Dialogues on Historical Justice and Memory Network WORKING PAPER SERIES Derek Charles Catsam "The Ambivalence of Forgiveness: Dirk Coetzee, Eugene de Kock, and South Africa’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 apartheid 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 Vlakplaas, an infamous counterinsurgency unit located on a farm outside of Pretoria, chose to bear his soul; Or at least to save himself from prison 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 murders. 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 Afrikaans independent weekly newspaper, Vrye Weekblad. 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 murder 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, Koevoet (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.