The policeman who terrorised Western Cape activists appears to suffer from selective amnesia, writes Gaye Davis
MERE mention of Jeffrey Benzien’s name struck fear into the hearts of otherwise hardened Western Cape activists during the dark and dangerous days of the mid-1980s. This was the man whose name regularly came up in political trials, where just as frequently defendants’ claims that he had tortured them were dismissed for lack of evidence.
This week those defendants were vindicated as Benzien, now serving in the police air wing, confessed before his amnesty hearing in Cape Town to assaulting, tormenting and abusing his victims – detainees held without access to family or lawyers – as well as repeatedly perjuring himself in court.
Though the tables were turned and it was the interrogator who was now answering questions, Benzien, like a cornered rat, could still wound.
Although he sprinkled his testimony with ”sincere apologies” and at one point wept, he could still psychologically assault his former victims, by revealing information he’d forced out of them which led to the arrest and torture of comrades, by implying they had broken quickly – or simply by failing to remember what he had done to them.
Ashley Forbes – who took longer to be persuaded to co-operate than the standard 30 minutes Benzien claimed was all he needed – was jogging the policeman’s memory about the torment that led him to attempt suicide after three months in Benzien’s hands. Benzien referred to the ”very good rapport” they’d had: ”I concede that on the Saturday I assaulted you and on the Monday, and then we went for a steak …”
Did Forbes remember the trips they had taken together? ”Can you remember when you saw snow for the first time?” Forbes remembered: the trips were to allow his injuries to heal and prevent him being seen by a doctor.
Benzien denied this, just as he denied ramming a metal rod up Forbes’s anus and shocking him with the electric generator he had got off a telephone technician and kept in his office, but ”only ever” used once – on Forbes’s comrade, Peter Jacobs. For Forbes, who still bears the scars, Benzien’s denial was unbearable.
As his former victims confronted him – and faced up to their own pain and humiliation at his hands – Benzien displayed the selective amnesia that was a hallmark of his performances in court: certain details recalled with astonishing precision, others blanked out by forgetfulness.
If the Umkhonto weSizwe guerrillas he had tortured had not been there to question him, his evidence that he was a dedicated policeman who used ”unconventional methods”, condoned by his superiors, to extract from trained terrorists information that would save innocent lives and prevent the overthrow of the state might have remained largely intact.
But as one after the other of his former victims took the seat opposite him and led him through their experiences at his hands, the
wet bag he admitted using over a detainee’s head ”to disorientate” them was revealed as a means of also causing near-suffocation and unconsciousness. While it was his favourite, it emerged it was only one of a range of bizarre and brutal methods in his repertoire.
African National Congress MP Tony Yengeni asked him: ”What kind of man uses a wet bag repeatedly and listens to those cries and moans and takes each of those people close to their deaths – what kind of human being is that?”
”I have asked myself that question,” Benzien said. ”I have voluntarily approached psychiatrists to have myself evaluated.” Later, it emerged he had had only two consultations.
He worked alone so that when a case came to trial it would be his word against the defendant’s. He later conceded he had had help, although he could not remember exactly from whom among his colleagues in the tight- knit anti-terrorist tracking unit.
Questions aimed at uncovering the chain of command which gave him licence to break the rules and saw him promoted and commended for his services ran into the cul-de-sac of his poor memory, suggesting to his examiners that he was covering up to protect still active networks.
When the hearing resumes on October 20, an as yet unidentified police general will explain the chain of command.
Forbes and his comrades will listen with interest. Believing Benzien to have been less than truthful, they do not support his application for amnesty.