 3: mostly like it's like a private murder police force. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: accountable to no one and allowed by the state to
Speaker 3: shoot kids in the back.
Speaker 2: Well, they are accountable to the police, but the way
Speaker 2: that the police monitor them is by going good job.
Speaker 3: This is probably going to go good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's going to be great. But you know what
Speaker 2: else is going to be great? Molly?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Is it products and services?
Speaker 2: I hope it's not an ad for Falcon security. That
Speaker 2: would be really awkward.
Speaker 3: A simply say ad yeah, simply.
Speaker 2: Safe, simply safe. Now we've got a guy with a gun. Uh,
Speaker 2: we're back anyway. It is unclear to me when Lewis
Speaker 2: made his first kill. Most official reporting suggests all or
Speaker 2: nearly all of his killings occurred in a three year
Speaker 2: spree near the end of the eighties. Some of what
Speaker 2: I've read leads me to question that. I think it
Speaker 2: definitely he started shooting people earlier, but he kind of
Speaker 2: I'm sure there's a period of ramping up to the
Speaker 2: speed of murder that he's going to be at, you know,
Speaker 2: those during that three year period. What we know is
Speaker 2: that Section forty nine provided Clote and Van Schuur with
Speaker 2: all the legal cover for murder they needed. So long
Speaker 2: as they argued that they had tried to get a
Speaker 2: suspect to stop and surrender and that suspect had run,
Speaker 2: they had what amounted to legal impunity. The precise nature
Speaker 2: of the law meant that shooting someone in the back
Speaker 2: was not just legal. You could argue it was your duty.
Speaker 2: Like legally speaking, Beverly was, by all accounts a huge racist.
Speaker 2: She's going to become an exceedingly wealthy burst after this
Speaker 2: and a real prominent bigot. But she does not seem
Speaker 2: to have been a fan of murder, and her husband's
Speaker 2: behavior either disgusted her or at least frightened her. I
Speaker 2: should probably also emphasize that she knew he was cheating
Speaker 2: more or less constantly on her, all of which factored
Speaker 2: into her leaving him in nineteen eighty three. Right now,
Speaker 2: the murder, it may, I mean she says that, like
Speaker 2: she says that him taking this job was like the
Speaker 2: final straw, right, and maybe I.
Speaker 3: Could accept one or the other. But yeah, chanting she
Speaker 3: did on by a serial killer, absolutely not.
Speaker 2: Now. The inciting incident seems to have been when Sabrina,
Speaker 2: who is not quite four at this point, caught Lewis
Speaker 2: making out with her preschool teacher and told Bev how
Speaker 2: he is such a piece of shit. This led to
Speaker 2: horrific fights, and eventually Sabrina would claim her dad threatened
Speaker 2: to murder her mom. Bev rightfully took Sabrina and her
Speaker 2: brothers away to Queensland as soon as they were gone.
Speaker 2: In the divorce final Lewis married Sabrina's teacher. She and
Speaker 2: her mother had to start a new life, with her
Speaker 2: haunted by the knowledge that she had broken up her parents' marriage.
Speaker 2: Even though obviously that's not your fault. You didn't do
Speaker 2: anything wrong that was coming, but yeah, you know that's
Speaker 2: she's four. Lewis continued to run through ryot wives at
Speaker 2: a steady rate after this. He divorced the teacher two
Speaker 2: years later after having two daughters with her. No not
Speaker 2: I love match, and then in nineteen ninety he proposes
Speaker 2: to the daughter of a wealthy local businessman. This may
Speaker 2: have been an attempt by Lewis, who's still working as a
Speaker 2: security guard at that point and regularly shooting suspects to
Speaker 2: gain a more reputable place for himself in society. As
Speaker 2: he aged If so, it didn't work out, largely because
Speaker 2: he seems to have been a bad husband. One local
Speaker 2: reporter described his four wives as either vulnerable, overweight, or
Speaker 2: meek okay, a little rude. The papers at the time
Speaker 2: always like to tell you when his wives are fat,
Speaker 2: which I think is gross. The arm chair psychiatry done
Speaker 2: by journalists after his murders became public described this as
Speaker 2: him seeking to fill his life with mentally weaker people.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I buy that, because again, Bev
Speaker 2: is an exceptionally competent and powerful businesswoman, So I don't
Speaker 2: know if it is a case of him filling his
Speaker 2: life with mentally weaker people.
