Minister puts off parole decision on ‘Prime Evil’

Reuters/AFP/PretoriaSouth Africa delayed a politically sensitive decision on whether to grant parole to apartheid death-squad leader Eugene de Kock, dubbed ‘Prime Evil’ for torturing and murdering black activists in the 1980s and early 1990s.Justice Minister Michael Masutha told reporters yesterday that de Kock had “made progress” towards rehabilitation after 20 years behind bars but said the families of his victims had not been properly consulted.“I have not approved parole at this stage,” he said.Masutha promised to complete that process and make a final decision within a year.“I am of the view that it is fair and in the interests of the victims and the broader community that the families of the victims are afforded an opportunity to participate in the parole consideration process,” he said.The highly charged decision had transfixed a country still dealing with the legacy of repression and brutality meted out by the white-minority administration that prevailed from 1948 to 1994.As head of an apartheid counter-insurgency unit at Vlakplaas, a farm 20km west of Pretoria, de Kock is believed to have been responsible for more atrocities than any other man in the efforts to preserve white rule.De Kock lawyer Julian Knight dismissed the delay as “political interference” and said that he would challenge Masutha’s interpretation of the law on consulting victims’ families in parole matters.“He’s wrong in law, and I intend taking it on review,” Knight told Reuters.“We’re not going to roll over and play dead.” De Kock himself was “disappointed”, he added.Arrested in 1994, the year Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) came to power, de Kock was sentenced two years later to 212 years in prison on charges ranging from murder and attempted murder to kidnapping and fraud.However, at a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) set up in 1995 to try to unearth – and, in some cases, forgive – crimes committed by both sides, de Kock came clean about the killing of many ANC activists.The information allowed police to recover the remains of victims and allowed them to receive a proper burial.Even from behind bars in Pretoria’s C-Max high security prison, the bespectacled de Kock has continued to cast his shadow over the post-apartheid South Africa.In a 2007 radio interview, he accused FW de Klerk, South Africa’s last white president, of having hands “soaked in blood” for ordering political killings.De Klerk, who won the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Mandela, has denied the allegations.De Kock has also expressed sorrow at his actions, fuelling a belief among some that he is remorseful – an important factor in any parole decision.Two years ago, he wrote to the mother of ANC lawyer Bheki Mlangeni, who was killed by a bomb in 1991, asking for her forgiveness.“Your forgiveness will mean a lot to me, but it can in no way wash away the pain I have caused,” he said in the letter, which appeared in South African newspapers.In the same year, he met Marcia Khoza, the daughter of ANC activist Portia Shabangu, whom de Kock executed after an ambush in Swaziland in 1989.“We greeted each other and shook hands. His handshake was firm,” she said after the meeting, at which de Kock described how he shot Khoza’s mother twice in the head before pushing the vehicle in which she was travelling down a slope.“I thought I would cry but strangely enough had the courage to continue to listen to him. I was not jolted because I had long forgiven him and have since learnt that resentment and bitterness will blur my vision on life,” she said.However, many other callers to radio stations – in particular black South Africans – have questioned de Kock’s remorse and said his crimes were so extreme he should die behind bars.In chilling testimony before the TRC in 1996, de Kock turned on his former commanders and returned to the theme in his amnesty application.“I am the only member of the South African Police Service that is serving a sentence for crimes which I had committed as part of the National Party’s attempt to uphold apartheid and fight the liberation movements,” de Kock said in an affidavit supporting his parole application. “Not one of the previous generals or ministers who were in the cabinet up to 1990 have been prosecuted at all.”“I would never have committed the crimes if it was not for the political context of the time, and the position I was placed in, and in particular the orders I had received from my superiors,” de Kock wrote.In his 1996 testimony, the highly decorated former colonel described the inner workings of the unit, blamed for killing at least 70 people.He calmly described scores of atrocities, from bombing the ANC headquarters in London to cross-border raids where he was applauded for shooting dead women and children.