DE KOCK GETS TWO LIFE TERMS FOR APARTHEID POLICE CRIMES

PRETORIA, 1996-10-30. — Eugene de Kock, the former police colonel whose name has become synonymous with apartheid's clandestine violence, was sentenced here today to two terms of life imprisonment and a further 212 years for offences committed in the service, and under the protection, of the old security establishment. Judge Willem van der Merwe imposed sentence in the Pretoria Supreme Court after proceedings that exposed murder, deception and the diversion of police resources into criminal operations. For South Africa's new democracy, the judgment establishes a substantial measure of individual accountability while leaving unresolved the responsibility of men farther up the chain of command.

De Kock formerly commanded the police counter-insurgency unit based at Vlakplaas, a farm outside Pretoria which became a centre of operations against opponents of white minority rule. His trial ended in convictions on 89 charges, encompassing murder and numerous other offences. The sentence is therefore not punishment for one disastrous raid or an isolated excess by a policeman. It represents judgment upon an extensive course of criminal conduct carried out by a senior officer with access to state weapons, money, personnel and intelligence. The man widely called “Prime Evil” now faces imprisonment on a scale commensurate with that record.

Vlakplaas occupied a peculiar and sinister place within the security police. Its work included the deployment of former liberation-movement members who had been captured or persuaded to change sides. These men, commonly known as askaris, could identify underground activists and assist operations against them. The unit's official counter-insurgency purpose provided cover for activities far beyond lawful investigation and arrest. Evidence concerning its operations has brought into public view a system in which suspected enemies could be abducted or killed and the resulting crimes concealed behind police authority. What once belonged to the secret language of security operations has now been examined in an ordinary criminal court.

Among the killings examined in the case was the 1989 bombing near Port Elizabeth in which three black policemen and a police informer died. The attack illustrates how the clandestine apparatus could turn upon people within its own orbit, not merely upon declared opponents of the government. Concealment became an operational purpose in itself. The trial also dealt with offences involving weapons, explosives and fraud, showing that the machinery required accounts and supplies as well as gunmen. Its violence was sustained through practical arrangements made by people holding public appointments, and through the misuse of resources entrusted to the police.

Arrested in May 1994, as South Africa entered majority rule, de Kock has been prosecuted during the country's difficult passage from negotiated political settlement to public examination of the past. His defence and testimony have repeatedly directed attention beyond Vlakplaas to the wider security establishment. The distinction is important: a finding of guilt against a commander does not establish criminal guilt against every superior whom he names. Nor, however, does the punishment of one officer settle whether encouragement, knowledge or orders extended farther upwards. Today's judgment determines de Kock's punishment; it cannot by itself provide a complete account of the state's secret war.

That larger inquiry is also proceeding through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The commission began public hearings this year and has heard accounts of suffering that were suppressed or disputed under the former government. Its task differs from that of the court. It is charged with establishing a fuller record of gross human-rights violations and providing a forum for victims, while a separate amnesty process considers applications by perpetrators. The criminal proceedings against de Kock demonstrate that this search for truth does not mean the courts have ceased to operate or that the transition has granted automatic immunity.

The governing legislation makes amnesty conditional, not general. It requires “full disclosure of all relevant facts” and concerns acts “associated with a political objective” within its prescribed framework. Those words are of immediate consequence to former security policemen and others who must decide whether to disclose their conduct. Political purpose alone is not a blanket acquittal, and a claim to have served the state does not erase a conviction. Whether particular offences qualify for amnesty must be determined through that statutory process. Today's sentence supplies no exemption from its requirements and no assurance about the outcome of any application.

The political force of the judgment lies partly in the contrast between the authority de Kock once exercised and the authority to which he is now answerable. Under apartheid, the security apparatus claimed exceptional powers in the name of defending the country against revolution. Under the present constitutional order, a senior representative of that apparatus has been tried and sentenced publicly. President Nelson Mandela's declaration at his inauguration in 1994 remains the Government's stated point of departure: “Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.” Giving that undertaking institutional substance requires more than a change of ministers.

For those whose relatives disappeared or were killed, a prison sentence supplies a form of recognition which political negotiation alone cannot offer. Yet punishment and explanation are not interchangeable. A family may learn that an officer has been convicted without obtaining every detail of a victim's final hours, the disposal of a body or the identity of everyone who authorised an operation. The commission's hearings and the criminal courts consequently address overlapping but distinct needs. The central political question is not simply whether South Africa will punish or forgive. It is how punishment, disclosure and the rebuilding of lawful institutions can proceed without one being used to defeat the others.

De Kock's immediate future is governed by the severe prison terms pronounced today. Beyond the courtroom, the reckoning remains unfinished. Further disclosures may test accounts already given by former policemen and political leaders, while the amnesty machinery must decide individual cases according to law. The danger for the new order would be to treat this one man as a sufficient explanation for an organisation that required colleagues, resources and protection. The achievement of today's proceedings is narrower but substantial: acts committed behind the shield of police power have been identified as crimes, and their perpetrator has been subjected to the judgment of a public court.