2 - He Must Not Circulate: Eugene de Kock's Blood Relations and his Prison Visitors

Summary

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission's promise to uncover the truth about life under apartheid provided us with a template through which to understand the South African present. The TRC's findings are archived in recordings and transcripts, and the Commission has been debated in scholarly literature and in the media, and interpreted, transformed and adapted on screen and on stage, as well as in literature. The reckoning with the past brought many secrets to light, although as Jacob Dlamini argues in Askari, and as Brian Rappert and Chandré Gould show in The Dis-Eases of Secrecy, the many secrets that were not told structure the present still, and run like veins under the skin of the current order. Eugene de Kock's testimony to the TRC has been the subject of much discussion, newly reactivated after his release from prison after having served only twenty years of what was meant to be a prison term of 212 years plus two life sentences.

Since his release, de Kock has appeared, incongruously, at two literary events, in both cases attending with his biographer Anemari Jansen. He was asked to leave the Sunday Times literary awards shortlist function (Malecowna 2016), as his presence offended many of those attending the event. He was also photographed, thinly disguised as an ordinary civilian, with Jansen at the Franschhoek Literary Festival (Gqirina 2016). He remains recognisable despite the fact that he no longer wears the distinctive thick-lensed glasses so familiar from his photographs, and that his build is much heavier. To see him drinking a glass of Porcupine Ridge wine at a public event, celebrating a book about himself, has angered many South Africans.

Even before his release he had been photographed outside prison, and his name appeared from time to time in sensational newspaper articles, reporting on the help and advice he has given to forensic teams looking for the physical remains of people killed by apartheid special forces. His complex role as special advisor came about because of his intimate knowledge of the violence (the word journalists often like to use is ‘encyclopaedic’, as if praising de Kock for remembering so much); this tainted knowledge is used to locate and return the remains to families who have been unable to bury their dead.