In the breakouts

• Divide yourselves into A, B and C.

• C is the Time Keeper.

By yourselves: 10 mins

• Begin with each person reading the extract on the

following pages that is labelled for you – eg A only
reads Extract A. Each person reads their reading on
their own.
• When you have finished reading write down a short
response to this:

o What, if anything, did you learn about forgiveness

from the reading and the videos you watched?
o What, if anything, did you learn about reconciliation
from the reading and the videos you watched?
o What connections can you make to your own
country?

Once all three of you have read your extracts you will
have a discussion sharing your reflections from all or
some of the questions above. You will have the
discussion in the following way:
15 mins

• C keeps time. When C says time is up, whoever is

talking stops talking. Be comfortable with NOT
finishing your sentence J
• A Begins and shares her/his insight for 2 mins. B &
C listen and don’t respond.
• Then B & C discuss what A has shared for 2 mins. A
listens.
• Then A has the last word for 1 min and responds to
what B & C have discussed. B & C listen.
 • Repeat the cycle with B starting. Then repeat with C
starting.

A
Eugene de Kock, called ‘Prime Evil’ by the media was the arch assassin for the
apartheid government and the commanding officer of apartheid’s death squads. He
was sentenced to 212 years in prison for crimes against humanity. Pumla Gobodo-
Madikizela, is a psychologist who served on the TRC’s Human Rights Violations
Committee, visited him in prison and spent many hours interviewing him for her
book, A Human Being Died that Night. In this extract she reflects on de Kock’s views
of black people and her response to him.

“I don’t see you as a black person,” de Kock said when I asked him about the
significance of race for him. He is not a racist, he claims, and justifies this assertion,
as we’ve seen, by pointing out that his father grew up on a farm in the Eastern
Cape and spoke three African languages, and that he, Eugene de Kock, had
worked with blacks all of his life: “All my men were black.” He obviously didn’t
think it significant that all of these relationships were with blacks who were his
subordinates, and not just that but guerrillas who had been captured and turned
to work for the apartheid cause…

“I was one of the very few police, if not the only one, who did not have
xenophobia,” de Kock said. With some probing, he admitted that his relationship
with black former guerrillas did not necessarily qualify as a basis on which to build
normal and equal relationships with blacks. “One was not in a position then to
talk to a person like you. If I met you ten years ago…” He let the sentence trail off,
obviously realising that he had put himself in a difficult position. “Ten years ago”
he was deep in the heart of Vlakplaas, as its commander involved in cross-border
“operations,” executing or supervising murderous actions against blacks like me.

Images from de Kock’s catalogue of unspeakable acts seemed to flood his mind,
stopping him in his tracks as he tried to imagine what our encounter would have
been like had we met ten years earlier. My own imagination was transported to
that time of madness, and I thought about all those people whose paths had
crossed his. Would I have considered meeting de Kock face-to-face ten years
ago? It was hard to know.

It didn’t matter. Watching de Kock struggling with his past was what mattered. It
gave me a sense of hope that he was in some emotional pain about the things
he had done. And the grace-filled gestures of forgiveness I had witnessed from
people who lived with psychological scars as daily reminders of their trauma
gave me even greater hope. In wrestling with my empathy, somehow I found
solace in these gestures of forgiveness by victims. They validated my own feelings
of empathy toward de Kock.

A Human Being Died That Night A story of Forgiveness – Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela,

David Philip, 2003, p 43 – 45
B
In this extract from Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela’s book, A Human Being Died that
Night, de Kock discusses his views of the white people who ‘benefited’ from his
actions and his feelings about him having to take the blame for apartheid atrocities
while those who benefited did not have to acknowledge any responsibly themselves.

Tacitly or openly, most white people supported the regime of terror as something
grim but good. After all, the police were only killing “communists” to protect the
state. It would be hard to believe that it was only when these crimes came to
public light that white people suddenly realised that what had happened under
apartheid was terrible. De Kock and many of the apartheid government’s
operatives have said repeatedly that what kept them going — what sustained
their zeal and conviction in the rightness of crushing the heads of thousands of
black activists — was the tacit but powerful support they felt they were receiving
from the beneficiaries of apartheid privilege — the polite churchgoers, the
cultured suburbanites, the voters. It is at their feet that the responsibility for
apartheid, ultimately, can be laid.

“White society had a good life,” de Kock said, sneering, as if there was something
repulsive about the idea. “They were quite happy with what they got, and now
they are not so happy with who made it happen. I mean, how many whites really
voted against the National Party? Whites say they didn’t know, but did they want
to know? As long as they were now safe and they had their nice houses and their
second cars and their third cars and their swimming pools and kids at good
government schools and university, they had no problem with cross-border raids
and other counterinsurgency operations of the security. Cross-border raids were
so well publicised; why did they never question this?”

De Kock was clearly angry that he had been made a scapegoat — that while he
had been sought after as a master counterinsurgency strategist and treated like
a hero under apartheid, he had become the most despised white person in post-
apartheid South Africa.

A Human Being Died That Night A story of Forgiveness – Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela,

David Philip, 2003, p 110 – 111
C
In this extract from Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela’s book, A Human Being Died that
Night, Gobodo-Madikizela confronts the complexities of her feelings for de Kock as
a perpetrator.

As usual my conversation with de Kock had gone beyond the time I was allowed
to stay at the prison, and two guards came to the door to tell me my time was
up. Usually de Kock was the first to apologise and to get up to leave with one
guard as another waited for me to collect my belongings. But today, as I put my
tape recorder, pens, and notebook in my bag, I noticed that de Kock was still
lingering, as if he had something to say but did not quite know how to say it.
Although I continued to get ready to leave, I was stalling to see how he would
handle his uncertainty. De Kock came over and stood in front of me, arms folded
and shoulders raised in a stiff, tense posture. He first looked away, then looked
back at me, biting his lower lip as if about to admit to something terrible he had
done. A heavy silence hung in the room. “Pumla,” he began. “I’ve been
meaning to ask you this, right from our second interview. Have I ever killed any of
your friends or family?”

The words bounced around the large room like an echo in a cave. I actually
turned and looked around, expecting perhaps to see someone else in the room
other than the guards at the door. Yes, I had heard de Kock’s voice. I was sure
that was what I’d heard… but had I just imagined it? Standing there stunned, in
conversation with a broken man who had been an angel of death, I felt as if I
were in the midst of a collision of scattered meanings within these prison walls
that had enclosed our conversations. De Kock’s words hovered in the room: I was
struggling to understand them before I could take them in.

I looked at de Kock, searching deep within his eyes, reading between the lines
for signs of evil, of malice. His eyes were filled with suffering. I felt nothing but pity,
the kind one feels when a friend is in pain over an event that has deeply troubled
him. I stared at his face again, and for a moment I thought I might touch him —
again? — to offer him some respite from the tortured emotions that seemed to
be coursing through his brain and body. But how? Where could I touch him? The
awkwardness of reaching out to someone, almost six feet tall, who had killed
many of my people, and to do it in front of the black guards, who I doubted had
heard de Kock’s question in the large, echoing room but were still standing at the
door holding it open and watching. What would they think? This black woman
reaching out to him with an embrace? De Kock stood in front of me, his shoulders
bearing the weight of struggling with the memory of his own evil. I felt then that
even if de Kock had killed my loved ones, I would never have been able to tell
him. I would have had to spare him. There was something in his face that I hadn’t
seen before, something utterly despairing. I finally found my voice. I said to him,
“No, Eugene. No one close to me.”

A Human Being Died That Night A story of Forgiveness – Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela,

David Philip, 2003, p 114 – 115