A scandal from the apartheid era shakes South Africa 30 years later: Is a pedophile ring hiding murders?

The South African public has been preoccupied in recent days by the mysterious death of former policeman Mark Mini, just a week after he revealed horrific details about an alleged pedophile ring within the former white minority government that claimed to be made up of devout Christians, writes the BBC.

Mini, 58, was found with a gunshot wound to the head, but many refuse to believe the police version of events - that he took his own life on a friend's farm near the coastal town of Port Elizabeth.

"The fact that a farewell letter was found does not necessarily mean that he wrote it voluntarily. It can also mean that he wrote it under duress. The very fact that he killed himself with someone else's gun is already suspicious," investigative journalist Jacques Pau told South African Radio 702.

Minnie and journalist Chris Steyn co-authored The Lost Boys of Bird Island, which details the shocking allegations against Magnus Malan, the once powerful defense minister accused of forming death squads and authorizing military incursions into neighboring countries during the struggle to maintain apartheid rule in South Africa during the 1980s and 1990s.

Later, Steyn confronted Malan with the allegations, to which he replied: "What does it mean to be a pedophile?", South Africa's private news outlet News24 reported on its website.

Malan died in 2011 of a heart attack aged 82 – some 17 years after anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela came to power as South Africa's first black president, ending the apartheid system.

Malan was part of a regime that believed the Bible justified racism. They saw themselves as defenders of religion, family and race from being overrun by "godless communists" and "uncivilized blacks".

However, according to Mini's claims, Malan was secretly part of a pedophile ring whose members raped boys - mostly of mixed race - during fishing trips to Bird Island, a nature reserve near Port Elizabeth. The boys were transferred to the island in military helicopters, drunk during barbecue parties and then sexually abused, Mini claimed.

According to local media, Malan's family and former colleagues categorically reject these claims.

Mini said he had been building a case against Malan but was forced to drop the investigation after high-ranking police officers during the regime intervened, and the prosecutor wrote in bold red letters on the list of pending cases: "Any investigation into this matter should be stopped immediately."

The book states that the pedophile ring that operated in the 1980s included then-Minister for Environmental Affairs John Wylie and wealthy businessman Dave Allen. Mini stated that he had actually arrested Allen for allegedly having sex with children and possession of child pornography.

He added that Allen "sang like a canary" and delivered the shocking news - he mentioned the name. And not just any name, but the name of a very powerful minister in the government.

"I am in shock. And then he mentions the names of two more ministers. It threatens to open the whole Pandora's box," Mini writes.

Allen (37) was never tried - he was found dead with a bullet in his head, just like 60-year-old Willi. Both died in the same week in 1987. According to the police version of events, both took their own lives.

Now, more than 30 years later, Mini - their pursuer - also ended up with a bullet in the head.

As the South African Times website stated: "It is the common denominator that connects the alleged suicides three decades apart, which silenced three people who were intimately familiar with an alleged apartheid-era pedophile ring that reached the highest echelons of government." .

Fueling speculation that these were murders, journalist Merien Tam, who assisted with the book "The Lost Boys of Bird Island", said that Minnie feared for his safety.

Mini, who worked as a teacher in China, said he emigrated because a former security contact "gave him certain documents that were enough to convince him to leave the country," Tam told her what Mini told her.

When he was killed, Minnie was in South Africa promoting The Lost Boys of Bird Island.

His publisher said that Mini considered the book "just the beginning of the fight for justice for the victims whose stories are told in the book." He wrote on Twitter that he never said anything to Mina that would suggest he would harm himself.

So far, police have only said that a friend found Mini "lying next to a bush with a gunshot wound to the head" and that "a firearm was found next to him."

"At this stage, there is no suspicion of a criminal act. The police opened an investigation while waiting for the results of the autopsy," added the police statement.

If it turns out that Mini was killed, it would mean that killers loyal to the former regime are still active in South Africa. And that would cause fear among many - not just other potential whistleblowers.

But Steyn, co-author of "The Lost Boys of Bird Island," says she will continue to investigate alleged pedophiles from the former regime. "Mini would want me to continue and that's exactly what I'm going to do," she told South African portal IOL.

Cruel Uncle Malan

"The Lost Boys of Bird Island" contains shocking allegations such as that some of the boys considered Malan a particularly "cruel uncle" and called him Ears because he had big ears.

The book also states that on one occasion, a gun was shoved into a boy's anus and Malan pulled the trigger. The badly wounded boy was later taken to a hospital in Port Elizabeth. Men in suits stood guard as the mixed-race boy was treated in the whites-only wing of the hospital, even though it was illegal under South Africa's racist segregation laws at the time. The boy's family and the head of the hospital were paid to remain silent, according to the book.