text: In my notebook, I had listed the details of seven specific shootings we wanted to ask Booysen about, along with another six questions, including about the pictures of killings we had obtained, and about a call for a judicial inquiry into the actions of the Cato Manor unit.
  Booysen appeared reluctant to discuss specific killings, or the evidence we had gathered suggesting they were suspicious, such as photos of close-range head shots and witnesses who said they had seen executions. He said the only document that could be relied on to determine how a person was killed was the post-mortem report, pointing out the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD), forerunner of the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID), had investigated all the killings. He said witnesses should make statements under oath and the competent authorities, the ICD and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), be given the space to do their jobs.
  But that was precisely the subject of our investigation. Witnesses were terrified of coming forward, and the competent authorities weren’t doing their jobs – it seemed Booysen’s men were running rings around them. I pointed out experts had told us many ICD investigations and post-mortems were sloppy or incomplete. Booysen said that wasn’t his problem.
  Before our interview with Booysen, the South African Communist Party (SACP) had called for a judicial commission of inquiry into the conduct of the Cato Manor unit, which it accused of committing “Vlakplaas-style” executions rather than taking suspects to court.
  The SACP said it was worried about the latest Cato Manor killing – that of Qinisani Gwala, an ANC Youth League branch chairman suspected of killing a police captain. The party also cited Cato Manor detectives having previously killed six men suspected of murdering Superintendent Zethembe Chonco, who headed a taxi-violence task team, and all the suspects wanted for the murder of Inkosi Mbongeleni Zondi, a former policeman close to Jacob Zuma.
  Our research showed that 16 of the more than 30 suspicious deaths we looked at were of suspected cop-killers. I thought at the time that this was precisely the sort of suspicious pattern of killings that a judicial inquiry might get to the bottom of. At least it stood a better chance of doing so than a compromised or inept police oversight system.
  I hoped that, by writing a story about the Cato Manor unit killings, we would create enough public awareness to pressure the government to convene such an inquiry. I asked Booysen whether he would support such a move.
  As we wrote on the front page at the time, Booysen said he would have “no objection to something like that [an official probe] – it may prove once and for all that the picture created about Cato Manor is totally wrong”.