Dialogues on Historical Justice and Memory Network WORKING PAPER SERIES

Derek Charles Catsam "The Ambivalence of Forgiveness: , , and ’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission” Working Paper Series No. 5 January, 2015

Copyright to papers in this series remains with the authors or This series is sponored by: their assignees. Reproduction or re-posting of this paper can only be done with the permission of the author. The proper form for citing Working Papers in this series is:

Author (year). Title. Version #.# Month. Dialogues on Historical Justice and Memory Network Working Paper Series. 1

The Ambivalence of Forgiveness: Dirk Coetzee, Eugene de Kock, and South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Derek Charles Catsam University of Texas of the Permian Basin

Abstract South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has become something of a model for the world. In Latin America and Africa the TRC process has been emulated to varying degrees of success. Post-conflict environments in Europe have invoked the TRC model. Even in the United States people have proposed truth commissions for events ranging from slavery to the George W. Bush administration’s torture policies. And in many ways the TRC was a remarkable thing that represented South Africa’s transition from the long years of draconian rule to non- or (perhaps more accurately) multi-racial democracy. Yet the TRC, for all of the good that it did, was far from perfect and among South Africans and close observers it engendered considerable ambivalence. This article investigates South Africa’s TRC with particular attention to two former security force officials, Dirk Coetzee and Eugene de Kock, who turned on their former colleagues and provided invaluable evidence that helped crack the code of silence that dominated the security forces and government. South Africa’s TRC was vital to the country’s transformation, but it was no panacea—the TRC is crucial to understanding not only South Africa’s era of transition and for addressing ongoing and future post-conflict environments.

Introduction Reasonable people can be ambivalent about South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Incapable of providing satisfactory retributive justice, South Africans settled for a process intended to bring about restorative justice. The transition from apartheid to multiracial democracy had occurred not as the result of successful military revolution, but rather because of negotiations. Thus the victors could not extract a pound of flesh, however warranted. Not when the National Party that was yielding power still had overwhelming military might at its disposal. It is a truism that the antiapartheid struggle was never strong enough to topple the National Party government but that the government was not strong enough to crush the opposition for good. As a consequence, the aftermath of apartheid was not going to satisfy those who might have wanted revenge, or even justice in the traditional sense. The stories of two of apartheid’s most notorious killers are illustrative of the ambivalence the TRC spawns. Dirk Coetzee and Eugene de Kock were responsible for countless deaths and unimaginable atrocities. At the same time, they were among a small number of former members of South Africa’s security force apparatus who came forward and fully exposed their own complicity in evil. Their stories inspire a host of mixed emotions. In so doing they reveal the complexities of the process that South Africa chose to reconcile with its past.

