O Vlok, the past is unpredictable. . .

The present brouhaha about the prosecution of Adriaan Vlok and allegations of wrongdoing by ex-President FW de Klerk reminded me of the comment Evita Bezuidenhout made about the Truth and Reconciliation process. “The future is certain,” she remarked, “but it is the past that is unpredictable”

We will always be fighting about the past, Evita seems to say, because what the “accepted” view of the past is in a society, depends on our view of the present. If we were now to agree that Vlok and De Klerk gave illegal orders for people to be killed or (more likely) turned a blind eye so that the foot soldiers could harm or kill the opponents of the apartheid state, we must accept that there is no moral equivalence between the De Klerk’s and the Mbeki’s of our world.

For most South African’s this is a no-brainer. The one side supported a system that was declared a crime against humanity and the other side fought for liberation and freedom, so for most people there can never be moral equivalence between the apartheid state and all those white people who supported it on the one hand, and the ANC, on the other hand.

But for many white South Africans who have never come to terms with the horror of apartheid, it seems impossible to admit this and so they keep on arguing that the two sides “both did bad things” that we now have to forgive and forget.

However, that was not the (deeply problematic) compromise reached when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up. It was agreed that we will only forgive that which was known, so that we could remember the evils committed in the past and could ensure that it be avoided in future.

What some of us did not know was that in its last years the apartheid state had made it impossible for us to know and thus to remember their evil deeds. As Terry Bell reported in a fascinating article in the Cape Times, during its last years in office it destroyed tons of files and other documentary evidence of the past.

Up in smoke went any chance of really finding out how evil the apartheid system was and to what extent the leaders like Vlok and De Klerk knew or orchestrated the torture and killing committed by security forces or their surrogates in the late eighties and early nineties. Thus De Klerk’s so called halo was kept in tact. That is also why he went to court to prevent the Truth Commission from making findings that would adversely affect his standing (and indirectly the standing of all white people who supported the system).

The present fight is therefore deeply meaningful because it is about who can be called “good” and who “bad”. Of course the ANC also did bad things, but like Britain in the Second World War they did them in the name of a noble cause. Few people today hark back to the decimation of Dresden by the RAF in which hundreds of thousands of German civilians were killed as few will hark back to the Magoo’s Bar bomb in 50 years.

This is because Vlok and De Klerk will find out that the past is unpredictable and that we will continue to re-interpret it in favour of the ANC as our society changes and the power of the De Klerk’s and their constituencies in South Africa diminish.

This is why some people get so upset about the ANC and pour scorn on everything it does. As anyone who reads this Blog will know, I have often criticized the ANC government for stupid and unwise decisions, but that is different from trying to discredit the government as government. Those who do the latter (some of them commenting at length on this Blog), seem to protest too much.

History will judge them harshly. More harshly, I would think than anyone in the ANC today – including fools like Yengeni and McBride.

What the Vlok is going on?

It is tempting to crack jokes about the decision of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to prosecute Adriaan Vlok for the attempted murder of Frank Chikane, who at present is Director General in the Presidency. (“Poor Vusi Pikoli will have to wear waterproof shoes for the foreseeable future.”)

But it is not really a laughing matter. Vlok was rightly a much despised figure when he was the Minister of Law and Order from 1986 to 1991. He seemed to try to imitate President PW Botha by swaggering and threatening the “terrorists”. Either because of direct orders by Vlok or Botha, or because of hints and winks, the police hit squad activity increased during his tenure.

Many people were killed by the state during this period.

Vlok actually applied for and received amnesty for ordering the blowing up of Cosatu House and the headquarters of the South African Council of Churches. It was therefore a bit of a surprised when he washed the feet of Frank Chikane as part of his request for forgiveness for ordering the poisoning of Chikane, because he did not apply for amnesty in this regard.

The deal struck between FW De Klerk’s National Party and the ANC was to create a Truth and Reconciliation Commission which would give amnesty to any person who committed criminal acts, provided that those acts were associated with a political objective and the applicant had made a full disclosure of all relevant facts.

Implicit in this compromise was the understanding that those perpetrators who failed to apply for amnesty or failed to make a full disclosure could be criminally prosecuted. Some high profile prosecutions – Eugene de Kock (convicted) and Wouter Basson (acquitted) – followed, but most people who did not apply for amnesty were not prosecuted.

One reason for this was that it is difficult to prosecute those – like Vlok, Magnus Malan or De Klerk – who may have given direct or indirect orders to underlings to torture or murder opponents of the apartheid state. Such illegal orders were never given directly but were given obliquely if at all. Often Ministers merely had to hint that steps had to be taken to deal with a person or a situation for underlings to revert to torture or murder.

Of course, Ministers knew their hints would result in criminal acts, but liked the fact that they could not be directly held responsible for those deeds. That is why the claims by Mr. FW de Klerk and his supporters that he never ordered people to be killed or tortured or never knew these things happened should be taken with a pinch of salt. Even us ordinary people who only read the Weekly Mail knew people were being tortured and killed. Perhaps De Klerk and others are not legally responsible, but morally, they have a lot to answer for.

It is in that context that the prosecution of Adriaan Vlok should be welcomed. He clearly did not make a full disclosure about his activities as Minister of Law and Order and even recently has shown a remarkable lack of knowledge about what happened in his department while he was Minister of Law and Order. In his telling, he was an ignorant bumbling fool who did not know half of what was going on in his Department.

Of course, it would be problematic if he was the only one prosecuted for apartheid era crimes. The NPA is constitutionally required to make decisions about who should be prosecuted without fear favour or prejudice. This means where sufficient evidence exists, the NPA should also prosecute others who committed crimes in the name of political ideologies during the nineteen eighties and early nineties.

Cynics might well argue that the prosecution of Vlok constitutes a clever attempt by the NPA to bolster its image with its critics, who feels the NPA is used to carry out a vendetta against Jacob Zuma and other ANC politicians. By charging apartheid era politicians, the NPA can appear to show that it really acts against everyone.

To silence such cynics, it its important that the NPA also prosecute other perpetrators who did not make full disclosures to the TRC. Only time will tell whether this will indeed happen.

Xolela Mangcu on Vlok and prosecution

I find myself agreeing (again) with Xolela Mangcu's column in today's Business Day. Money quote:

I sometimes find the hypocrisy in the white community quite astounding on these matters. The very same people calling for Jacob Zuma to be prosecuted for the sake of the rule of law or for Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe to be taken to The Hague turn around, without batting an eyelid, and plead forgiveness for Adriaan Vlok and Johann van der Merwe.

But where is the sense of justice for the families of Siphiwo Mthimkhulu and his comrades? Does this not reveal a certain callousness about black life if consideration is given only to the perpetrators.

I am not big on punishment, but if we are to have it then we must be evenhanded in its application.