Easter, Fujimori, Vlok and Van der Merwe

A bench of three Peruvian judges has convicted former president of Peru, Alberto Fujimori, of gross human rights violations. These were torture, kidnapping and enforced disappearances committed during the early 1990s. The Special Criminal Division of Peru’s Supreme Court concluded that Fujimori as president bore individual criminal responsibility in all three cases because he had effective military command over those who committed the crimes.

In South Africa, we have a string of apartheid security force ministers and army generals who had effective military and police command over those who committed similar crimes against humanity including, in addition, extrajudicial killings; cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment; and prolonged unlawful detention. The last of those in office were minister Adriaan Vlok and General Johan van der Merwe. They too would surely meet the criteria used in Peru for individual criminal responsibility for crimes of apartheid.

Vlok and van der Merwe did not apply for amnesty at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). However, they have applied for presidential pardons for the only criminal offence they were convicted of — poisoning Reverend Frank Chikane’s underwear. As a result of a plea bargain to which Chikane as the victim agreed, they entered a guilty plea and suspended sentences were given. Now they want their criminal records expunged. And it seems the political reference group has recommended to the president that these criminals be pardoned. We do not know if Reverend Chikane was again consulted or whether as the victim, he agreed.

We do know that other victims of those the reference group has recommended have not been consulted. For instance, the widow of sociologist David Webster who was assassinated by Ferdi Barnard. Perhaps South Africa as a whole is a victim here and should have a say. Perhaps Webster could have played a major role in assisting the post-apartheid government to prioritise poverty alleviation fifteen years ago. Perhaps Webster would have become a leading international academic of whom we would all be proud. Is South Africa willing to have the criminal record of his murderer expunged?

Somehow South Africans have not been outraged enough to take Vlok and Van der Merwe and others who had effective military command over those who committed crimes of humanity to court. Did the TRC numb our desire to pursue justice? Were the gruesome testimonies of those who directly suffered torture, rape, prolonged detention and cruel, degrading treatment too much for our delicate “but I didn’t know” consciences to bear? And too much also for those who “I lived those stories, they are my stories” to contemplate resuscitating? Have those stories become but a dim and distant, but never to be eradicated gene in the DNA of our collective consciousness?

Those who directly experienced the atrocities carried out by the security forces, who exposed their pain and grief at the TRC, still await some semblance of the “rehabilitation” recommended in the TRC final report. And there are tens of thousands who did not testify at the TRC. Many of the individuals who testified as well as those who didn’t, are members of the Khulumani Support Group.

Perhaps it is time the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) laid criminal charges agains Vlok, Van der Merwe, and others who were not granted amnesty. Perhaps it is time the people who still live with the consequences of Vlok and Van der Merwe’s respective individual criminal responsibility laid criminal charges too.

At the same time it would be necessary to start lancing the hidden abscesses of crimes against humanity committed in secret by the liberation forces. Extrajudicial killings; rape; torture; cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment were not the sole prerogative of the oppressors. Rumours abound of orders to kill those suspected of being double agents. Rape as a means of subjugating women within the liberation movements was allegedly not uncommon. Is it the fear of these secret crimes coming to light, those responsible being prosecuted, and the muddying of parties’ heroism-mythologies, that has allowed the pursuit of justice for the more overt human rights crimes of the apartheid criminals to be quietly smothered?

What about the string of apartheid state presidents and prime ministers who presided over similar crimes of humanity? Can one charge and find a person guilty posthumously? History certainly has and continues to do so.

Easter is traditionally a time of resurrection. An anomalous celebration of spring when in the southern hemisphere we enter the autumn months. Why should we not look our collective histories in the face once again, and perhaps allow the rainbow to die in the hope that through a thorough, albeit painful purging, and subsequent implementation of restorative justice, we would somehow reach our own spring-time cleansed and renewed? Perhaps only then could the true magnificence of a reborn South Africa be realised.