Speaker 3: Some of them were meek and some were just fat.
Speaker 3: Maybe she was strong and fack.
Speaker 2: Bev gets fat, which is part of why I think
Speaker 2: these journalists are like, she's mentally weaker than him, but
Speaker 2: like she's like a multi milli millionaire entrepreneur. I don't
Speaker 2: understand why you think she's mentally weak.
Speaker 3: So we're really drawing a lot of conclusions about the
Speaker 3: wives here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I might say the single mother who was able
Speaker 2: to leave her husband to start a new life and
Speaker 2: become a millionaire on her own is probably mentally stronger
Speaker 2: than the man who just shoots people in the back
Speaker 2: for a living.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean he does it for the love of
Speaker 3: the game. He does do it for the.
Speaker 2: Love of the game. You know, find a thing you
Speaker 2: love and you'll never work a day in your life.
Speaker 2: Bev is kind of thriving. After the breakup, Lewis continues
Speaker 2: to do the only thing he'd ever been good at. Violence.
Speaker 2: By the late nineteen eighties, Falcon Security had a contract
Speaker 2: to protect seventy percent of all white owned businesses in
Speaker 2: East London. Local business owners started to see Lewis as
Speaker 2: their version of the Punisher, a killing machine you sent
Speaker 2: in to trim the grass, periodically murdering young men who
Speaker 2: had the temerity to commit property crime and thus keeping
Speaker 2: criminality under wraps.
Speaker 3: Is A.
Speaker 2: Jacobson, a South African journalist, claims he was a kind
Speaker 2: of vigilante killer. He was a dirty, hairy character. These
Speaker 2: weren't intruders who were, in a lot of cases pretty desperate,
Speaker 2: digging through bins, maybe stealing some food. Petty criminals do
Speaker 2: these people don't realize this is real life.
Speaker 3: This is not a movie, isn't a TV show? What
Speaker 3: are you doing about you're not reducing the amount of
Speaker 3: violence in the community by killing people in the parking lot.
Speaker 2: I think the white people in town see it as like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what you're doing is making them keep their heads down. Right,
Speaker 2: you want to kill the ones who commit crimes, you know,
Speaker 2: because that'll scare the others and it'll just generally it'll
Speaker 2: keep the system in place, it'll let them know their place, right,
Speaker 2: Like that's why they like what he's doing, Right.
Speaker 3: I guess it's just I don't know. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: like what we're seeing right now with Israel, Right, It's
Speaker 3: like the people who mature psychologically in this kind of
Speaker 3: environment just have a different understanding of violence than we do.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they see him as part of the wall because
Speaker 3: there's like a dead guy in the parking lot. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like you're seeing this, Yeah, he's he is.
Speaker 2: Part of the wall that they see their life as
Speaker 2: depending on. Now, it's an unfortunate reality with cases like
Speaker 2: this that some chunk of the populace will always say, well,
Speaker 2: you just can't let people steal. And so this is
Speaker 2: where I provide you with more detail on the kind
Speaker 2: of murders that Lewis committed. Sometimes more than one a week.
Speaker 2: Here's an experts may be. Yeah, he shoots people. He
Speaker 2: shoots people so many times.
Speaker 3: So is there a separate thriving industry of like whoever
Speaker 3: comes and picks up the bodies?
Speaker 2: I mean there's a lot of there's a lot of
Speaker 2: work for the hospitals, there's a lot of work for
Speaker 2: the morgues. There's a lot of Actually a lot of
Speaker 2: these guys go into unmarked grades.
Speaker 3: He just thinks he's like the season one and two
Speaker 3: the Arrow on CW. What is happening here? I can't
Speaker 3: comment on this an amazing shot, and like everyone he
Speaker 3: shoots dies or is he shooting ten guys a week?
Speaker 3: He's ten guys a week.
Speaker 2: He's shooting at the height of his shooting people, he's
Speaker 2: shooting about one person a week, and he's killing about
Speaker 2: one person a month.
