'Vlok deal undid what the TRC tried to do'

Published Oct 18, 2007

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Former Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) deputy head Alex Boraine has denounced the plea-bargain deal that kept apartheid police minister Adriaan Vlok from jail as having undone everything the TRC had tried to do.

He spoke last night at the Centre for the Book at a panel discussion on Dilemmas of Prosecuting Apartheid Perpetrators hosted by the Centre for Conflict Resolution. Fellow commissioner Mary Burton also spoke.

Vlok, ex-police chief Johan van der Merwe, former major-general Christoffel Smith and former colonels Gert Otto and Johannes van Staden pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of Frank Chikane in 1989.

All four received 10-year suspended sentences.

"We now need to explore ways in which the process can be legitimate, because the fact that Vlok and Van der Merwe can escape with suspended sentences is not fair."

He said the Department of Justice had delayed in acting on recommendations made to it by the TRC on possible prosecutions of those who had not applied for amnesty.

"Van der Merwe lied when he appeared before the TRC when he denied there was list of names (of anti-apartheid activists to be killed), because he later admitted in his trial with Vlok to the existence of the list," said Boraine.

He said the "conciliatory" gesture by Vlok in which he washed the feet of Chikane had not been genuine.

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