During South Africa’s transition to democracy, a bafflingly small number of people were actually held accountable for crimes committed in defense of apartheid; of those who came forward, many killers received amnesty in exchange for honest testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And prosecutors have dragged their feet on prosecuting those who did not testify.
But now, 20 years later, the few that were tried and are still in jail have become eligible for parole, igniting a debate about what this means for the country’s much-vaunted reconciliation project.
The debate is especially frenzied because the racial hierarchy these men were defending when they committed their barbarous acts is still largely intact, even if the lives of many black people have improved since 1994.
These conversations are edging us closer to a national catharsis, an emotional release that will only be possible when these men join apartheid’s other monsters who already walk among us, free, like Adriaan Vlok (who ordered killings and bombings while serving as minister of law and order in the late 1980s) and the notorious Wouter Basson (who spearheaded the apartheid regime’s biological and chemical weapons program).
In the ensuing clarity, the reverence with which our supposedly miraculous transition from apartheid is beheld might fall away, allowing us to finally ask meaningful questions about whether truth and reconciliation actually served the interests of justice and the greater good, and challenge the racial and economic hierarchy that remains in place.
Earlier this year, everyone was talking about the parole application of Clive Derby-Lewis, a Conservative Party politician who conspired with Janusz Walus to assassinate the anti-apartheid hero Chris Hani in 1993. In the past few weeks, discussions have centered on the possible release of Eugene de Kock, one of the apartheid police force’s most notorious assassins.
Many South Africans, myself included, denounced the idea that a man dubbed “Prime Evil” could so easily be paroled from a double life sentence for six murders and an additional 212 years for other criminal acts.
Others, including some journalists and academics, who worked on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, disagreed. Their argument was that Mr. de Kock’s confessions over the years had revealed truths about apartheid atrocities we might not have known otherwise.
Moreover, they say, the failure of successive post-1994 governments to prosecute those who had snubbed the truth commission or had been denied amnesty resulted in a selective application of justice borne disproportionately by the likes of Mr. de Kock. After all, he cooperated with the commission, but was denied amnesty for some of his crimes, including kidnapping, assault and the murders of five men, one of which he tried to conceal by blowing up the body of the victim. The commission ruled that these were not political crimes.
It’s a moot point for now because the justice minister has turned down Mr. de Kock’s application. But the rejection is a mere technicality that will likely only delay his release for a year. And that means that the moral arguments about punishment and parole for apartheid’s assassins aren’t going away.
Proponents of parole rely on a strict reading of current laws with no consideration for the greater social context. They admit that many victims of apartheid-era human rights abuses were denied justice. And, worse, they seem to be admitting that these victims won’t ever have justice, which would mean the commission was little more than a glorified exercise to whitewash apartheid.
The argument against parole is more complex. It hinges on the idea that apartheid crimes had immediate victims but also many other victims, who were harmed by unjust laws that dispossessed them of assets like land and homes, and denied them access to economic opportunities. Some observers erroneously see the anti-parole argument as simple racial bloodlust or a call for vengeance. Indeed, a friend of mine recently wondered aloud if those of us who are appalled by the prospect of Mr. de Kock’s release were, out of some misplaced racial solidarity, appropriating the anger felt by the slain Mr. Hani’s widow and the mother of a young lawyer who Mr. de Kock killed with a tape-recorder bomb. These women have not forgiven the men who killed their loved ones.
My friend reminded me that I was only a child at the height of Mr. de Kock’s state-sponsored terror campaign. I never suffered directly by his hand. And I’d only just turned 13 when Mr. Hani was assassinated, and share no personal connection to his family. The only voices that should count in the parole decision, according to this view, are those of the people injured by these men and the families of those they killed.
I am glad he said this, because I suspect it is what many people are thinking quietly. But to reduce this debate to vengefulness or to curtly say matters of justice cannot be decided by public sentiment is short-sighted. Public engagement was the foundation on which the South Africa transition was built. To dismiss it now while admitting that justice eluded us in 1994 is foolhardy.
Moreover, the commission’s definitions of victim and perpetrator were too narrow. The brutal atrocities committed by Mr. de Kock and others were not simply random acts of violence disconnected from the larger criminal enterprise that was apartheid — a system that victimized everybody classified “non-white” and continues to do so indirectly through the persistence of the social hierarchy it created.
According to this narrow view of victimhood, someone like me — born in an impoverished township that served as a cheap migrant-labor reserve for the apartheid economy — couldn’t possibly be a victim of Mr. de Kock’s actions. Nor could the children born there and in other black communities over the past 20 years, even though they still suffer the effects of the actions and decisions made by apartheid-era politicians and their lackeys. But they, too, are victims.
The clash over Mr. de Kock’s parole application is about much more than his fate alone. And I can only hope that in a year’s time, when his parole is once again up for consideration, those defending his right to walk free have more to offer than merely saying the ship has sailed on justice for apartheid’s victims — all 47 million of them.
T.O. Molefe is an essayist, at work on a book on post-apartheid race relations.