“Paedophilia. Government corruption. Murders. And they wanted to kill me. F*** them.” This is the way the explosive book, " The Lost Boys of Bird Island" opens in this shocking story of abuse written by courageous cop and journalist team Mark Minnie and Chris Steyn.
In the late 1980s, serious allegations surfaced against three prominent National Party cabinet ministers, one of them known as the second-most powerful man in the country. They were allegedly regularly abusing young boys on an island just off the coast of Port Elizabeth.
From opposite ends of the country, Minnie and Steyn started investigating. What the pair independently uncovered is evidence of a very dark secret.
Thirty years later, the two finally connected the dots to expose a horrifying story of criminality, cover-ups and official complicity in the rape and possible murder of children, most of them vulnerable and black.
Marianne Thamm writes the foreword, explaining how South African and Belgian police swooped on the home of a 37-year-old computer engineer in Plettenberg Bay. What they found on his computer was beyond belief - thousands upon thousands of images and videos of children, even babies being abused, raped and murdered. It opened up a hornet’s nest.
Excerpts from the book and news of its publishing have started to create a furore and an outcry.