South Africa's former Occult Crime Unit boss speaks: An interview with Kobus "Donker" Jonker.

In the last days of apartheid an occult unit was formed to discover any truths about the Satanic-Panic sweeping the country.
It was a strange time, when people and children disappeared, yet the mainstream press focused on Satanism - almost like a metaphor for the cult-like secrecy of the regime, and the liberation movements.

Soon academics began to ask questions. Where was the evidence of a major Satanic cult that threatened to seduce the white youth?
The occult unit and its boss - Kobus Jonker - were soon seen as fundamentalist Christians pushing their agenda, and persecutors of pagans, wiccans and heavy metal fans.
Jonker earned nicknames like "Donker" (Afrikaans for "dark"), or "God's Pit-bull".
Ultimately the occult unit was disbanded as discriminating against certain beliefs.

This did not stop Jonker from publishing books on Satanism and "Spiritual Warfare".
Often he was pictured with butchered cats and other "muti" murders.
Muti is African-styled witchcraft, which is known to use animal and human parts.
Critics argued that proof for any specific white satanic cult remained elusive, despite some self-styled "satanic" murders.
Jonker is now employed as a consultant on muti murders.

I expected a very intolerant person.
But in repeated interviews this is not what I found at all.
He respects pagans and LaVeyan Satanists.
He even says that in SA satanism was more about crime, and in other countries the Satanists are more into the "religious aspects".
So at least nowadays he clearly divides the mystical movements from criminality.
Also in African beliefs he distinguishes between the "sangoma" (healer) and "baloyi" (black magician).

Jonker is clearly a man guided by his religion, but I don't find him unreasonable.
He probably knows a lot.

I still wonder whether he truly saw the "tokoloshe" (a midget demon that is highly sexual in African culture).
I cannot say I believe it where I sit now, but I've been to places where it is very real.

I agree with him - true evil exists.
Evil beings and forces exist.

Here the interview and article by "Vice Magazine's" Henk Lustig: (warning: it includes graphic imagery of a butchered cat):
www.viceland.com...

Great find S&F

Never heard of this before and will investigate further.

Just a heads-up, I have seen many-a thread on ATS that turn into battles over Evil exist vs. mental Illness.

Si vis pacem, para bellum -- "If you pray for peace, prepare for war"

Regards,

t

If you told me this story I'd say don't talk nonsense to me...

Dr. Jonker describes an exorcism, and his encounter with a tokoloshe:

The pastor had a lot of other pastors and therapists there and they were watching all these events unfold. All of a sudden a small tortoise climbed out of the girl’s navel. A small tortoise! When they saw this happening they all ran off so that there were only three of us left in the room. Everyday people never see this kind of thing. If you told me this story I would say “don’t talk nonsense to me” because my thoughts are based on reality. If you see it for yourself it’s different. It was witchcraft and it is a reality; it does exist.

And you dealt with stuff like this on a regular basis?
Oh yes. I was sent to the farm of a very wealthy family in Venda about eight years ago where the so-called Tokoloshe (a short demon from African lore) was raping a girl there every night. I said: “I don’t believe this nonsense,” but the commissioner sent me out saying they’ve got real problems there. All of the windows of the farmhouse were broken. Outside the farmhouse were the remains of burnt clothes everywhere because every time the girl tried to put clothes on they would start burning. Rocks fell from the air onto our police vehicles. The farmer had called in several sangomas to try and get rid of the evil spirit but it didn’t work. What caught my attention was that there were no cattle, oxen, dogs or birds. There was nothing. It was like a graveyard. So I went in the house and asked the mother to remove all of the sangoma’s stuff and I said: “I’m coming to you in the name of the Christian God, Jesus Christ,” because I saw that it was going to be a spiritual battle. The girl was sitting on the bed in a lotus position eating an orange and the sap was running down her breasts. I asked her if she wanted to break free of this evil. She said yes, so I started to pray. After about twenty minutes the door slammed open next to me and a small man, like a dwarf, came running to me. He was an old black man and he was sweating profusely—it was actually a cold day, but he was sweating. I said: “What are you doing here? Can I help you?” and he replied in a gruff voice: “I want to help her.” I told him to leave because we were busy. He grunted and left. No-one on the farm knows who the short man was and no one has seen him since then.

