De Klerk’s failure to admit moral responsibility for apartheid sins fails all of us, argues Andre du Toit
SHOULD Archbishop Desmond Tutu have known better than to expect FW de Klerk, as National Party leader, to accept political responsibility for apartheid’s dirty war?
According to press reports in May, Tutu had been close to tears, so disappointed was he by the outcome of the NP’s second round of submissions to the truth commission. Yet he, if anyone, should know his customers by now. As he himself reminded De Klerk, Tutu had repeatedly confronted the NP leadership during the dark days of the 1980s about some of the same political atrocities which the commission is now publicly recording. De Klerk did not take his word for it then – why would he be prepared to accept responsibility now?
Let me correct that: on behalf of the NP, De Klerk did accept ”overall responsibility” for the period of his leadership. And he reiterated his apology ”for the pain caused by former policies of the National Party”. But just what did that amount to?
Re-reading his formal submission, and the answers provided to the commission’s questions arising out of the NP’s first submission last year, one is struck by two things – political calculation and cold-hearted legalism. This is the document of a politician and a lawyer. Whatever Tutu might have expected, De Klerk did not view his appearance before the commission as the place where his place in history will be settled, or where he can be held accountable to the people of South Africa. Instead, he was concerned with cutting the commission down to size, and exposing it as the partisan instrument of his political opponents.
In accepting responsibility, De Klerk also carefully distanced himself from any actual atrocities. He stressed that there were significant differences between the party and the state. He insisted that the NP now is not the same as the NP then. He repeated that all along the NP’s policies had had legitimate and ”idealist” objectives. He once again stated that the Cabinet had never authorised, and the NP never supported, any gross violations of human rights.
And so his acceptance of ”overall responsibility” did not include responsibility for what he called ”the criminal actions of a handful of operatives of the security forces of which the party was not aware and which it would never have condoned”. De Klerk does not dispute the political atrocities concerned. He told the commission that ”there is now ample evidence that gross violations of human rights were committed by elements of the security forces”. But, for that, he and the NP cannot be held responsible.
It was this denial of responsibility which so disappointed Tutu. But should he have expected anything else? Could he really have thought that a politician would knowingly accept such a political liability?
Tutu’s very real disappointment was a tribute to the stature of De Klerk in our recent political history. After all, once before, on February 2 1990, he exceeded and confounded our expectations. So Tutu was right in having high expectations of De Klerk’s appearance before the commission, if only out of respect for his historic political achievement. And if De Klerk so bitterly disappointed the bishop, he also failed the rest of us. Just what are the implications of De Klerk and the NP’s failure to take responsibility for these political atrocities?
To whom does it matter whether De Klerk does, or does not, accept clear political responsibility for human rights violations committed in the name of apartheid and the NP government? It matters to the actual perpetrators, the members of the security forces who fought apartheid’s dirty war. It matters to those who gave them their instructions, some of whom are also applying for amnesty. It matters to the victims. And it matters to those who voted for the NP, and directly or indirectly supported the NP government and its policies, which brought on these violent conflicts.
For the perpetrators and their bosses the message of De Klerk’s submission is clear: if he denies responsibility for these atrocities, they carry the can. Indeed, if the commission would accept De Klerk’s position, then their deeds literally become ”criminal actions” – and presumably will not qualify for amnesty in terms of the criteria.
For the victims the implications are significant: instead of having been targeted by agents of the apartheid state, they were victims of ”criminal elements” who happened to be security force operatives (in principle their fate would be no different from those who get caught in the middle of a taxi war).
Most important are the implications for white voters and (former) NP supporters. If De Klerk can claim that he had no knowledge of and responsibility for Vlakplaas and other dirty deeds, then the same surely holds for ordinary white South Africans. After all, as head of state and leader of the NP at the time, his was the position of ultimate political responsibility. If FW de Klerk can claim not to have known what happened, so can we all.
The nub of the matter lies in the guidelines for ”unavoidable secret operations” approved by De Klerk’s Cabinet as late as June 1990. These stipulate that political heads should accept full accountability for ”special projects”, and that ministerial approval in writing is required. Significantly the guidelines rule that the ”principle of plausible denial” should be avoided. But it accepts the ”need-to-know” principle for special operations and covert projects. This is a blatant contradiction, and it should occasion no surprise that the ”need-to-know” principle resulted in operatives not informing their superiors, even after the doctrine of plausible denial had been rejected.
By his own account, De Klerk found it possible to live with a security force operating according to the ”need-to-know” principle in a dirty war. So, effectively, did the majority of ordinary white South Africans. What are our responsibilities for what the agents and operatives of the apartheid state had actually done? Having accepted the ”need-to-know” principle, it follows that De Klerk – and we – would not have known about political atrocities done on our behalf. This is what the commission’s process is about: confronting us with the brutal realities of what we did not know, and chose not to know. If we now accept that these atrocities really did happen, we – and De Klerk – are responsible.
No court injunction that the commission has not been totally ”impartial” can change any of that. It is not a matter of the commission’s impartiality in law; it is a matter of De Klerk’s accountability for what we now know. And of our shared responsibilities.
Andre du Toit is a professor of political studies at the University of Cape Town