On Domestic Violence
When I first heard about the brutal slaying of Anni Dewani in Cape Town, my head reeled. I was shocked! Not at the fact that this beautiful woman was murdered but at the fact that they would go into Gugulethu at night, unprotected, with(?) a guide whom they had only just met.Something didn’t ring true for me and I thought about how I always travel when I go overseas.
When I went to San Francisco a few months ago for the International Alliance of Guardian Angels 2010 Conference I had already found out everything that I wanted to know about the area.
About the only thing I wasn’t prepared for was the bitter cold of their ’summer’, compared to Cape Town being twice as warm in the grip of winter. But, I none-the-less DID MY HOMEWORK. Why didn’t they? This was the question. Last year I went to train a group of Guardian Angels in Israel. Before I went I studied all I could about the country. I found out about customs and I CONSULTED A LOCAL! My host, and guide, in Israel was not only trustworthy, she was a Guardian Angel. In my opinion this places here right up there with Ghandi and Martin Luther King as highly moral people (ok, so maybe both of them also had their little defects, but it does not detract from what I am trying to say). If I could do my homework, why didn’t the Dewani’s?
The morning after the news hit the headlines I was in an office block in Cape town speaking to a young muslim lady and her co-worker. Their verdict? “Its the husband!” Both were adamant. both were guided by their intuition and both appears to have been much wiser than I gave them credit for. They immediately pointed to the husband, while I was still thinking of other possibilities.
The sequence of events before this poor woman’s death and after that up until very recently are briefly as follows. They were married in India in Mumbai in an expensive Hindu ritual that apparently cost £200,000 and was attended by more than 300 guests, but which was NEVER REGISTERED? If I wanted to marry a woman, and willing to fork out that much money I would make darn sure that I had it registered. Even if I did not have to pay for the marriage, and the bride’s father paid for it I would still want it to be officially registered and recognized. Later reports suggest that they were going to have it registered in March only.On the way home to London after the wedding Anni Hindocha (she was not yet Dewani when she was killed) apparently refused to sit near her husband on the plane and she cried most of the way. Now, honeymoons do not always go perfect, but so soon after a wedding ceremony you would think that she would still be in the ‘glow’ phase of the relationship. She should not have been crying.
On 12 November 2010 they landed in Cape Town and was met at the airport by a taxi driver Zola Robert Tongo who was waiting to see if he could pick up some fares. Instead he picked up a
18-year prison sentence for himself. This is how. He gave Shrien Dewani and his ‘wife’ a ride into Cape Town. Anni had never been to Cape Town before, but she was not unfamiliar with the rest of Africa as she was comfortable with Nigeria and Kenya, having visited both of these countires before. After their arrival in Cape Town at the Waterfront where they stayed the taxi driver was approached by Shrien who asked him if he knew of any available assassins(????). In the driver’s own words someone who could: “have a client of his taken off the scene“. The shocking part of life in Africa is that Tongo then said ‘Yes’. Think about this for a moment. How many people do you know who would be willing to kill your wife for a couple of bucks or even quite a lot of it, yet, the VERY FIRST person they met at the airport knew someone?
Shrien Dewani offered to pay in american dollars and the transaction was sealed right there and then and by later the same day the whole operation was being planned. Presumably Anni was at that time enjoying the sights of Cape Town or else still trying to recover from a spot of jet-lag. Tongo was discussing how to find a killer. The price he asked for this little ‘finders fee’; a mere R5000. This is quite a bit less than $800.The afternoon of the next day, 13 November 2010 he met with two others, and they decided on how it would be carried out, where they would meet, how he would be ejected during an apparent ‘hijacking’ and how the husband would be thrown out a little later. They would then proceed with the wife, rob her and shoot her. The car would be abandoned, the body found and since this happened in Gugulethu which has a murder every two and a half days it would not be a big deal.
That same evening they were to put thing in action, but the driver was an hour late. The frantic husband was clearly
eager to be a widower as he called and asked that things had to hurry up. The driver took them to Gugulethu, but the assassins were nowhere to be seen. This necesitated a side-trip to the Strand, where they had supper. It must have been a strange supper. What do you say to the woman whom you married 2 weeks ago and you know will be dead within the hour? Newlyweds are notorious for making plans and talking about the future and the day when they will have kids and even where they will retire. Also next year holiday plans and the list goes on and on.
This would have been entirely absent from his side of the conversation. Would she have noticed this? Would she have seen something was amiss? Were her eyes open or was she mind-blind? Did she know that just before entering the restaurant her husband said to the driver that he wanted it done that night.
