Ex-Apartheid Minister Offers Lone High-Ranking Voice of Remorse

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Of the 6,037 applications for political amnesty considered so far by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Adriaan Vlok stands alone.

Vlok, 62, is the only apartheid-era Cabinet minister to seek a pardon from the truth panel, which was created by the black-majority government to expose abuses during the apartheid system of racial separation.

This week, the former minister of law and order was granted amnesty for the 1987 bombing of a building in downtown Johannesburg. In three days of testimony, Vlok admitted that he had ordered the blast at the headquarters of the Congress of South African Trade Unions because security forces suspected that it was a base for attacks against the government. No one was killed in the incident.

The amnesty ruling--Vlok’s second from the commission--confirms his place in history as the highest-ranking official of the white-minority regime to be excused for crimes committed in its name.

At the same time, it forever brands him a Benedict Arnold among some Afrikaners still unhappy with their loss of political power and with what they perceive as the new government’s anti-Afrikaner bent.

“There are people in this country who are angry with me, who say it was wrong for me to ask for amnesty,” Vlok said in an interview. “A young man came up to me and said, ‘You are a traitor,’ and then walked away. It was not easy to come to my decision, but I am at ease with it.”

Vlok, who was minister of law and order from 1986 to 1994, said he tried to get his Cabinet colleagues, including former presidents Pieter W. Botha and Frederik W. de Klerk, to make a joint application to the truth panel. In his testimony, Vlok directly implicated Botha in another bombing, saying the then-president ordered him to render the headquarters of the South African Council of Churches “unusable.”

None of the former Cabinet officials were swayed, however--Botha even went to court to block the commission from compelling him to testify in a separate matter--leaving Vlok alone to shed light from the inside on four decades of National Party rule.

“This was a golden opportunity for the previous government to come forward in the view of history and put things in the correct perspective,” Vlok said in the interview. “I think apartheid was a mistake, but I also can understand why people started it. Many things went wrong, but there were also many good things. We missed the opportunity to put that before the world.”

Despite his lone voice of contrition, analysts say it would be a mistake to cast Vlok as a hero of the truth and reconciliation process.

He had been publicly implicated in several police bombings by former security chief Gen. Johan van der Merwe, who also was pardoned this week for the trade union blast. If Vlok wanted to set the record straight--and avoid possible criminal prosecutions or civil actions--he needed to come clean.

The trade union congress also complains that there were 40 other crimes committed against its members that neither Vlok nor any other former government official has offered to explain.

“He was scared his past may have caught up with him in one way or the other, so I think he was looking out for No. 1,” said Richard Lyster, a labor and human rights lawyer and former truth commissioner. “Yet his application was very significant because basically it went as far as you can to the top. One can’t say he was way down the ladder and was trying to save his skin by pointing to those at the top.”

The truth panel granted Vlok amnesty in August for the 1988 bombing of the South African Council of Churches building. Commissioners are still considering a separate request related to attacks made by security forces on movie theaters that were screening the 1987 anti-apartheid film “Cry Freedom.”

Vlok claims that those attacks also were politically motivated, thereby making them eligible under the amnesty law. The statute allows the truth panel to pardon criminal acts between 1960 and 1994 as long as they are deemed political and the applicants truthful.

The main work of the truth commission ended last year, but the amnesty reviews are expected to continue until March. Of the 6,037 rulings so far, only 568 people have been pardoned. A spokesman said the panel is still considering 815 applications.

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The Forgiven

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has pardoned 568 people for human rights violations during apartheid. Those granted amnesty include:

* 383 members of the African National Congress

* 124 members of the apartheid security forces

* 28 members of the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party

* One member of the National Party.

Source: Truth and Reconciliation Commission