Cut to the Bone: Dirk Coetzee One of the first fissures in the apartheid security force dam came in 1989 when Dirk Johannes Coetzee, a security force officer who had climbed through the ranks to become a senior officer at , an infamous counterinsurgency unit located on a farm outside of , chose to bear his soul; Or at least to save himself from or worse. As a decorated member of the police forces who worked for the state in various capacities, Coetzee was responsible for planning, organizing and carrying out abductions, beatings and . The most famous of the murders was that of Griffiths Mxenge, a prominent ANC lawyer in Durban. By 1986, however, after a series of 2 personal difficulties and professional problems, including reprimands that stemmed largely from behaviors that cemented his status as a loose cannon, Coetzee decided that it was time to quit, and after overstating the severity of his diabetes he took medical retirement.1 For some time after leaving the security forces Coetzee had been engaged in off-the-record talks with Jacques Pauw, a writer for a new independent weekly newspaper, . Pauw had hoped to get Coetzee to talk on the record, but the former Vlakplaas leader was wary, and understandably so, given the nature of his past crimes and the ruthless ways in which the security forces were known to deal with traitors. Nonetheless, as 1989 progressed, it became clear to Coetzee that some of his past transgressions, most notably the of Mxenge, were catching up with him. Coetzee allowed Pauw to make arrangements for them to discuss the inside story of the apartheid security regime in exchange for a place of safe hiding. In what must have seemed the ultimate irony to many of the individuals involved, that safe location proved to be the ANC Headquarters in London. The result of the collaboration resulted in Pauw’s In The Heart of the Whore: The Inside Story of Apartheid’s Death Squads, a book that helped to shatter the wall of secrecy that the apartheid regime had built up around itself.2 And although Coetzee’s intentions had been self- preservation, he nonetheless proved to be of vital importance for the anti-apartheid struggle, for with his confessions, and his willingness to expose the inner workings of the security state, the prospects of the end of apartheid and white rule seemed more realistic than ever. In 1991 Coetzee wrote a letter to President F.W. de Klerk asking for “the chance to return and expose the truth.” He wanted to “make full statements of who in the hit squads did what to whom” and he believed that his testimony could go a long way in solving some important murders — not only that of Mxenge and his wife, but also those of Dr. David Webster, Japie Maponya and others. He maintained that he “would be able to do this because I know the procedures used since I was in the force have not changed.” He argued that de Klerk had proven himself “to be honest. You have done so much since September 1989 to promote peace and stability for everyone in a new South Africa, and I have got no doubt . . . that you would like to cut to the bone the mess that is left in the wake of police hit squad activities.” Coetzee also told de Klerk that he had “listened to the other side of the story many times, and have trusted and relied on senior police officers, to no avail.” He warned de Klerk against allowing “the old lies” to continue, and he couched his argument in terms that would become standard for former security force members in the post-apartheid era: “We must admit what was going on during days when all was considered fair in what was a war situation, because that was precisely what it was.” He wanted to be appointed “as a police pensioner with the rank of captain . . . for a period with a specific instruction to help you get to the truth.” He acknowledged that he had “just as clean or dirty a record as all of those who” were “involved and who (were) still in the police.” He concluded by assuring de Klerk that his letter was “not inspired by the African National Congress, or written with their permission.” He only saw ANC members once a month to collect his monthly allowance, though he did admit, “They do look after me well.” He signed off on his sworn statement by saying that he was “acting on my own, as a patriot, in the longer-term interests of my people.”3 Whatever his motivations, Coetzee was vital in breaking down the walls of National Party and Security Force secrecy. De Klerk, himself complicit in late-apartheid era atrocities despite his central role in the negotiating process that ended apartheid, never took Coetzee up on his offer, but Coetzee still had served a vital function. In 1994 the first freely elected multiracial Parliament in South Africa created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Its creation allowed for other security force members to come forward and reveal the atrocities of the old regime. Most did so in order to gain amnesty for crimes that had already been discovered, or to prevent their roles from being uncovered, or for numerous other reasons, ranging from the self-serving to the truly 3 repentant.4 But the testimony of Coetzee had been vital in unlocking doors that for most of the 1980s looked likely to remain forever sealed.

Opening the Floodgates: Coetzee’s Legacy With each testimony, the depth of the apartheid atrocities piled up. Many of the security force officers pointed toward their higher-ups, indicating that the ethos of death squads, Vlakplaas, Hammer Units, (an insurgency unit whose Afrikaans name meant “crowbar”), “Third Force” and myriad others extended to the highest echelons of the bureaucracy and government of the country. One former police lieutenant, Charles Zeelie, said simply about his superior officers: “My seniors up to commissioner knew about these methods, and condoned them.” The methods about which he spoke were the application of electrical prods on various body parts to coerce information from suspects.5 Many of Zeelie’s superiors denied his testimony, but by that point, such revelations had become commonplace. It was clear to most observers that only the most deluded and anachronistic amongst the security force elite could deny their roles in the atrocities. After 1994 more and more big names came forward. Eugene De Kock, known as “Prime Evil” because of his efficacy as a killer and commander of security force atrocities at Vlakplaas testified in charismatic, mesmerizing, and gory detail about numerous murders and escapades ranging from Ovamboland in Northern Namibia to to Zimbabwe and of course back at home in South Africa. He maintained that his orders came from the highest levels of government and was willing to tell all to the TRC in order to mitigate his multiple life sentence that has him in prison for more than 200 years for his roles in murders and conspiracy.6 Retired Security Police general Nic Van Rensburg asserted that senior government cabinet ministers, including former Minister of Law and Order Adriann Vlok and Defense Minister Magnus Malan, were aware of “dirty tricks” campaigns.7 Former Security branch chief Gerrit Erasmus testified before the TRC: “The politicians had to know. They were aware of what was going on. I believe that the President [P.W. Botha] was also aware [of the policy of getting rid of trouble-makers.]”8 Clearly in the minds of security force members, the responsibility for their actions was not theirs alone, and they were certain that many of their directives came from the highest levels of government. Adrian Vlok, Minister of Law and Order during the Botha years, confirmed many of these assertions when he finally testified before the TRC in 1998. Vlok maintained, “The buck stops here with me, I have to take political and moral responsibility for actions, regular and irregular.”9 Nonetheless, Vlok asserted that de Klerk knew of such allegations at least as far back as 1994, because Vlok had told the former president about his intentions to go before the TRC. This is not even the most compelling aspect of Vlok’s testimony. In October 1997 the TRC held a lengthy “Security Hearing” in from which emerged a number of revelations about the nature of the organization, structure, and methods of the security forces. The question of the meanings of certain phrases and words became a topic of discussion. In addition to “uit die saamelewing verwyder” (“remove from society”) and “permanent uit de saamelewing verwyder” (“permanently remove from society”) a number of other apparently ambiguous phrases and words occur: “elimineer” (“eliminate”); “neutraliseer” (“neutralise”); “uitwis” (“obliterate or wipe out”); “vernietig” (“destroy”); “opspoor en vernietig” (“track down and destroy”); “hou vas, breek” (“break their grip”); “bekamp” (“fight against, curb, control”); “stuit” (“arrest, stem”).10 Security Force members from the highest levels on down used such phrases. And almost to a man, each believed that every phrase had a multiplicity of meanings and interpretations, and that none could be taken at face value.11 Adrian Vlok was one of the foremost adherents of the idea that even the most seemingly clear phrases, words and sentences were fraught with ambiguity:

