The former minister of law and order notably oversaw the brutal repression of opponents of white power, as well as bombings of churches and trade unions to “inspire fear”.
Adriaan Vlok, feared apartheid South Africa’s public order minister and one of the few senior racist regime officials to face prosecution, died on Sunday aged 85 in a hospital near Pretoria .
The former Minister of Law and Public Order (1986-1991), who oversaw a brutal police crackdown on opponents of white power, “died early this (Sunday) morning at Unitas Hospital in Centurion, after a short illness“, said a spokesperson for the family in a press release.
“I thought apartheid was right”
At the end of the 1980s, Adriaan Vlok notably supervised bombings against churches and trade unions. “I thought apartheid was right“, he told AFP during a meeting in 2015. “It was our job to instill fear in people“.
Having become an old man with a bald head gnawed by remorse, he then distributed pies, sandwiches and cakes to the underprivileged population of a township, an example of these creations of apartheid installed on the outskirts of large cities to separate the population black.
In 2007, Adriaan Vlok received a ten-year suspended prison sentence for the attempted murder of a notorious opponent.
Poison in underwear
He had tried to poison, 18 years earlier, the Reverend Frank Chikane then at the head of a leading organization in the fight against apartheid, by distilling poison in the latter’s underwear.
“I’m ashamed of a lot of things I’ve done“, he said at his sentencing, admitting that his commitment to the segregationist regime was “a mistake“.
The former minister publicly asked for forgiveness from his victims, going so far as to wash Reverend Chikane’s feet. An attempt to seek redemption or, for its critics, a crude tactic to avoid revealing the extent of police abuse.
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To shed light on the abuses of the regime, the government of Nelson Mandela, which emerged from the first multiracial elections in 1994, set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), guaranteeing amnesty to those responsible for political violence in exchange for full confessions. .
But they are few to have lent themselves to the exercise. A tiny proportion of cases have gone to trial and many voices criticize a “unfinished businessto heal the wounds of apartheid.
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