Simon Milliken, a roundly-loved musician, was attacked and stabbed to death in Durban it’s been over a week now.
Police have not yet been in touch for follow-up with the man who was attacked with Simon, and who had urged officers to continue their search for him – when he might still have been alive.
The two had been held up at gunpoint. Milliken was taking a visiting conductor of the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra, US-based Perry So, on a hiking trip in Durban’s Burman Bush. A man produced a gun, then a knife. Only Perry made it out of the reserve. Simon’s body was discovered the next morning.
Story fragments of distress and bafflement about the tardy police response have been in the local and international media, on social media and worldwide music blogs, but like all of Simon’s friends, I want to know more and yet am scared to hear it.
We want to understand how it can be that a police rescue operation did not manage to find a body that was on a trail path, a mere 10 minutes’ walk from the entry to the reserve. I sit down with Perry So, to hear more about the attack and about the horror of what happened in the minutes and hours after that.
Perry knew the gun and the knife meant Simon would be in danger inside the reserve. Frantic with worry, he had made an escape from the reserve and ran to the residential area overlooking it. He asked anyone he encountered – a security guard, a shopkeeper and a resident to call the police.
This must have been just after 4 PM, Perry says. How did they not understand the urgency? When he was finally able to call police, 40 minutes later, why did it take almost an hour for them to arrive? I see in his eyes that he’s not sure if he’s ready to talk about it, and I’m not sure if I’m ready to hear, but we try.
Simon and Perry had been on a bird-watching walk two days before. Both wanted more of what Durban’s inner-city nature reserves have to offer. Walking towards the Pigeon Valley, the other municipal reserve on the Wednesday, 60-year old Simon Milliken, Durban’s best-known double bass player who moved to Durban from the UK as a founding member of the orchestra over 30 years ago, and Perry So, the 36-year-old maestro, who was born in Hong Kong and whose home is in Boston, US, passed lush suburban gardens.
They looked back when they heard a bird chirping. In the dappled sunlight they saw it came from a bird in a cage on a veranda.
“You know that there’s only one animal that should be in a cage”, Simon said and Perry responded with “human beings?”Simon nodded. In very little time, Simon and Perry had become warm friends, talking non-stop with a shared love for nature and music. On the Friday, Simon and Perry decided to go to Burman Bush reserve.
“The reserve boasts the largest blue duiker population in Durban’s reserves, but the main attractions are the bird and plant life”, says the website for Burman Bush.
Up until early August, the website had also warned of muggings at gunpoint in the reserve.
Burman Bush was as magical as the website had promised: “Simon had heard the chirping of a Black Sparrowhawk and we looked up and saw a Sparrowhawk nest”, says Perry.“He was convinced there must be chicks, so we craned our necks to try to see them, going round and round the tree. “One last time”, Simon urged, because it would be so special to see chicks.
And then – out of nowhere – appeared a man with a gun.” He demanded they hand over their belongings. Perry complied and laid his binoculars, credit card and hotel key on the ground. Simon, with his sharp sense of justice, said no, the camera was his.
The man threatened to shoot them. Simon moved in between the attacker and Perry. “I’m going to shoot you. ‘Then shoot!’, said Simon”. Nothing. He had called his bluff, but the attacker then produced a knife.
In a scramble and clamber for their lives, they managed to get away. Or so they thought. Hastening toward the reserve’s exit, Perry looked back and did not see Simon. What follows are Perry’s efforts to raise the alarm and the police eventually arriving.
When he saw police arriving, he rushed to the reserve entrance and urged them to hurry to go look for Simon and insisted on going with them to take them to the place where they had last been running away together.
With police on the scene, Perry was able to contact his hosts, the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra. News that Simon was missing and possibly in danger reached fellow musicians of the orchestra who were performing at Durban’s International Conference Centre at IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s birthday party.
Not everybody had heard that Simon was in peril. Later, when friends heard about what had happened, the idea that they were playing for hours on end while Simon was in danger, was upsetting.
Did the management of the orchestra act with urgency when they heard about the incident at Burman Bush? Bongani Tembe, Chief Executive of the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra, says he’s confident that he took the right action at the right time.
He reported the incident to the security detail at the event. An oboist in the Philharmonic Orchestra and friend of Simon’s, Margit Deppe, left the performance and rushed to where Perry was, with the orchestra’s marketing manager, Reena Makan.