4

There was nothing unnatural or unusual in the use of these expressions. It is however so as already said that with the benefit of hindsight, it is an indisputable fact that there wasn’t necessary consideration of the perspectives in interpretations of other people who did not attend these meetings. With my knowledge and my insights into the mechanisms of the SAC I say that no decisions were taken by it to act illegally but at the same time, I know, or I know now that it would have been unavoidable that people who did not experience the spirit and intent of these meetings could very easily come to other conclusions and apparently they have indeed done so . . .12

It seems that while Vlok was willing to take on full responsibility for the actions of those beneath him in the chain of command, he was equally sure that what it came down to was that his directives were misunderstood or misapplied, that “divisional commanders and their troops on the ground who were . . . responsible for controlling uncontrollable situations and to normalise abnormal situations and on whom there” was extreme pressure from outside forces, ranging from politicians and commanding officers to the general populace, “These people would not easily have linked an innocent interpretation to these expressions.”13 Despite his willingness to stand up to the TRC and face his past, a step many of his cohorts, such as Magnus Malan and P.W. Botha steadfastly refused to take, there is something inherently unsatisfying about the nature of Vlok’s apology. It is institutional — “the buck stops here,” he says, but only because it was supposed to. Such an apology seems a far cry from actually accepting responsibility for actions that clearly caused profound harm. One can assume that Vlok’s contrition had some legitimacy, but at the same time he proclaimed that a word like “uitwis” has many interpretations, and that his underlings time and time again chose to infer the wrong ones. The Mail and Guardian was skeptical of Vlok’s contrition — far moreso than it was that of Eugene De Kock or of vicious security policeman Gideon Nieuwoldt. In addressing Vlok’s testimony, the M & G wrote, “He accepts ‘political and moral responsibility’ for the misdeeds of the police, but not ‘direct’ responsibility: Christ-like, he offers to take the sins of the world (or at least those of his men) upon his shoulders, but let no one dare suggest he was a sinner!”14 In essence, Vlok wanted to put forth the appearance of performing his duty to the TRC, to the nation, and to his position without putting himself in the direct line of fire for the deeds and misdeeds of his past.