On finishing their meal they got back in the vehicle and returned to Gugulethu. Tongo send Shrien an sms reminding him about the money and the answer came back a few moments later that it is in a pouch by the front seat. The driver took them to the spot he had agreed to and this time the assassins were waiting. They stopped the vehicle and then took control of it. After a while they threw the driver out as per the plan and shortly after that the husband. Up to this point they were still faking a hijacking. What happened after Tongo was ejected from the vehicle? Did Shrien tell her that she was about to be killed, that he orchestrated the whole thing, that he believed he would get away with everything?
If he did it would have been the most despicable thing any person could do to another, and I certainly hope that he didn’t do it, that she had at least the illusion of hope right up to the very end. This poor woman was already despairing and I struggle to understand the throughts that may have gone through her mind. Maybe she was lucky enough to have had a cognitive lockdown in which the brain shuts off many of its functions to protect its host.
Anni’s body was later found in the abandoned car in Khayelitsha, her blood testimony to the crime.
For those who feel sorry for the poverty in which the accused lived I have to point out that he drove a silver grey Volkswagen Sharan. This is not exactly the vehicle driven by poor persons.
Poor people drive a beat-up old Ford like I do or they take the bus. On 16 November Tongo met with Shrien at his hotel to receive a further R1000 for his part in the murder. This was at the same time that the husband was loudly proclaiming his innocence.
He was finally arrested on 7 December in Bristol after handing himself over.
Some of the things that didn’t ring true for me from this point became glaringly obvious with hindsight.
Suddenly he hired a high-profile publicist. One of the things I train the local Guardian Angels in is something we call “Meta Language”, and one of the main things about Meta Language is that people who speak the truth expect to be believed.
Liars want to prop up their arguments and they look for anything to support their particular view of the world. Liars would quickly hire a public relations expert to help smooth the bumpy parts of the road ahead.
Liars would quickly accuse the police of trying to pin things on him ‘because it would look better for the country if a foreigner did it’, but this does not sound like an explanantion. It sounds like a motive.
If a person from another country wanted to kill his wife. What better place in the world to take her to? Gugulethu and Khayelitsha are both regarded as highly dangerous places to visit. And yet, they went, both of them, but only one came out alive.
I have seen photos of the victims of hijackings and they are much to graphic to post on this blog. Shrien Devani didn’t have a scratch on him. Nothing. This was his worst mistake. The first one was that we do not care about life in South Africa. The second mistake he made was to think that he could exploit this situation.
Unfortunately our society allowed things to get to the point where we got this sort of reaction and reputation.
I am studying NLP and will in a few days start with an intensive course on this fascinating subject.
One of the interesting things I learnt in my pre-study material was ‘Sensory Acuity’. In a nutshell it means that we miss so much of what is going on around us because we have not opened our eyes entirely. Let me explain.
Look at the picture to the left. This is what is known as a ‘congruent’ smile. Look at Shrien Devani’s face. He appears to be quite happy here and the happiness runs all the face up and down his face, from the top to the bottom. There are clear little laugh wrinkles around his eyes. This is a ‘true’ smile. The one we use when something is making us happy or we find something funny. The exact same thing can be said of Anni’s face in this picture. She is also congruent. There is a relaxed look to her face. Compare this to the next photo, the one on the right
. In this photo there is something clearly wrong. Most people wont be able to see the difference immediately so let your friendly neighborhood NLP-trained Guardian Angel explain. The laugh wrinkles around Shrien Dewani’s eyes are suddenly gone. There is tension around his chin. Anni is also more tense. Compare the edges of the laugh lines around her mouth in this picture to the previous one. The previous picture has a nice relaxed joy on it. This picture has artificially widened smiles and tension is visible. Is this enough to utterly prove that Shrien Dewani had his wife murdered? No, of course not. Nor do we know which of these pictures were taken first. But it does give us a small indicator that things were not all moonshine and roses at the Dewani household.I wish Anni Hindocha peace, but not yet. I first wish her justice. I would not sleep easy in my grave if I was treated with the utter contempt and disregard that she was treated with. I hope that this is a wake-up call for the government that we need to bring back the death sentence.
Guardian Angels in South Africa actively endorse and support the death sentence. We actively want to know how we can help stop these crimes.
Alas, central government will not listen. They are still too busy stealing to worry about other criminals, so we will find more and more of these things happening, where our crime rate will be the spur for other persons to come and perform what is euphemistically known as ’spousal removal’.
The pictures I saw of her father crying in court touched me deeply. I have had to bury a child and I know that it is not in the natural order for parents to bury their kids. All kids have a biological switch that allows them to know that they will one day be required to bury their parents. No parent should have to go through this hell.
Vinod Hindocha is going through hell to try and find out what really happened that fateful night to his beautiful daughter. It is my wish that the judge in this case be blessed with an extra helping of wisdom and mayVinod Hindocha find peace.
