Appointing Robert McBride as chief of the Ekurhuleni municipality’s Metro Police was inspired. The many who disagree strongly with the decision have been very vocal, but then free expression of views in dispute of political and bureaucratic decisions are of the quintessence of the democratic process. When folk leap up and protest vehemently about McBride’s appointment, it’s most encouraging to see they get heard and read.
McBride is the perfect choice for several reasons. His are select and undervalued qualities, not found in most candidates for a job like police chief. For a start McBride has had more than just a glimpse of the ‘other side†in the police/accused correlation. He was once very much an accused himself and, in 1988, found himself in a terrible situation: on death row, having been found guilty of planting and exploding a bomb in a bar frequented by the specialist policeman of the previous South African government — the undemocratic one, that is.
Whether the justice system of the pre-1994 era was as aloof and dispassionate as it was cracked up to be by its functionaries doesn’t really matter in this instance. The fact is that McBride experienced personally the forbidding processes of arrest, trial and conviction and was sent off to Pretoria Maximum Security prison to await the hangman. After more than three years his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. In 1992 he was pardoned and released by then state president FW de Klerk.
These experiences must surely be seen as unique qualifications for a police chief. There are not many in those ranks who will be as naturally sympathetic to the plight of the accused who come under their care — especially if they’re charged with leaving bombs around the place.
McBride was again to suffer imprisonment in 1998 when he got banged up for six months in the frightful Machava prison in Mozambique, on charges of gunrunning. He was working for the South African Department of Foreign Affairs at the time. It was said some industrial-strength back-room diplomacy helped show how trumped-up these charges were. McBride was released and went back to his job in foreign affairs. Then came some more unpleasantness when poor Robert got falsely accused all over again about some to-do at a Cape Town massage parlour. He had to endure the typically seamy media coverage that followed.
McBride’s experiences on both sides of the law can only serve him well in his new career. He understands how easy it is for an individual to be accused and scourged for things he either never did, or did only in pursuit of admirable revolutionary ideals. There seems little doubt that these exceptional qualifications were taken in account by the Ekurhuleni municipality appointing officers. What might be asked is why McBride’s sort of experience isn’t being deployed elsewhere in the Ekurhuleni municipal system. Why isn’t someone like a certain Mr Barend Strydom being appointed to some equivalent position — or any position at all?
There are striking similarities between McBride and Strydom. Both were convicted of crimes their defence argued had deeply ingrained political motivations. In Strydom’s case, his murderous violence was against people of a different colour to him and whom, as the inevitable result of the racist political indoctrination he underwent as a child and young man, he believed to be not worthy of living. Even under the degenerate apartheid judicial system, his jour-ney to death row was as inevitable. Later Strydom also had his death sentence commuted and in 1992 was also released by De Klerk who rationalised his and McBride’s pardons as unrelated acts of reconciliation.
I don’t believe the fathers of the Ekurhuleni municipality have been fair-minded. They haven’t even offered Strydom some humble job, perhaps as McBride’s shoeshiner; any employment that would give Strydom the chance to rally his cruelly suppressed human qualities. Such a move would give the municipality the perfect answer to the voluble array of critics of McBride’s appointment. No one could say the municipality had been moving the gibbets.
Come to think of it, there are quite a few other ‘pardonees†who would qualify for similar appointments. People whose expertise could be put to excellent use. Why not find a job for another courageous non-suicide bomber, Craig Williamson. In the 1984 he rigged up a parcel bomb and sent it off to Marius Schoon in Angola. Schoon ‘s wife, Jenny, opened the parcel and was killed along with their six-year-old daughter, Katryn. Williamson didn’t even have to stand trial. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission let him off without any of that sort of fuss and bother. Surely there’s a job at the Ekurhuleni police department for Craig — teaching the sniffer dogs which Boeremag gift parcels to ignore?
There must be a whole gallery of people blessed with the sort of compassion and understanding which, as a result of the bitter experiences of his life, McBride carries in him. Surely more of them deserve a second chance. After all, McBride’s had about five.