“Prime Evil”: Eugene De Kock In January, 1998 Nando’s fast-food chicken restaurants produced a new radio advertisement in which it pilloried the infamous apartheid-era death-squad leader Eugene De Kock. Nando’s is well known for its irreverent, witty, and sometimes scathing ad campaigns that often intermix social and political commentary with their campaigns to sell their fare. The advertisement in question, produced by advertising agency TBWA Hunt Lascaris, features a caller claiming to be “prisoner De Kock.”15 He places an order for “chicken supremo.” He provides his prison address, but the receptionist who takes his call announces that Nando’s can only deliver in twenty minutes. At that point the De Kock sound-alike announces that he will get the meal himself. He then asks for a “knife and fork . . . make that lots of knives.” This last reference is not only a barbed allusion to De Kock’s predilection for weaponry, but also to a series of prison breaks over the previous Christmas holidays in which a number of prisoners escaped with relative, indeed suspicious, ease. The advertisement also portrays , an infamous , and William Ratte, a right-wing extremist.16 Not many South Africans would have dared to mock Eugene De Kock so brazenly just two years earlier. Indeed, for more than a decade, De Kock’s name was one of the most feared among 5 members of the resistance struggle. Because of his role as hit-squad commander for Vlakplaas, a secret security force headquarters on a farm near Pretoria where “dirty tricks” campaigns, counterinsurgency activities, and internal covert operations were masterminded, De Kock earned the nickname “Prime Evil.” His enemies in the Freedom Struggle called him the “Scourge of God.” In September 1996 De Kock was convicted in the Pretoria Supreme Court of six murders, two conspiracies to commit murder and more than eighty counts of gunrunning and fraud.17 Those convictions alone would have served to make De Kock an unprecedented figure in the annals of South African crime, even by the warped standards that prevailed under the apartheid regime in the 1980s. However, in the years after his conviction, De Kock revealed much more about his involvement during the 1980s and early 1990s. He applied for amnesty for a number of other cases in which he was involved. It is now clear that “Prime Evil” was involved in the detainment, torture, murder and attempted murder of activists and numbering into the hundreds.18 In an attempt to mitigate his sentence, De Kock offered broad disclosure of Vlakplaas activities, and he served as a vital lever in opening up the closed society that was the security force regime. Once the TRC began its work, De Kock filed numerous amnesty applications declaring his involvement in “Third Force” activities, including some of the most famous cases of the post- era.19 In his testimony De Kock has been willing to expose the involvement of government, police and military officials and he has claimed that these groups were intimately involved not only in planning and executing covert operations, but also in covering up their involvement. De Kock’s disclosures rival those of Dirk Coetzee in their importance in breaking down the walls of silence that have long pervaded the officialdom and the rank-and-file of the state’s armed mechanisms of terror.20 De Kock was involved in some of the greatest atrocities of South Africa in the apartheid era. Yet he is equally vital for exposing the range, extent, and details of events that otherwise might never have seen the light of day. The spirit of ubuntu, a sense of human linkages that TRC Chairman Archbishop often advocated, not to mention the mandate of the TRC, allowed for De Kock to redeem himself, in the hope that the truths he disclosed would provide for some form of reconciliation between himself and the society he terrorized for so long. And yet there are more than a few observers who see this as a perpetuation of apartheid’s evils. De Kock earned the nickname “Prime Evil” among his colleagues because of his efficacy as an assassin for the state.21 Yet the Government of National Unity, a transitional multiracial democracy that paved the way for the next government to take its place under the new constitution in 1999 also allowed De Kock the remote possibility for freedom in exchange for his revelations. For many observers, ubuntu may not have been about vengeance, but it was not about justice either. De Kock is a compelling figure. He is charming, intelligent, and personable. He possesses tremendous charisma that he wields with great effect.22 His testimony before the Truth Commission, which occurred intermittently in the years after December 1996, was persuasive, and sometimes brutal, in both his assessment of his own role in Vlakplaas and in his condemnation of his peers and superiors. Although many observers of the TRC hearings argue that most all of the testimony from former security force members is suspect, De Kock’s carried more veracity than that of most of the others who usually came across as self-serving, delusional, and at times pathetic. He was candid and direct. In many ways his testimony represents the ideal of what the TRC must have envisioned when it asked for the perpetrators of gross human rights violations to come forward. Of course, by his own admission this was also his “last chance” to avoid spending the rest of his life in prison, so he felt that he had “nothing to lose.”23 De Kock fit the image of the macho, right-wing Afrikaner to the letter. His father was a virulent anticommunist and a member of the executive committee of the Broederbond, an Afrikaner cultural, social, and political organization. The elder De Kock was a strict disciplinarian who ran his 6 household with a “rod of iron” and he was not above administering beatings to his children. Ironically, Eugene De Kock’s mother was a member of the relatively liberal United Party, a fact that galled her husband, who told her to keep her mouth shut about politics in public lest she embarrass him. From his father’s influence Eugene made an easy entree into the ideological world of Afrikaner white supremacy. As a child he had a speech defect that caused him to remain quiet and shy around other children. However that insecurity, coupled with that fostered by his domineering father, served to push De Kock. He underwent speech therapy to improve his communication skills, which grew tremendously along with his confidence. He became a passionate defender of the existing political order. In a 60 page autobiography that De Kock wrote in his early months of incarceration, he revealed that he “resolved to fight the ANC in every possible way so that ‘these kinds of monsters, the kind we saw destroy the Belgian Congo, should not be allowed to take over again.”24 De Kock served in the military in 1967 and joined the police in 1968. He worked in counterinsurgency and fought with the white security forces in the former , participating in a number of operations between 1968 and 1973. In 1976 he was active in attempting to crush student resistance in South Africa’s East Rand, and in 1977 he became a commander of a police base in Ovamboland. In 1979 he joined the infamous counterinsurgency unit at Koevoet in Oshakati, Namibia where he remained until 1983. 25 In May of that year he joined section C-1 of the police, which was the Vlakplaas unit.26 There he created his legend. While at Vlakplaas he served the government well as becoming arguably its most effective agent of terror. By the time of his TRC hearings he represented perhaps its most famous agent of betrayal. He claimed involvement in more than 120 incidents ranging as far afield as England (where he was active in planning the bombing of the ANC headquarters in London) as well as throughout southern and South Africa. He is currently imprisoned in , where he has spent time in CMAX, the prison’s maximum-security section.27 De Kock does not lack for stories about his involvement in gruesome activities. When he was appearing before the Pretoria Supreme Court in September 1996 he gave an epic account of cross-border operations in Lesotho and Botswana. The judge, court officials, and packed jury were riveted by De Kock’s accounts of how he “blew houses and buildings to smithereens, abducted ANC operatives, pushed getaway cars over cliffs and shot men in the head.” When Justice William Van der Merwe asked De Kock what he and his men received in return, the former Vlakplaas commander replied “Ag, just a good handshake and a little braii.” This disarming response received a slight smile from the otherwise stern magistrate.28 De Kock was not always so charming to deal with, particularly if one was on the receiving end of one of his fits of rage. In the same testimony De Kock told of how he once bashed one of his own agents with a spade, splitting his skull. His former operatives claim that he beat every one of them while he was commander of the Vlakplaas base. He would beat black members with a sjambok and white ones with his fists.29 There is evidence to corroborate both De Kock’s and his men’s testimony. In October, 1996 SABC (the state-run national television and radio network) broadcast a stunning documentary by Jacques Pauw, the journalist who had gotten Dirk Coetzee to open up to him, appropriately titled “Prime Evil.” The documentary is shocking in the depth of the grisly events it portrays. In it one can clearly see the footage of a victim’s skull that De Kock had split with a spade. Another clip shows De Kock assaulting a prisoner “during an impromptu interrogation in the bush” of Namibia. Still more footage shows charred bodies in a minibus taxi that Vlakplaas operatives had shot up, or mutilated bodies of Swapo guerrillas with their ears lopped off as grim souvenirs for the attackers. Numerous security force operatives support the testimony of De Kock and statements of Archbishop Tutu that members would have braiis and drink beer or liquor before, during, and after their conquests.30 7

