STORY | "Adrian Vlok did not have a road to Damascus moment"

In his 1942 book, The Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis says that the greatest evil is "conceived and ordered in clean, carpeted, warmed and well lighted offices by quiet men with collars and cut fingernails and smooth shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices".

The death of Adriaan Vlok last week left a predictably divisive legacy and a series of unanswered questions for the families of those who were killed by apartheid soldiers during his tenure as Minister of Law and Order. As Minister, Vlok presided over some of the most tumultuous and repressive years of the dying regime.

His tenure presided over the murderering of the Cradock Four, the poisoning of Rev Frank Chikane and the bombings of Cosatu House in 1987 and Khotso House in 1989. He also approved a series of bombs in cinemas showing the film Cry Freedom in 1989. 

A man full of lies: Vlog refused to ever acknowledge that he had known what was going on in places such as Vlakplaas although the unit's commander, Eugene de Kock, testified that Vlok had visited the farm to congratulate him on the bombing of Khotso House. Vlog denied this. He also denied there had ever been a state sanctioned third force operation to destabilise KwaZulu-Natal, but he chaired a committee that was formed in 1985 to investigate such a strategy.

The closest Vlok has ever approached to coming clean was in an interview two years ago for an Al Jazeera documentary about the Cradock Four. Pressed by journalist Hamilton Wende about the call for "permanent removal from society" of Goniwe and Calata, Vlog said: 

"You know, we in the security council, we were very careful not to tell, not to say and to make a note and have it in the minutes to kill anybody. So we would say, 'Uh, remove a person from society, remove him.' And you know, nobody ever said 'killing'. But we thought probably it was meant if you can't solve the problem by removing the guy, then you could kill him."

Vlog grew up wanting to be a lawyer but couldn't afford law school. He worked his way up the administrative rungs of the apartheid bureaucracy to a position of immense power through his commitment to the cause and a cunning use of sematics of the king he continued to exhibit at the TRC and later in his public act of washing the feet of Rev Frank Chikane and other victims.

Chikane and others whose feet Vlok washed may have welcomed his acts as genuine evidence of contrition, but for some, such as Lukhanyo Calata, son of murdered Cradock Four Activist Fort Calata, Vlok's foot-washing was unconvincing. "That incident of washing Frank Chikane's feet was in his best interests," says Calata. "Why did Vlog not go to Cradock and wash my mother's feet? Why did he not go to Cradock and wash Mrs Goniwe or Mrs Nkomo or Mrs Mahlauli's feet?" Calata says, referring to the mothers of the other Cradock victims.

"We know better to believe that Vlog had a road to Damascus moment. He was a criminal who committed crimes against people's humanity, that's who he was." In Court papers submitted by the families of the Cradock Four last year, the families wants to compel the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to make a final decision on the prosecution of those responsible for the murders. Former president FW de Klerk and Vlog are both included as respondents.

Like De Klerk and Van de Merwe who died before him, Andrian Vlok goes to his grave leaving many unanswered questions for the families of the victims of the apartheid atrocities. Vlok told Journalist Eve Flairbanks of The New Republic megazine: "After i die, yes, yes, the Lord will sit in judgement.. but Jesus will be there next to me. If anyone accuses me, he will say 'but i have already paid the price'."

---------------------------- Reference
Tymon Smith "Blood That Never Washes Off" Sunday Times Jan 2023

Photo Illustration by Pilgrym; Paballo Thekiso/AFP/Getty Images; Getty Images