Pronounced guilty, Eugene de Kock will now have his turn to incriminate members of the old security forces, writes Eddie Koch
The day of judgment had come. Yet there was no air of anticipation in the courtroom. No murmurs of approval in the gallery as the judge delivered his verdict. Not a single family member to sniffle as he was taken down to the cells. In fact, it was the kind of denouement that could have ruined the entire show.
After a courtroom series that took 18 months and cost at least R5-million to produce, the judge asked Eugene de Kock to stand up in the dock and, in just two minutes, summarised his judgment: guilty of six murders, two counts of conspiracy to murder, one of attempted murder, one of culpable homicide, one of abduction, one of serious assault, one of being an accessory to culpable homicide, one of defeating the ends of justice, nine of illegal arms and ammunition possession; and 66 of fraud.
In the old days these multiple crimes — a total of 89 counts, probably more serious than one person has ever been convicted of in South Africa, would have warranted the hangman’s noose or at least a sentence of 200 years.
Yet De Kock sat down without flinching. A group of bored schoolkids who had been sent to write up a project about the case shuffled out of court clutching pens and notebooks. And the legal teams got down to planning, in a matter-of-fact way, their next episode: the one that everyone in court knows is going to be the blockbuster which will probably justify the extravagant costs of this drama.
On September 16 Colonel de Kock, a man who has described himself as the most accomplished of the many assassins who executed the apartheid government’s covert wars, will explain why he did these gruesome things.
Political ideals, fears of a communist take-over, violent bush wars in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South West Africa (now Namibia), battle fatigue and shock, instructions from the political hierarchy … all of these factors will be woven into a personal narrative that could turn this country’s recent history into the stuff of a Frederick Forsyth thriller.
The mitigation hearings will also have serious implications for other political murderers and assassins.
De Kock has already stated he will, as part of his explanation for the murders he has confessed to carrying out, give evidence implicating at least eight generals from the old security forces. Whether this information extends to members of the National Party Cabinet and the State Security Council remains to be seen.
Here there is an intricate interplay with the workings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. That organisation’s investigative unit has issued subpoenas to seven of the men De Kock could point out: Generals Johan van der Merwe, Mike Geldenhuys, Johan Coetzee — all former police commissioners — and Basie Smit, Krappies Engelbrecht, Johan le Roux and Bertus Steyn.
The timing is convenient. If the generals lie, or fail to volunteer significant details about their role in covert operations, they could well be caught out when De Kock begins to talk next month. This will effectively minimise the generals’ chances of lodging successful applications for amnesty before the cut- off date, thus placing them under strong pressure to come clean when they begin answering questions in camera to the truth commission on Friday.
The colonel will also talk about his involvement in the supply of weapons, ammunition and explosives to leading members of the Inkatha Freedom Party in the early 1990s, war material that may well have been used to account for the huge number of murders committed during the low key civil war that still rages in that province.
IFP senator Philip Powell, former KwaZulu police minister CJ Mthetwa and IFP heavyweights in Gauteng, Humphrey Ndlovu and Themba Khoza have all been implicated in the supply of weaponry to Inkatha’s self protection units and will be holding their breaths when the Pretoria Supreme Court hearings open on September 16.
But the true importance of De Kock’s mitigation hearings lies not in political significance or the entertainment value of the event. They will, probably more than any judicial process ever held in this country, provide a nation desperate to come to terms with its violent past the opportunity to hear and understand — from a member of the inner circle of Pretoria’s “total war” strategists — why they did the things they did.
More importantly, Justice William van der Merwe will have to take into account De Kock’s own testimony, as well as that of a psychologist and criminologist, when he decides at the end of the hearings on what kind of punishment to hand down to the self-confessed killer. Although the comparison is both inaccurate and cliched — it will be the closest that South Africa has come to an Eichmann trial.
This places an enormous burden on the judge. He will have to come up with a sentence that is not only balanced, but one that, he has indicated, will have taken into account the broader political imperative of the times: to understand and forgive if this can promote national reconciliation without undermining a culture that respects human life.
By taking into account De Kock’s social, psychological and political background, Justice Van der Merwe’s sentence could end up using the key “proportionality” test contained in internationally accepted principles on how to prosecute war crimes.
He will have to decide whether the acts that De Kock committed — including conspiracies to murder friends and colleagues who either told or threatened to tell the truth about the activities of his Vlakplaas unit at the time and gruesome ways of disposing of victims’ bodies by burning them or blowing them up into tiny pieces — were in proportion to the political motives and the mindset that drove him to do it.
The judge has already indicated that, during the mitigation hearings, he wants to deal with issues like this that are beginning to shape the jurisprudence of post-apartheid South Africa.
He will weigh up any evidence that De Kock presents about the political nature of his activities, especially with regard to the charges of gun-running to Inkatha, before he delivers sentence. He has also made it clear that witnesses who gave evidence against De Kock will not automatically be granted indemnity against prosecution for crimes they were personally involved in.
This means he could refuse to protect hitmen like “Chappies” Kloppers and Joe Mamasela, who are now receiving material benefits from the Justice Department, including witness protection and monthly stipends, just because they gave evidence against their former colleague.
The way this matter is handled will have a crucial bearing on how the judicial system’s need to induce informants to come out of the woodwork is married with the creation of a culture that refuses to reward people who abuse human life.
The De Kock trial falls outside the ambit of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. But, just as that body was set up to do, the marathon case could help find the elusive formula to promote reconciliation and respect for all those who died.
If it succeeds, the taxpayers’ R5-million may have been worth it.