FRIDAY, 8.30AM
FORMER justice minister Adriaan Vlok has admitted to ordering the placing of “small explosive devices” outside two cinemas showing anti-apartheid movies, and to making false bomb threats to cinemas planning to show the Biko film Cry Freedom.
Vlok is believed to be referring to a series of anti-censorship film festivals run by the Weekly Mail (now the Mail & Guardian) during the late 1980s State of Emergency, which faced constant police harrassment, including bombings.
Vlok, the only apartheid-era minister to apply for amnesty for specific acts of terror, has also confirmed his involvement in ordering the massive Khotso House and Cosatu House bombings, both aimed at destroying major anti-apartheid organisations. He blames the Khotso House attack on PW Botha, who has denied all knowledge of it.
Vlok’s motive for seeking amnesty is that he faces possible court action from activist Shirley Gunn, whom he publicly blamed for the attack and allowed police to arrest, interrogate and hold in detention. His application says: “Legal advice suggests that I have already been granted amnesty for [the bombings].”
Vlok says that as a committed Christian he saw it as his first duty to fight the communist onslaught, which sometimes required that violence be met with violence. He also complains that while forgiveness is expected of apartheid’s supporters, “it is not expected at all from the supporters of Marxism/Communism”.