Read the rest at Vice Magazine: DR. KOBUS JONKER: GOD’S DETECTIVE - Vice Magazine

For those interested, Kobus Jonker appears in this Australian (ABC/Journeyman Pictures) documentary on muti murders. (Jonker appears at about 10:45 in the clip.)

The journalists draw a clear divide between beneficial traditional healers (and their powers) and the black magic criminals.
Things have worsened considerably since then.
It could suffice to say that anyone who wants black magic for curses and power only doesn't have to bother with Western occultism any more.
Although there are many frauds - there is big international money in tribal black magic.
The money itself compromises people.
For a price - it seems - anything is possible.

I am really surprised more ATS Members have not commented on this subject.

Is this person someone with substance and respect or just a sensationalist working on a book deal and a round on the talkshow circuit?

I guess it's a very localized topic.
I don't think any self-styled fundamentalist Christian "occult cops" maintained that level of celebrity-status in the US.

I''ve been Googling some more interviews, and will add some when I have more time.
The pagan sites see him as a crackpot and opportunist.
The Christian sites regard everything he says as evidence.
What surprises me is that he never comments on the white girls kidnapped by Gert van Rooyen, since many believe there was a cover-up and occultism involved. en.wikipedia.org...
I recall that Van Rooyen was also a fundamentalist pastor, with connections to the National Party cabinet (essentially Jonker's former bosses). Many now believe that Van Rooyen was assassinated by police in a cover-up.
It strikes me as strange that Jonker's unit made allegations of child sacrifice, but didn't comment much on this case, although a former lover of Van Rooyen claimed in Personality magazine that he took her to a strange, allegedly "satanic" meeting.
Some might see satanic-panic as misinformation and a deflection to what was really going on.

It is also possible that much of what was regarded as "satanism" were crimes committed by the mentally ill in a violent environment, and that they used demonic possession as a (usually unsuccessful) defense in court.

reply to post by halfoldman


Do you know if this guy has any actual evidence?

I would think that if you know in advance that you dealing with an unknown, you may want to provide proof of claims that most would consider outrageous.

Photos, Videos, Audio or preferably so hard concrete evidence such as a forensic police crime scene evidence collection of a satanic crime?

Still find this very intriguing and look forward to your further posts.

reply to post by EyeHeartBigfoot

Interestingly an Afrikaans newspaper published a skeptical article on Satanism in SA last month.
This was a courageous move, since Christians had previously threatened to boycott the paper when a columnist - Deon Maas - wrote that satanists also deserve religious freedom. Maas obviously meant the LaVeyans, and not the baby killing sects of popular Christian propaganda, but they cannot distinguish between the two.

The article titled "Where are all the Satanists?" (by Johannes de Villiers) is unfortunately in Afrikaans, although there is a translate button, resulting in a garbled translation, but it does have an illustration:
www.rapport.co.za...

De Villiers refers to one of the first sensationalist articles in the popular magazine "Die Huisgenoot".
A man claimed to be a former satanic priest, and that there were 40-90 000 satanists in SA in 1978.
The satanic-panics were thus constructed, and many of them in conservative (boring) rural villages.
Yet, despite all these claims there was no evidence.

The "Huisgenoot" author defended his 1978 article in a letter the following week.
There were satanists in prison, he claimed (without being specific), and the police had an occult unit.
Why would the police have a unit for something that didn't exist?
So Jonker and the occult cops were given as evidence in themselves, in a circular argument.
In the post-apartheid period where Vlakplaas and the death squads have been exposed, it is strange that anyone would still have such unwavering faith in what a former cop said.
In any case, satanic-panic was informed by similar material from the US, and several pastors wrote books and lectured on the dangers of satanism.
Whatever the truth, it was quite a big industry.
An army of believers soon claimed to have been former satanists, but there was never any evidence beyond fantastical claims.

Unfortunately I don't have Jonker's books with me right now.
I recall two photos - one of a black child skinned in a muti ritual.
The other showed a woman in a black cloak with what appears to be a skinned cat.
The rest are mainly pencil drawings, and a lot of horrific claims.

There seem to have been a few disturbed teens and isolated people who probably took a lot of the info from magazines and Christian books to create their own self-styled satanism.
I recall using Christian books to get details on LaVey's rituals, since The Satanic Bible was banned.
The sensationalist portrayals caused a lot of curiosity.

