Friday, South Africa’s Minister of Justice, Michael Masutha, announced that Eugene de Kock, head of the Vlakplass secret police under apartheid, was to be released on parole. See here for a thoughtful reflection on the decision by Fr. Russell Pollitt, S.J., in America. Known as “Prime Evil” for his ordering of more than 100 instance of murder, torture and fraud, de Kock was released after serving some 20 years in jail, this being only a small portion of the 212 years to which he had been sentenced.
Sandra Mama, the widow of one of de Kock’s victims, responded with . . . a statement of support. Mama and her children had visited de Kock in prison after he had made contact with them . . . and forgave him. As Fr. Pollitt describes, other victims’ family members forgave him, too, in the atmosphere of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Not all forgave de Kock. Pollitt explains that the brother of a human rights lawyer whom de Kock had murdered protested that justice had been denied. Psychologist and Truth and Reconciliation Commission staffer Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, fascinated with and ultimately a vocal proponent of forgiveness, experienced conflicted feelings during the several trips she made to visit de Kock in prison in researching her book, A Human Being Died That Night. She describes becoming empathetic with de Kock’s humanity but then suddenly recoiling, wondering if she was naively being drawn into the web of a wily and malicious spider. By the end of her book, though, she ends up concluding that forgiveness is meaningful and possible, even of the de Kocks of the world.
In my own study of political societies facing past injustices all over the world, I have found few countries where leading perpetrators of atrocious deeds come to repent for these deeds and accept forgiveness. South Africa is an exception. The explanation lies in moral leadership. Reconciliation and forgiveness had informed the anti-apartheid movement for several decades, so that once South Africa had made its transition to multi-party democracy beginning in 1990, leaders like Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and many others were poised to make these themes South Africa’s guideposts for dealing with its past of injustice. Numerous blacks followed in this direction. Behind this leadership, in turn, was the influence of Christian churches and theology. Only this environment and this history can explain how, on Friday, a black Minister of Justice granted parole to the killer of tens of anti-apartheid activists.