As time passed, De Kock grew ever more ambivalent about Vlakplaas and the other coercive arms of the state. His rigid principles always made the culture of heavy drinking, sex, and drugs that pervaded the security forces at home and abroad repellent to him. He also often had difficulty with the foul language of his colleagues. Nonetheless, he succumbed to the excesses of the lifestyle. He too drank heavily and from 1983 onward he visited doctors to complain that he suffered from sleeplessness and nightmares, stomach pains, chest aches, dry mouth, and “‘lips that felt dead.” He also grew skeptical of the intelligence world, which he described as a “‘paranoid netherworld in which you are used, misused, and abused. It is a world in which you have no friends. You were guilty only if you did not defend the public.’”31 Nonetheless, these factors were not enough to compel De Kock to forsake covert operations. That decision took a series of internal skirmishes that grew bigger than the cloistered world of the “Third Force” could contain. There was always an element of potential betrayal within the security forces. This was particularly evident in the case of the askaris. De Kock has told fascinating stories about the complex relationship these former ANC guerrillas-turned-security- force-operatives had with the white who made up the bulk of the security regime. In his September 1996 testimony in Pretoria he gave a classic performance that revealed both the charm and the horror of his involvement against the ongoing struggle. He explained how one of his black operatives had infiltrated Winnie Mandela’s gang of “township toughs.” But the agent returned to the police and complained that Mandela had turned him into a “sex slave.” They did not believe him, but Captain Anton Pretorious had listened to the tapes of recorded activities in Winnie Mandela’s circle. According to De Kock’s testimony, Pretorius said the operative “was a man of Olympian standards who could satisfy any woman.” Once again this met with amused smiles in the gallery and from the bench, but these quickly disappeared in the wake of De Kock’s next utterance. In the process of infiltrating Ms. Mandela’s gang, the operative had allegedly been responsible for killing three policemen. De Kock said “He was taken to Penge mine. I shot him myself. When it came to the part where his body was to be blown up, I walked away.”32 But it was an internal conflict that finally led to De Kock’s unmasking. As time passed, De Kock became ever more paranoid and felt considerable physical and psychological stress from the demands of the job and the security culture that he could never entirely embrace. At one point, he tried to have a former friend, Chappie Kloppers, killed. Kloppers, a notorious womanizer, in turn began making plans to kill De Kock, but instead he and two of his Vlakplaas colleagues turned themselves in to the authorities. They went to investigators from the Transvaal attorney general’s office, which hid them away in Denmark where they revealed all that they knew. As a result De Kock was arrested on the charges that sent him to prison.33 This experience, coupled with De Kock’s growing misgivings and his desire to mitigate his sentence, fueled his willingness to tell all. It soon became clear that De Kock was no aberration, and that the network of formal and informal links to “Third Force” atrocities ran deep and wide, with innumerable actors sharing responsibility for South Africa’s regime of terror throughout the southern tier of the continent. Even as he revealed his involvement during his trial, there were many who felt drawn to him. During tea time on a Wednesday afternoon, two women scurried to the dock, talked to De Kock for a while, and each gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. As he went down to the cells below, one person was heard to comment “can you believe he is just a killer?”34 Indeed, De Kock’s internal struggle emerges eloquently from his own words. Justice van der Merwe asked the disgraced colonel if he had used the time spent isolated in his jail cell “to reflect on those turbulent years because he regretted what happened or simply because he was no longer caught up in the turmoil of that time.” In answering the question, De Kock provided an interesting, seemingly heartfelt observation: 8

