FORMER security policeman Greg Deegan this week wrote a poignant and hard-hitting letter to the Mail & Guardian, expressing the fury of the apartheid “footsoldiers” whose generals have run for cover.
This is his letter:
I was a member of the South African Police Security Branch and stationed for the major part of my service at John Vorster Square, Johannesburg, from 1974 to 1979.
Paul Erasmus (who in the last few weeks revealed former president FW de Klerk’s government’s “dirty tricks” campaign in the run- up to the 1994 election) and I were colleagues, and became close friends during that period..
Sometime during 1994, through contacts within the SAP, I learned that Paul had “done a Goldstone”. To say that I was astonished would be putting it mildly! Apart from the fact that taking this step would undoubtedly expose him to, at the very least, ostracism, it seemed somehow out of character. To use an archaic term, Paul was always one of those stalwart characters who could be depended on to keep his
I felt more than a little resentment that Paul would want to implicate his colleagues in alleged “dirty tricks”. We had, after all, been through a lot together, sharing danger and boredom, good times and bad.
After listening to radio interviews and following the story in the Mail & Guardian, it began to dawn on me that, contrary to what I suspected, it was possible that Paul could be doing the right thing — that his motives for going public could possibly be in the interests of fairness and justice rather than for the purpose of making political gains for a political party, or for saving his own
After watching Agenda on July 10 1995, I decided to get in touch with Paul. I managed to do this on Tuesday, July 11, and the ensuing conversation gave me cause to reconsider my position. After much soul-searching, I have decided to write this letter.
We, the white South Africans of the previous political era, were brought up to detest communism in all its forms. We were taught that our “blacks” were the spear point of the communist thrust into our society and that only through apartheid would we keep the communist threat from our doors.
We were taught that the blacks would subvert our culture, and deny us the land our forefathers fought and died for. We accepted this as gospel, and few white youngsters growing up during that era could resist the propaganda. It was the time of the “Winds of Change” in Africa, and the grisly upheavals in Nigeria, the Congo, Mozambique, Angola and Zimbabwe, and the inept and corrupt governments of numerous African states, only served to confirm our fears.
We were not taught that poverty and repression were the ideal breeding grounds for communism, that communism could never gain a foothold in a free and prosperous society, that communism was born where a minority subjugated the natural aspirations of a majority to seek a better existence for themselves and their children.
We believed that our “cause” was just, and we believed in our leaders. We believed in our leaders when we were called upon to fight the “total onslaught”. We believed in our leaders when they urged us to fight “fire with fire”. We believed in our leaders when they ordered us, either directly or by suggestion, to rid them of their enemies, and provided us with the means to do so.
The extent of our conviction was so great that we believed in our leaders when they were exposed as corrupt. We believed in our leaders when they rewarded corruption with massive “golden handshakes”. We, the security force operatives, became the footsoldiers of the “cause”, because we believed the propaganda, and believed in our leaders.
To all those “footsoldiers”, I pose this question: where are those leaders now? Where are the cabinet ministers, politicians and senior security force officers whom we believed in? Are they standing with us and saying, “Yes, we did what we did because we believed in our cause”?
Or have our leaders all run for cover? Have they denied everything they ordered us to do, or expected us to do? Do our leaders expect us, who champoined their cause, to now stand alone? Is the cry of our leaders, “We didn’t know”, to be believed, and is this not in itself an indictment of gross ineptitude?
Until now, Paul Erasmus has not implicated the “footsoldiers”. The names he has mentioned are those of senior officers and politicians. Paul hasn’t “dropped” his friends. Paul has done what he has done because, unlike the rest of us, he has realised that the “cause” for which we fought has been abandoned by our leaders. That we have been abandoned by our leaders. That our leaders now enjoy either well-paid positions within the present administration or are relaxing on massive state pensions.
Paul Erasmus has opened the way for all of us. Now is the time to decide whether it is fair that we stand alone, or whether the architects of our “cause” should be held accountable.