Violence, Betrayal, Complicity a Study of Apartheid Perpetrator Narratives
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Fall 08 Violence, Betrayal, Complicity A study of apartheid perpetrator narratives Robyn Bloch Supervisors: Professor Sarah Nuttall and Associate Professor Pamila Gupta A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Johannesburg, 26 October 2018 Abstract This investigation considers the phenomenon of perpetration and its representation in contemporary South Africa. To uncover what is hidden or omitted in these narratives and to understand how writing about violence influences the text and the writer, I critically analyse five recently published books by or about apartheid perpetrators. My first chapter analyses Anemari Jansen’s biography Eugene de Kock: Assassin for the State (2015) by tracking De Kock’s shifting representation over the past 20 years. In my second chapter, which investigates Askari: A Story of Collaboration and Betrayal in the Anti-Apartheid Struggle (2014), I examine writer Jacob Dlamini’s battle to confront black betrayers. Hugh Lewin’s Stones Against the Mirror: Friendship in the Time of the South African Struggle (2011) is the story of how Adrian Leftwich, a fellow anti-apartheid saboteur, stood state witness against Lewin. I analyse white betrayal as premised from a position of privilege. My fourth chapter looks into the autobiography of the apartheid spy Olivia Forsyth, Agent 407: An Apartheid Spy Breaks her Silence (2015). Forsyth absconds from responsibility by writing three contradictory narratives and training her focus on surfaces. Her depiction of black women shows that she plays into the power dynamics of a white madam. Finally, my fifth chapter examines Bridget Hilton-Barber’s Student, Comrade, Prisoner, Spy: A Memoir (2016). Hilton-Barber, I argue, conjures her past and relives it in the present. In doing so, she acts as a witness to her younger self. But her book reveals forms of privilege and whiteness, and thus enacts another kind of betrayal. I conclude that each text employs narrative devices to contend with this contentious material and that the violence of the material causes the writers’ sense of self to fracture. ii Key words Apartheid; perpetrators; complicity; whiteness; privilege; betrayal; violence; apartheid agent; spy; informer; state witness; security branch; Eugene de Kock; Anemari Jansen; Glory Sedibe; Ephraim Mfalapitsa; Jacob Dlamini; Adrian Leftwich; Hugh Lewin; Olivia Forsyth; Bridget Hilton-Barber iii Declaration I declare that this thesis is my own unaided work. It is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. It has not been submitted before for any other degree or examination at any other university. iv Acknowledgements A grant from the National Research Foundation and awards from the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust and the National Arts Council contributed to completion of this project. The financial assistance of the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, in collaboration with the South African Humanities Deans Association towards this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the author and are not necessarily to be attributed to the NIHSS and SAHUDA. Without these generous endowments, this work would not have been possible. I would like to thank my supervisors, Sarah Nuttall and Pamila Gupta, for their consistent support and guidance throughout this process. I am so grateful for the opportunity to write with openness. The Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, in which I wrote this PhD, constantly challenged me with its lively debates from across disciplines. The space shaped my work, as did my fellow PhD cohort, particularly the convener Hlonipha Mokoena, and Candice Jansen and Renee van der Wiel. Thank you also to Najibha Deshmukh. I would also like to thank my first supervisor, Michael Titlestad, for helping me craft this project and then letting it move in the direction it did. Thank you to my friends, especially Karl van Wyk and Kirby Mania, and to my family, who patiently listened to endless descriptions of this work. Finally, I would like to thank Ricky Hunt, my husband and reader. It is always you. v Dedicated to the second of two birds vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Perpetrators 4 Complicity and betrayal 24 Methodology 37 Reading responsibly 37 Writing with emotion 44 Reflecting on emotion 48 Chapter breakdown 51 The Evil in Me is the Evil in You 55 Anemari Jansen’s Eugene de Kock: Assassin for the State Making a boy of the man: Prime Evil De Kock and the child Eugene 61 The boy 65 The new man 69 War made me do it 74 To serve, protect and kill 85 Hunting men on farms 92 Terror on the farm 94 The hunt 97 The missing 111 Who is De Kock now? 115 The Apartheid Historian’s Struggle: Black Betrayal and its Effects 122 Jacob Dlamini’s Askari: A Story of Collaboration and Betrayal in the Anti-Apartheid Struggle The historian’s ghost 129 Of trophies 138 The choice, or, loving the killer 145 The terrible mirror 153 The walking man 156 After the askari 164 Tyranny is tyranny 169 The watchers 171 A dreaming, or, loving the writer 174 vii Archivist, Bomber, Storyteller: Writing the Circle 177 Hugh Lewin’s Stones Against the Mirror: Friendship in the Time of the South African Struggle Not I, he: loops and doubles 185 Which lion, Lewin? 