Jonker apparently has an exhibition room with a lot of evidence, and things like candles made of human fat, however I've never seen them examined by an independent source.
In one program he took the Wiccan celebrity - Donna Darkwolf Vos - into this room, and there were things like Buddha statues and a fantasy poster of a magician, along with what appear to be muti fetishes.
The program was a bit of a reconciliation between Jonker and the pagans he once harassed, although as a Christian he refused to attend one of their ceremonies, and had it explained to him on video.
Pity I can't recall the title or find it on Youtube.
I remember from my Christian days during the satanic-panic that satanists could apparently curse ordinary objects, so any New Age statue, tape or book could be evidence - it was pretty ridiculous.

The other "evidence" would be satanic graffiti under the village bridge or in a storm-pipe, which was immediately viewed as evidence of an active coven.
It was even a bit of bizarre fun making these horrific claims, and I recall seeing this girl with a big smile on her face talking the biggest load of crap about how the satanists watched her house, and she saw a child being sacrificed.

I vaguely recall that Jonker claimed a satanic coven was called The Brotherhood of the Ram, which turned out to be a rather displeased Masonic-type group. So there was a lot of mistaken identity and mixing things up.
I think he took things as evidence as he went along.

But still, there were some pretty sick people who killed animals for fun and so forth, so I wouldn't entirely dismiss the odd self-styled satanist or group, who took their influences from horror movies, LaVey, the Christian devil, muti and witchcraft. However we are never given details of the rituals and invocations, just grisly lists of so-called satanic crimes. They seem to have been so busy murdering people and cats that they probably had little time for writing rituals and theological considerations (sarcasm).

In the pre-Jonker days an author called P.J. Haasbroek wrote a book on occultism in SA titled: "Die Duiwel is Los" (The devil is loose) (1978). This does seem to describe a real ritual in Durban, where the coven chant "Yod He Vau He" and dance around a goat's head. However they are simply called "witches", and they don't do anything criminal. At that stage there was little of the differentiation that anti-occult preachers have to do nowadays.

I'd say if there was organized satanism it happened very high up in the echelons of social and religious power, and it had nothing to do with school-children, or disturbed individuals who dabbled in the occult.
There may be things that Dr. Jonker isn't telling.
According to the De Villiers article in Rapport the ruling National Party had already decided at a congress in 1974 that it was all nonsense, and that press articles relied on claims made in books rather than a real phenomenon.
Which makes one wonder why they formed an occult unit.

I often think that the CIA or some agency planted "satanic panic" in First World countries in the 1980s.

We could say it was the last and most violent phase of the Cold War, and that discourse always looked for the "enemy within".

It was also the period where the US involved itself in the Mid-East and Latin America, with all kinds of shady dealings involving drugs and arms, and silencing opposition.

SA saw itself as facing a "total onslaught", and the authorities were involved in many illegal activities, while their constituency was fed propaganda.

Satanic panic was a metaphorical deflection from this.
People were so distracted by the over-blown accusations of "satanism" (which ultimately reinforced their faith and morality rather than leading to questions), that the real evils were hidden in plain sight.
Very effective, and they will use it again.

Jonker might have been a useful idiot in this.
He's not a multi-millionaire mega-church preacher, but he helped these US churches to spread in SA.
And some of these churches now have paramilitary overtones, based on some very troubling Biblical interpretations that call for "Mighty Men" (Jesus said the meek shall inherit the earth).

I don't think it was just a natural thing created by a free press (which didn't exist in SA in the late 1970s).
The fact that SA regurgitated the same materials from the US and UK and took it to extremes, shows that satanic panic was deliberately created, introduced and spread in SA.
It is not an accidental narrative.

And of course, nothing makes a narrative more believable than the introduction of a "learned expert".
If a cop or a doctor says something that privileged discourse makes it true.
Maybe not so much today, but in the 1980s it was very effective.
I mean people bought certain aspirins because an actor in a white coat recommended them.

And I'm sure if you describe enough disaffected satanists, then some disaffected people will model themselves on that description. So it's a discourse that eventually creates its own enemy.

This is interesting. I had not heard about it before.

In the West criminal human abuse - usually not sacrifice - of this type is called "ritual abuse."

