Terry Bell: A REASON FOR SADNESS AT THE DEATH OF FW DE KLERK
NB: History has always been a battleground, for as Orwell’s Big Brother reminds us: 'Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past' (1984). The search for the truth about the past is as difficult as it is inevitable. DS
Had justice and the rule of law prevailed in South Africa in 1993, Frederick Willem de Klerk, the last apartheid president, would have been in jail and not flying to Oslo to be jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela. He, alongside a number of other ministerial securocrats, would have faced charges of mass. murder. But 1993 was a time of compromises, of mutual back-scratching and the launch of the era of rainbow nation myths.
Such myths are starting to wear thin, but continue to be promoted,
under-standably by remnants of the old regime and, sadly, by senior figures in
government and the ANC. The prime myth in this regard is that FW de Klerk
was the individual responsible for bringing about the end of apartheid;
that he was somehow deserving of the joint 1993 Nobel Peace Prize
award with Nelson Mandela.
That is the core of the fantasy. For De Klerk was an apartheid hardliner,
chosen by the real powers behind the scenes because he was also seen as an
opportunist who would not turn down the chance to be president. Although
it is still unclear, it seems that the real manipulators and motivators were
the late Professor Pieter de Lange, chair of the secretive Afrikaner
Broederbond and his lieutenant and chief of the National Intelligence Service,
Daniel - “Niel” - Barnard. They were supported by the likes of defence
minister Kobie Coetzee.
But Kobie Coetzee appeared alongside De Klerk and others in an indictment
for murder filed with the Transkei High Court in October 1993, only weeks
before the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize award. The charge
related to the massacre of five school students while asleep in. the front room
of a home in Mthatha’s North Crest suburb. But this was in the Transkei,
ignored by most media as some sort of apartheid backwater where few journalists
ventured.
The killings were announced by De Klerk as an attack on a “terrorist base” in
an apparent attempt to placate a restive “white right” by showing
kragdaadigheid (power in action) by his administration. De Klerk appeared
on television, complete with gory Polaroid pictures, to claim that an “Apla
base” had been destroyed. But this “Apla base” turned out to comprise
Samora and Sadat, the 16-year-old twins of local butcher Sigqipo Mpendulo, and
their friends, Thanda Mthembu, 17, and Mzwandile Mfeya and Sandiso Yose, both
12 years old.
As an independent investigation by the national directorate of the Lawyers for
Human Rights noted: “[That] there exists a prima facie case of murder
arising from this incident is without question.” Mandela, when he
heard of the incident, referred to it as “an act of thuggery” That
was a week before the announcement that he and De Klerk would jointly be
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. None-the-less, a week later, Mandela
stated on a television talk show: “For a president to authorise the
killing of children is a blatant act of terrorism.”
This comment was understandable since Mandela was aware at the time that De
Klerk had been for years been a member of the State Security Council (SSC) that
had sat at the head of as vicious regime of murder and mayhem in the apartheid
cause. He referred to De Klerk as “a man with blood on his hands”.
But such comments tended to be drowned out as politicians and media around the
world hailed what was seen as a unique and peaceful breakthrough.
At the time, I was perhaps the only journalist who visited and maintained
contact with the Transkei. So I wrote about the murder charges lodged in
the Transkei High Court and submitted the reports to local and overseas
media. None agreed to publish. As the then BBC correspondent,
Feargal Keane remarked when I complained: “Who wants to bugger up a
fairytale?”
And a fairytale it was, although it was anything but peaceful for ordinary citizens
on the ground. But the process continued and the rainbow myth was
promoted. Along with it came the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
(TRC) a process by which the horrendous truths of the apartheid past were
supposed to be exposed and reconciliation sought through amnesty and, where
necessary, prosecutions.
Perhaps, as TRC investigations head, Dumisa Ntsebeza was later to admit, “The
TRC was the best we could have hoped for.” But it did not expose
even a fraction of the truth, and served very little in terms of justice.
Even the prosecutions recommended by the process were ignored: boastful and
swaggering killers publicly dismissed the TRC with the wave of a hand.
However, some families kept fighting, seeking justice. The Timol and the
Calata families and the relatives of Neil Agget are examples.. They want
to know the truth of what happened in those terrible years of officially
sanctioned murder and repression. And they do not celebrate the death of
FW de Klerk; they mourn his passing because his death closes one more
access to the truth of a hurtful and horrific chapter in. the history of South
Africa.
Blog: terrybellwrites.com