There were so many days when a person begins to wonder how it was possible that you could ever find yourself in such a situation. A feeling of remorse? Yes . . . It is a cross I will bear for the rest of my life. And if it was in my power, or any other person’s power, then I would will that all those people who are not here today were alive . . . Often when you rode away from the scene of a battle in Ovamboland in your Casspir, you would see the bodies of the enemy. It was strange. They alway [sic] looked as if they were smaller. They were not the same people you fought half an hour ago . . . And a man began to wonder if you met these people in another context whether they would have been your friends. I cannot tell you, I do not have the vocabulary or the language skills, to give you a description of the feelings of loss.35

The case of Eugene De Kock is a perfect illustration of the dilemma that confronted the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and continues to confront the South African government and the country’s people. De Kock has been willing to remove his stack of secrets from the gullet of the crocodile. But with revelations that he might soon be a andidate for a pardon there is the possibility that he will be able to escape virtually unpunished relative to the degree and nature of his deeds, away from CMAX and Pretoria Central Prison, and into a freedom that he has forever denied his victimsThere was always the possibility that the TRC would not grant De Kock amnesty, or that they would not do so for all of his transgressions, thus leaving him in prison for the rest of his days. In fact, amnesty on some but not all charges was De Kock’s fate. While he was granted amnesty for all of his applications relating to 54 crimes, including 12 murders, he did not receive amnesty for his last application, which involved his 1992 involvement in the killing of five men and the blowing up of one of the bodies. This crime carried with it the penalty of a life sentence, and so De Kock will likely spend the remainder of his life in prison. Furthermore many of his underlings, superiors, and peers received amnesty from the TRC. There remains the possibility of De Kock and others in his position being granted a blanket amnesty, or individual clemency, but this looks increasingly unlikely, and most observers believe that it would serve to undermine the whole purpose and process of the TRC and the transition from apartheid. It is equally clear that without De Kock’s testimony, and the evidence from others like him, the shroud of obfuscation and silence that covered so much of South Africa’s recent history might never have been lifted. However imperfect those revelations might be, however incomplete and misleading some of the testimony undoubtedly was, we now know more than ever about the nature of the regime that terrorized black, Indian, “coloured,” and even white South Africans for decades. Weighing the relative merits of these considerations was the job before not only the TRC, but also of all South Africans in the attempt to bridge the chasm between truth and reconciliation, between multiracial democracy and National Party terror. There have been many complaints about a perceived absence of justice in the TRC by numerous critics including the families of the victims. At the same time, those who did not receive amnesty faced and at least theoretically, though perhaps not realistically, continue to face the real possibility of prosecution. Because of the TRC Nando’s could mock men such as De Kock. Protesters at TRC hearings could protest what they see as brazen lying on the part of those who testify, toyi toying and mocking their former antagonists.36 Others have been able to condemn the cynicism that characterizes security force members who suddenly and rather unexpectedly found themselves under the microscope, testifying to the world in front of video cameras and the notebooks of newspaper reporters. These actions show how far South Africa has come. At the same time, the dismay, frustration, anger, and disbelief that provided the emotional undercurrents for observers of the TRC process shows just how far this “Rainbow Nation of God” the “New South Africa” still has to go. 9

