ALI MPHAKI
APARTHEID police hit-squad leader Eugene de Kock is just fine where he is – behind bars.
This is the word from Catherine Mlangeni, the mother of ANC attorney Bheki Mlangeni, who was killed by a parcel bomb in February 1991. The parcel contained a Walkman cassette player with an explosive device in the headphones. She was reacting to reports that the government is considering parole for De Kock.
Speaking from her Jabulani home yesterday, Mlangeni, 80, said De Kock had never shown remorse for his evil deed and that she could consider forgiving him only if he came personally to ask for a pardon from the family.
“As far as I am concerned he must rot in jail,” Mlangeni added.
Relating events on that fateful Friday evening of February 15 when her son was blown to pieces, Mlangeni said that while her son looked worried, he had dressed smartly that morning before leaving for work.
“I heard that he went to his office, did what he had been called for and took the parcel. He then phoned his wife Sepati, and both of them went to watch a movie – Reversal of Fortune– at the Carlton Centre.
When they returned home, they went to their back room. I was very sick that day, and minutes later Sepati rushed in and said ‘Mama, Bheki is in the garage!’,” she said.
“I was surprised, wondering what this garage story was about, and couldn’t hear anything. When I came out of the house, they held me (back) and asked me please not to go into the garage.
“I just skipped through their legs and went in. To my horror of horrors I found my son in pieces, bits of him on the curtains, pieces of him and his brains all over. That was the end of my Bheki.”
Equally shattered was Bheki’s father Koos Mlangeni, who was never the same, especially after he had come face to face with De Kock at his trial in Pretoria.
“It was not easy for my husband to look the killer of his son in the eye, and he died nine years later in 2000 a very bitter man,” she said.
Mlangeni said she went for counselling after the death of her son, but lately, memories of him had come cascading back “in full force”.
“Oh I miss him so much. He was the family’s breadwinner and we are really struggling without him. Even his friends are no longer coming to visit us. It is like everybody had forgotten about him,” she said.
Correctional Services confirmed that De Kock’s parole hearing, which was scheduled for last month, has been postponed indefinitely.
De Kock and another hit squad killer, Ferdi Barnard, are among a number of inmates who were sentenced to life imprisonment before October 1, 2004.
The Pretoria High Court ruled in July last year that anyone sentenced to life before October 1, 2004 must automatically be considered for parole after serving 13 years and four months of their sentence.
Correctional Services spokesman Phumlani Ximiya said the standard procedure for a parole application started with a case management committee compiling a profile on the inmate. The committee would hand over the profile to the parole board and suggest a direction in which the application should go.
The parole board would then make a decision on the inmate’s eligibility based on the profile and factors such as the length of incarceration, and whether the inmate had attended rehabilitation programmes, such as for anger management and self-control.