He didn’t exactly kill with kindness but there is a charm to Eugene de Kock that belies the murderous work he carried out for the apartheid government. Eddie Koch reports
IT was a balmy autumn afternoon back in 1993 and Eugene de Kock was sitting, as arranged, on the terrace of the Centurion Park Hotel in Pretoria with a bulging moon bag next to the beer in front of him.
It was our second meeting and I was hoping, naively it turns out, that because the Vlakplaas commander was involved in a bitter dispute with his police superiors at the time he would talk about their role in fomenting “third force” violence. But instead of giving away state secrets, the colonel did two things that epitomise the conundrum he has posed for the court and country this week.
He took a state-of-the-art Glock pistol from the bag and, with the boyish smile that he displayed all through his testimony in court, explained that it wasn’t really an assassin’s weapon and he only used it on the shooting range. And when he heard I was about to leave for Greece and was thinking of visiting Bosnia, he offered some fatherly advice: don’t travel in an armoured car because it “will cook you” if hit by an RPG-7; “if you take a head wound ask someone to shoot you because then it’s not worth surviving”; and if you get into real trouble ask your wife to call me and I’ll come and fetch you.
The experience left a set of deeply ambivalent feelings. I was horrified to handle a gun that had probably been used to murder some of the colonel’s victims yet attracted by the man’s genial manner, disturbed by his professional capacity for violence but beguiled by his offer to help in times of stress.
De Kock’s uncanny ability to both shock and charm is a theme that was played out over and again when this complex man had the judge and his pair of assessors, as well as most of the packed gallery, on the edge of their chairs in room DG3 of the Pretoria Supreme Court this week.
There was, for example, a moment when — after a riveting account of cross-border operations into Lesotho and Botswana in which he blew houses and buildings to smithereens, abducted ANC operatives, pushed getaway cars over cliffs and shot men in the head — Justice Willem Van der Merwe asked De Kock what he and his men got in return. “Ag just a good handshake and a little braai.” It was a reply that broke the judge’s stern countenance into the hint of a smile.
On another occasion the colonel explained how one of his agents had complained that Winnie Mandela turned him into a sex slave after he had infiltrated her gang of township toughs. “We did not believe him but Captain Anton Pretorius who listened to the tapes made in Mrs Mandela’s house said he was a man of Olympian standards who could satisfy any woman.”
There were more grins on the bench and they were eradicated by the testimony that came seconds later. The Vlakplaas man had apparently killed three policemen during his time with Mandela. “He was taken to Penge mine. I shot him myself. When it came to the part where his body was to be blown up, I walked away.”
At tea time on Wednesday two petite woman rushed up to the dock. They chatted to the colonel for a while, hugged him and each kissed him on the cheek before he went down, flushing slightly, to the isolation of the cells below. It was difficult not to feel sorry for the man. “Can you believe he is just a killer?” said the person behind me as we shuffled out of the gallery.
That is the central question that underlies the split response in most of those who heard De Kock’s evidence in mitigation for the crimes he has committed. Is he a psycopathic killer, a charming version of South Africa’s own Carlos the Jackal, who deserves the 200- year sentence that would normally be handed down for the combination of crimes he has been convicted of?
Or was he just one of the many ordinary footsoldiers who found themselves, almost by misfortune, fighting a dirty war not of their making but doing it anyway because it had become a mundane and normal part of their working lives?
The colonel’s defence team led by Flip Hattingh has presented a compelling case to support the latter view. De Kock was trained to fight communists and the ANC as the enemy. He suffered repeated stress and tension after fighting bush wars in Rhodesia and South West Africa. The orders for some of his most reprehensible missions came from the highest office. Two state presidents, four cabinet ministers and more than a dozen generals have been named in this regard — and none of them have denied the accuracy of his charges.
Corruption and fraud, ranging from free booze in the Vlakplaas canteen to the filing of false claims worth up to R80 000 a time was the order of the day in the police force. De Kock learnt how to do these things after the generals showed him how. Even though his judgment was clouded by the trauma of what he did, and the culture he worked in, the colonel sometimes refused to carry out orders he regarded as being morally unacceptable.
One of the most shocking moments in his career was when General Gerrit Erasmus allegedly said they should shoot any uniformed policemen who may have interfered with their mission to blow up Khotso House. “We decided not to shoot any policemen. If there was no other way (of dealing with their potential to leak information about the covert operation) they would simply have to become members of the security police,” De Kock told the court.
But what about the evidence of gratuitous violence? He once split the skull of one of his own agents with a spade. Former Vlakplaas operatives say he beat every one of them during his stint as commander of the base — the black members with a sjambok, the white ones with his fists.
There are countless incidents like these that will have to be taken into account when the court considers the colonel’s plea for understanding and remission.
Then there are the gaps in his testimony, suggestions he may be protecting some of his old buddies. Did he play a role in the activities of the CCB unit that operated out of Staal Burger’s hotel in Hillbrow? What about the train massacres on the Reef and the Boipatong massacre? These are issues that may be explored to test the truthfulness of the colonel when the state cross-examines him.
Whichever way the judge’s decision goes on the question of mitigation, De Kock has already achieved another of his objectives. He has provided prima facie evidence that he is not alone in his guilt.
Dozens of those, and they include former cabinet ministers and generals in the security forces who connived with him and gave the orders, are still in office or they are walking free. If they receive permanent amnesty, the colonel’s defence team will ask, is it fair that De Kock spends the rest of his life in jail?
That question is the greatest, most central, challenge to the the country’s criminal justice system that will stem from the De Kock trial.
To use a phrase from Hannah Arendt’s book on the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem: “It is one thing for the courts to ferret out criminals and murderers from their hiding places. It is another to find them prominent and flourishing in the public realm.”