1 For information on Coetzee see Tina Rosenberg “Recovering From Apartheid,” The New Yorker, November 16, 1996 and Jacques Pauw In The Heart of the Whore: The Inside Story of Apartheid’s Death Squads (Durban: Southern Book Publishers, 1991). See also Derek Catsam, “‘Permanently Removed From Society’: , the TRC, Moral Judgments, Historical Truth and the Dilemmas of Contemporary History,” Revista de Historia Actual (print)/Historia Actual Online 7, May 2005 (available at: http://www.hapress.com/haol.php?a=n07a11

2 Jacques Pauw In The Heart of the Whore: The Inside Story of Apartheid’s Death Squads. See also Pauw, Into the Heart of Darkness: Confessions of Apartheid’s Assassins, (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 1997).

3 Dirk Coetzee to F.W. de Klerk, letter dated February 21, 1991. Papers, ANC Archives, University of Fort Hare.

4 See Derek Catsam, “Text, Lies, and Videotape: Truth, Reconciliation, and the Transition to Democracy in the New South Africa,” Proteus: A Journal of Ideas, Vol. 21, #1, Spring 2004, pp. 13-22.

5 South African Press Association (SAPA) News Release, February 25, 1998.

6 For more on De Kock and his revelations to the TRC see Catsam, “Text, Lies, and Videotape: Truth, Reconciliation, and the Transition to Democracy in the New South Africa,” pp. 13-22.

7 East London Daily Dispatch, September 30, 1997.

8 Quoted in Eastern Province Herald, September 24, 1997.

9 Quoted in the Electronic Mail and Guardian, ZA NOW July 21, 1998.

10 TRC Security Hearing Transcript, Part 1, 14 October, 1997, Johannesburg. Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

11 Ibid. passim. “Permanently removed from society” was the infamous phrase contained in a government signal before the killing of and three of his colleagues, the “Cradock Four,” in 1985.

12 TRC Security Hearing Transcript, Part 2. For a very truncated version of Vlok’s testimony, see “Apartheid Crimes: One Giant Misunderstanding” in Harper’s Magazine, March 1998.

13 Ibid.

14 “The Gospel According to Vlok” Mail and Guardian, July 24, 1998.

15 De Kock is currently serving two life sentences plus 212 years in prison for his leadership involvement in more than eighty counts of apartheid-era atrocities, including murder.

16 Ferial Haffajee, “De Kock’s in the soup, but he’s no chicken,” M&G, Feb. 11, 1998.

17 “De Kock’s time to talk has come,” M&G, Sept. 13, 1996, and “Yes, I did it, says Eugene De Kock,” M&G, Aug. 2, 1996. See also Eddie Koch “Day of the assassin promises to thrill,” M&G Aug. 30, 1996, and “Quest starts to untangle De Kock,” M&G Sept. 27 1996; and Stefaans Brummer, “Why generals are silent while De Kock sings,” M&G Sept. 27, 1996. The best example of De Kock’s own views comes from his autobiography/memoir A Long Night’s Damage: Working for the Apartheid State (Saxonwold, South Africa: Contra Press, 1998). Jeremy Gordin, the writer to whom de Kock tells his story and who effectively wrote the book, also provides a good deal of information in his revealing introduction.

18 An was a member of the police force who had been involved in the resistance struggle, usually as a member of the ANC, but who turned informant. While these individuals were often vital in covert operations and “dirty 10

tricks” campaigns, their status was always tenuous within the SAP and its hidden branches. They often were assigned to the most distasteful and oftentimes dangerous tasks and of course they were in every way treated as inferiors within the security forces. Furthermore, within their own black communities, these individuals became pariahs, and their lives were often at risk.

19 “Third Force” activities were security force operations that occurred covertly and under a highly secret cooperative alliance of leaders among the “securocrats.” It is a popularly used umbrella term to refer to many extralegal and illegal covert operations in the years of the States of Emergency.