185 Which left, Leftwich? 192 My friend John Harris 200 Lloyd: The unforgiven 209 Storytelling as betrayal, or, what stories betray 211 Reflection as reflexivity 211 In the beginning were the seeds 224 The Spy in the Kitchen 240 Olivia Forsyth’s Agent 407: A South African Spy Breaks Her Silence Innocent superspy 246 The life of a spy 246 The docile woman 252 Walking on air 258 The seven-eyed spy 263 I spy 264 With my little eye 271 Madam 279 The spy I love not 293 The Unhomed and Other Women 298 Bridget Hilton-Barber’s Student, Comrade, Prisoner, Spy: A Memoir The bad good woman 306 The good bad woman 309 Politics at home 315 The time of the witness, and beyond 322 Me, the colour of the enemy 337 The other woman 348 Epilogue 353 Writing the perpetrator 353 Conclusion 366 Bibliography 372 viii Introduction In this thesis I analyse perpetration in the South African context. I do this by considering recent key texts written by or about perpetrators. These texts are as follows: Anemari Jansen’s Eugene de Kock: Assassin for the State (2015), Jacob Dlamini’s Askari: A Story of Collaboration and Betrayal in the Anti-Apartheid Struggle (2014), Hugh Lewin’s Stones Against the Mirror: Friendship in the Time of the South African Struggle (2011), Olivia Forsyth’s Agent 407: A South African Spy Breaks Her Silence (2015) and Bridget Hilton-Barber’s Student, Comrade, Prisoner, Spy: A Memoir (2016). These are, in order, a biography; a history, which the author calls a “story”; an autobiography and two memoirs. The aim of this study is to investigate how the figure of the perpetrator is represented in recent narratives. Attendant on that aim are questions of complicity, betrayal, race and gender. Each of these questions relate to violation and violence and their links to doubleness and self- deception. An analysis of these texts can contribute to understanding how perpetrators are depicted in South Africa today, and can thus establish a timeline to chart how their recent representations differ from their past portrayals. The study intends to illuminate what happens in and to narratives about violence, betrayal, complicity and perpetration to analyse how these complex factors shape and influence the writing and the writers. Textual form takes us closer to the phenomenon of perpetration in the formation of selfhood. These stories compel the reader to consider the moral implications of feeling empathy for those who commit violence, and invite them to consider their own capacities for violence, perpetration and complicity. The outcomes of this work are two-fold. The first is that each book examined here uses a specific narrative device or set of devices, including textual omissions, built into its structure to navigate this contentious material for reasons and in a 1 manner I will examine closely. The second is that in working with notions of complicity, betrayal and perpetration, especially where there is violence, animalisation, torture and death – or where there are violently oppressive regimes – the “I” is shattered, split or doubled as the writer moves closer to and further away from the subject. I will consider this splitting across the chapters. Eugene de Kock, who was the head of a death squad at a farm called Vlakplaas, was almost alone among the apartheid perpetrators to be criminally tried and imprisoned, though he contributed extensively to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). He was released in 2015, the year his biography – which represents him as new, a changed man – was published. Parts of Jacob Dlamini’s Askari: A Story of Collaboration and Betrayal in the Anti-Apartheid Struggle, which came out the year before, focus on Vlakplaas, where captured members of the armed wing of African National Congress (ANC), called Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), were tortured until they turned into apartheid government agents, or askaris. Dlamini’s book, which insists on these collaborators’ personal agency in making the choice to change sides, is the only study of the South African phenomenon of betrayal and the askari by a black writer of non-fiction. Hugh Lewin’s memoir, on the other hand, is one of several written by white anti-apartheid activists during the 1960s. However, it is Lewin’s best friend, Adrian Leftwich, who makes this book pertinent to the study of the representation of perpetrators.