Eddie Koch
EUGENE DE KOCK’S autobiography, hand-written in his cell, is being kept under wraps by the colonel and his lawyers because it contains deeply personal details about the man who became apartheid’s most ruthless killer.
It describes his upbringing in a right-wing family on a plot near Springs. He attended the Baanbreker Primary School and the Voortrekker High School in Boksburg.
At high school he and his brother belonged to the Voortrekker movement and went to compulsory veld camps. Their father taught them to hunt. “As a result of the camps in the veld and the experience of hunting and fishing, the accused developed a love for Africa and its wild animals. The bush was a safe haven for him,” says the criminologist’s report based on the autobiography.
“For the father, a hyper-macho image was important. He was a typical Afrikaner who belonged to a number of right-wing organisations. … He was a member of the executive committee of the Broederbond … In his work situation at the Department of Justice, the culture was one of smoking and drinking and talking of rugby. The children also came under the influence of this culture.”
De Kock did his national service in the army in 1967 with plans to enrol in the permanent force and do a B.Mil degree at Saldanha Bay. “But the officers were determined just to break the servicemen physically and mentally. As a result of constant swearing by the officers, he decided to leave the SADF.”
He joined the police in 1968 and was sent to Benoni after training at police college. In the same year he was called up for a counter-insurgency course, then fought with white security forces in what was then Rhodesia.
He participated in a number of operations in Zimbabwe between 1968 and 1973. After spending a few months in the State President’s Guard, which he hated, he was sent back to Benoni. In 1976 he was heavily involved in suppressing student resistance to apartheid in townships on the East Rand and in 1977 was sent to Ovamboland as commander of a police base.
In 1979, he was transferred to Koevoet in Oshakati and served in the notorious counter-insurgency unit until May 1983. Then he joined Section C1 of the police, the Vlakplaas unit that provided the base for a string of assassinations, murders and bombings that followed.
He was arrested in May 1994 and held at the Adriaan Vlok Prison in Pretoria before being transferred to the Medium B section of Pretoria Central where he is currently waiting to be sentenced for multiple murder and fraud.