It is practiced by Whites, not Blacks. People are throwing the word "Satanism" around, but I will leave that term out of it. In the West these practices have also been tied to pre-Christian belief systems. But at a more advanced level, they are tied to various forms of programming, or mind control. Mind control is considered a modern human pseudo-technology but, according to many reports it is also an ET practice. It is believed that the ET group known as "Reptilians" may be responsible for some of these practices, as they are said to need human suffering, or at least human blood or flesh, to keep them alive when they are on Earth.

This of course is a very secretive practice, and reliable data about it is hard to come by. Some of the victims who have gone public are hard to believe, while others are very convincing.

See this link:

www.reflectionsinthenight.com...

I would like to think that these practices are dying out. But I have no way of knowing. I have not heard any stories of these things happening in the past ten or so years. I would like to think that the world is actually beginning to change and that the Reptilian influences on earth are losing their power. I would like to think that these "Muti" killings are just an isolated phenomenon now. But I can only hope that this is so.

reply to post by l_e_cox

Interesting stuff.

I will read the link, which is very long.

Let me just say that while the US citizens were glued to the screens and books, and forming groups against "satanism", heavy metal music and role-plating games, their governemnt poured $5 Billion into the Salvodoran War that killed 75 000 people (en.wikipedia.org...).
And that is just one example.

These kind of CIA wars were widespread, funded by good, conservative Christians.
Yet you ask people today who still harp on about satanism in the 1980s: What happened in El Salvador from 1980-1992?
How many children died, how many were forced to be child soldiers?
And this was all created by the people who aimed to give us moral guidance on music and religion?
Well, most of the the anti-occult Christians have never even heard of this war.
What a great job at deflection!

Just re-reading some old books on satanism back then (such as Carl A. Raschke's "Painted Black", 1990), and it's a total diversion from what was happening in reality.
Similar to SA, the Matamoros murders and "palo mayombe" were used to create the impression of a wide-spread satanic movement in the suburbs of white, middle-class America.
The youth was effectively demonsized to encourage right-wing thinking.

When this type of Christian hysteria surfaces, you can be sure that the elites are trying to hide something.

And yes, I'm sure the elites have these rituals, and in a climate of hysteria one can no longer say which cases are real and not.
Create enough trees and you can't see the wood.

Interesting how everybody was chasing occult signs during satanic-panic, and parents knew more on the supposed meanings of peace signs and pentagrams than common street drugs!

However, mixed pagan symbolism has now been exposed in Christianity, beginning with the cross.

In fact, this clip suggests that the currently popular SA pastor - Angus Buchan - is preaching Hitler-styled occultism under the cover of Christianity.
Oh dear, exposure looms, they need new devils fast!

If only the gays could be more demonic... but nobody wants to hate them any more.
Great, let's just dig out Jonker.
Well, lets wait and see.

For now militarized white men still like a good "opfok" session with cold showers.
A bit of nostalgia.

Jonker and the Morne Harmse case:
While previously self-styled Christian "experts" could claim anything in their ruling hegemony, the question remains: Why was Jonker even allowed to testify?

What Jonker said actually made sense - Harmse was not guided by satanism or heavy metal - despite Jonker's strange criteria.
But it seems like putting a respectable face on fundamentalist Christianity, and comparing it to proven social studies.
Jonker might not be a complete crackpot or phony (or satanic priest himself, as was claimed once on radio), but he views the world through a biased religious paradigm.

So for him to give evidence on satanism is like inviting Thabo Mbeki to give a lecture on AIDS.
Nevertheless, his ultimate diagnosis in the case seemed quite good.

wildhunt.org...

Absolutely classic.
Harmse wasn't a satanist according to Jonker because of the colors of his curtains and ouija-board candles!

Erm, it's bloody hard to get black candles in SA cities, let alone the smaller towns.
But yeah, that made sense to Dr. Jonker.
A high-school kid will color-code his room.

Dr Kobus Jonker, testified that although Harmse had been experimenting with Satanism and witchcraft, his involvement in such practices was superficial … Jonker said certain items and rituals typically present in a Satanic murder were absent in Harmse’s case … the bedding and curtains in Harmse’s bedroom were coloured, whereas a practising Satanist would have had only black or red. There were also no blood smears or animal parts found in his bedroom … candle wax found on the ouija board under his bed was white, pink and yellow, whereas a Satanist would have used only black and red candles … Jonker said that on the day of the murder, Harmse had not spoken in any demonic language…”

Well, fair enough, I suppose.