Speaker 3: Bruh, Stop, that's weird. That's just being a murderer.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's weird. That's yeah, that's just being
Speaker 2: a murder. Murderer. Yeah, I'm going to read you for
Speaker 2: an example of how the kind of murders he's committing.
Speaker 3: Here's an excerpt from.
Speaker 2: A BBC report in a particularly brutal case. On eleventh
Speaker 2: July nineteen eighty eight, Van Shore shot a fourteen year
Speaker 2: old boy who had broken into a restaurant searching for
Speaker 2: petty change. The boy, who we have not named to
Speaker 2: protect his privacy, told the police he hid in the
Speaker 2: toilet when he saw Van Shure with his gun. He
Speaker 2: said the security guard called him out, told him to
Speaker 2: stand next to the wall, and then shot him repeatedly.
Speaker 2: He told me to stand up, but I couldn't, said
Speaker 2: the boy. While I was lying there, he kicked me
Speaker 2: in the mouth. He picked me up and propped me
Speaker 2: up against a table, and then he shot me again.
Speaker 2: So this is not a security guard comes across. It's
Speaker 2: not supposed to be right.
Speaker 3: Wait, so even under this like bizarre framework where it's
Speaker 3: cool to shoot the seat in the back while he
Speaker 3: runs away, like you can't this.
Speaker 2: No, because he's not running away, Like this is supposed
Speaker 2: to be illegal. But here's the thing. Lewis says, he
Speaker 2: ran away. The black boy he shot says he did
Speaker 2: all this horrible ship to me. Guess who the cops believe.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh, they don't have like no ballistics or anything.
Speaker 3: They're not doing any doing science.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're not doing that on these cases A working
Speaker 2: a part time in the floor.
Speaker 3: They don't come with.
Speaker 2: Thelster walking around in there doing you don't give a ship.
Speaker 2: And in fact, this boy, as he is like in
Speaker 2: the fucking hospital recovering from being shot within an inch
Speaker 2: of his fucking life, gets charged with breaking an entering
Speaker 2: and basically all of the survivors get charged in like
Speaker 2: sentenced for breaking an entering after Lewis nearly murders them.
Speaker 3: So that's cool.
Speaker 2: Uh. Now, the good news is that in this case,
Speaker 2: the but Lewis shot survived. But Lewis is going to
Speaker 2: kill other children, and in part two we'll talk about that,
Speaker 2: and we'll talk about his daughter, Sabrina. It's going to
Speaker 2: be great, Molly, It's going to be a lovely time.
Speaker 2: But first off, most importantly, how are you doing?
Speaker 3: Oh, you know, not as good as about an hour ago,
Speaker 3: but still pretty good?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Great, excellent.
Speaker 4: Well, Molly, do you have anything you want to before.
Speaker 3: Plug the idea of not using dogs as weapons? No,
Speaker 3: but I also have a new podcast. Yeah it feels
Speaker 3: so gross to say, yeah, well, welcome to the club.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I think you should not use dogs as weapons,
Speaker 2: but you might use a weapon as a dog, you know,
Speaker 2: try that out, you know, pick up.
Speaker 3: Instead of any of that, you should open your podcast
Speaker 3: app of choice and subscribe to Weird Little Guys, my
Speaker 3: new weekly show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, subscribe to Weird Little Guys. Then put a put
Speaker 2: a dog lee sure out of Thompson submachine gun and
Speaker 2: just drag it into the park, you know, and give
Speaker 2: everyone a good time.
Speaker 4: And uh, because people, people have been asking, uh. The
Speaker 4: the Apple ad free version of our network, cooler Zone
Speaker 4: Media is available now and the Android version is getting
Speaker 4: so unbelievably close, so close, so close, friends.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: Well everyone, this has been Behind the Bastards, a podcast
Speaker 2: about a piece of ship. And this this this week
Speaker 2: we got a real, real piece of ship for you.
Speaker 2: So be back, enjoy, enjoy the ship. Suck up this ship,
Speaker 2: you know, slip up the ship everyone. There will be
Speaker 2: more on Thursday.
Speaker 3: Bye bye.
Speaker 4: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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