20 Coetzee was the first high-level commander with intimate knowledge of apartheid atrocities to defect from the security forces and reveal some of the horrors of the regime. He gave a series of interviews to journalist Jacques Pauw of the anti-apartheid Afrikaans newspaper Vrye Weekblad. Those interviews appeared in that newspaper and then were at the center of Pauw’s book In The Heart of the Whore: The Story of Apartheid’s Death Squads, Durban: Southern Book Publishers, 1991. See also Eddie Koch, “We could decide at events like these who would live and who would die,” M&G, Oct. 18, 1996 and Angella Johnson, “There’s life after the death squads for Pauw,” M&G, Oct. 25, 1996. Coetzee would flee to London where he lived in exile under the protection of the ANC, from whom he also received financial support. Coetzee’s defection was a major crack in the apartheid facade. Coetzee had tried to approach President F.W. De Klerk in an attempt to help the President move away from the police state, but he was rebuffed. (See Coetzee letter to De Klerk, (n.d.) Oliver Tambo Papers, ANC Archives, University of Fort Hare, RSA). As to whether de Klerk knew about the Third Force activities, seeFrederik Van Zyl Slabbert, “Truth Without Reconciliation, Reconciliation Without Truth,” in Wilmot James and Linda Van De Vijver, After the TRC: Reflections on Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa, ((Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001) pp. 64-65, de Kock, A Long Night’s Damage: Working for the Apartheid State, pp. 277-283, and David Goodman, Fault Lines: Journeys Into the New South Africa, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999) pp. 123-124.

21“De Kock is ready to sing,” M&G, Dec. 26, 1996. De Kock also earned several other nicknames among his colleagues and underlings, many of whom grew to despise or resent De Kock. The crude “Fok Fok De Kock,” was one that circulated behind his back. And of course “Scourge of God” indicates the level of fear and wrath with which his name came to be associated among those in the resistance movement.

22 See, for example, “Shocking revelations from a charming man,” M&G, Sept. 20, 1996.

23Notes (in author’s possession) from De Kock testimony before TRC in Motherwell Bombing case, Centenary Hall, New Brighton, Oct. 1-3 1997.

24Quoted in “Delving into the pain of SA’s Vietnam,” M&G, Oct. 11, 1996. For de Kock’s life growing up see A Long Night’s Damage: Working for the Apartheid State, pp. 43-56.

25 On his career see de Kock, A Long Night’s Damage: Working for the Apartheid State , pp. 57-152, 161-247. Rhodesia is now Zimbabwe. The East Rand was at the center of the student revolts in 1976-1977 in South Africa before they spread to many parts of the country, most notably the . Ovamboland is a region of Namibia on the border of Angola, where South Africa engaged in covert operations to fight against the communist insurgency in that country. Namibia used to be South-West Africa. Koevoet means “crowbar” in Afrikaans. The counterinsurgency unit there saw itself forcing open the opposition through its covert operations. While in Namibia De Kock was also part of a plot to assassinate Namibia’s President Sam Nujoma.

26 Eddie Koch, “Life story of an assassin,” and “Delving into the pain of SA’s Vietnam.”

27 See Alet van Rensburg, “Apartheid hitman Eugene De Kock makes his first appearance before amnesty committee,” Sunday Independent, Sept. 28, 1997; and Julian Rademeyer, “‘Prime Evil’ lashes out at top Nats,” Eastern Province Herald, (Port Elizabeth), Sept. 30, 1997.

28 Quoted in “Shocking revelations from a charming man.” 11

29 Ibid.

30 “‘We could decide at events like these . . .’.”. Swapo was the South West African People’s Organization, a freedom fighting group in Namibia (formerly South-West Africa) during the 1970s and 1980s and now the political party with the most power and support in that country.

31 Quoted in “Delving into the pain of SA’s Vietnam.” See also “Life Story of an assassin,” and “‘We could decide at events like these . . .’.”

32 Quoted in “Shocking revelations from a charming man.”

33 See “We could decide at events like these . . .”. On de Kock’s trial see A Long Night’s Damage: Working for the Apartheid State, pp. 249-275.

34 Quoted in Ibid.

35 Quoted in “Delving into the pain of SA’s Vietnam.”

36 The toyi toyi is a traditional African dance that took on political significance in the years of struggle, and which the government went to great pains to stop. These sorts of protests are common before and especially after amnesty hearings. After De Kock’s testimony in Port Elizabeth in October, 1997, regarding his involvement in a 1989 car- bombing (The Motherwell Bombing case) in which three askaris died, protesters carried signs condemning De Kock and his cohorts for their past atrocities, but also because they believed that the ex-security force members were not revealing the whole truth. They danced, sang, chanted, and marched around Centenary Hall.