On Pardoning de Kock

I've been a lazy blogger recently (Facebook seems to have stolen all of my internet effort, sadly). But Andile Mngxitama's M&G article "Let Prime Evil Go" just shook me out of my laziness.

My first response to this article is just "wut?"

I understand how people who committed apartheid related crimes have been let off by the TRC. In this massive unjust system, they had a job to do, they did their jobs, they were following orders and doing so on the mandate of the government. In many ways then their actions were the responsibility of the government, of the apartheid system. So if they came clean at the TRC, they could be let off.

It doesn't sit so very well, but I can understand it. If I was a young man in the SADF in the 1980s, maybe I would have done some unimaginable things. Because I was ordered to, maybe, or because I was in some situation where I was (rightly or wrongly) afraid for my life, or because I had some skewed picture of the world where "the blacks were out to get us", and all that was standing between us and anarchy and war was my brothers and I in our cassipers.

I get that.

And I get that Joe Nobody soldier on the ground should not have to take the blame for carrying orders that were given from the top. The people at the top, with the appearance of clean hands, should take the primary blame. I get that.

I also get that the apartheid system benefited not only the guys with the guns, and the guys at the top giving the orders to shoot, but the average white South African, in his house in the suburbs. And in one sense, while there were politicians and generals and police commanders giving orders, the order to maintain apartheid was given by highest authority in the land - the voting populace. All of white South Africa who enjoyed the fruit of apartheid and turned a blind eye to the atrocities committed to maintain their way of life, bear some responsibility for those atrocities.

Down with all of that.

So we had the TRC and absolved lots of people.

Judging anything like this isn't clear cut, of course, but it seems to me that there are pretty clear guiding principals for letting people off for apartheid era crimes.

It can be argued that de Kock should be let off because he was acting on orders, just carrying out the will of the state. A soldier doing the bidding of his commander. But I just don't think that holds water in his case.

I stand to be corrected, because I have a limited knowledge of what went on with de Kock and Vlakplass. But from what I know it was a place of wanton murder and torture and cruelty. The little I have read about it turns my stomach.

If you are a soldier and your commander tells you to kill someone, then you do, fair enough. But you don't mutilate him them, then douse them in paraffin and burn them alive. And if you do, you are no longer a soldier acting on orders, protected from personal responsibility.

And even if we are just speaking about killing people, without torture and so forth... how can you be a soldier fighting for a nation that would be appalled at you if it knew about your existence? Do you still have their authority behind you, protecting you? Surely not. I know that white South Africa turned a blind eye on a lot, and maybe it is naive of me to think so, but Vlakplaas and the kind of assassinations and so on the de Kock was involved in were kept from the public eye, and would not have been approved of by the public. Which means he was less a soldier for an army, as a hit man of the acting regime. The powerful of the time. Surely he knew that.

Apparently the lawyer prosecuting de Kock said that "this is a pure crime. This is not a political crime."

I am open to have my mind changed on this, because I could do with knowing more about Eugene de Kock. Maybe he was a scapegoat. But with what I know now, no, he was not just a soldier doing his duty. And he should not be indemnified as if he was one.