‘Apartheid ghosts still haunt me,’ says former NP negotiator

Apartheid ghosts will not let me be in peace. I wrote about them in “Encountering Apartheid’s Ghosts – from Krugersdorp to Constitution Hill’ (2020).

I look at the pictures of a frail and bewildered Joao Rodriques at the Timol inquest (he is accused of murdering Ahmed Timol) and ask myself if I can renounce him. I was a student in 1971 – I wasn’t there. However I believed and propagated the official explanation at the time. That makes me part of this chain of events.

I have met with different families who battle to find closure for deaths of loved ones during the years of struggle. I try to understand their pain and their quest. I have also spoken with some of Rodriques’ former colleagues. I try to understand their quandary. I look at pictures of FW de Klerk appearing before the TRC and me sitting next to him and other pictures of me still doing the rounds – that makes me one of the faces of the old order.

It is difficult (if not impossible) to find anybody who supported the National Party. Some now parade as undercover change agents, afraid to rise above the parapet.

It is disappointing that Rodriques and some of his colleagues didn’t play their part during the TRC proceedings by applying for amnesty – they now face criminal prosecutions. However, I wish they could be helped to grow old gracefully. It is embarrassing that the aggrieved families never found closure. I don’t quarrel with anyone seeking to know what happened.

I quarrel with the politicians – then and know. They (we) left the policemen on their own in no man’s land. The politicians (old an new) failed the aggrieved families – the old were never involved; the new (it would seem) didn’t care.

These old ghosts now and again come out and mock me.

A member of the security forces wrote an anonymous letter to a newspaper claiming that I, as chairperson of the Joint Management System (JMS), knew much more than what I were prepared to admit. This rumour mongering brought me up from my haunches.

I answered this anonymous correspondent in the same newspaper. All the decisions I was a part of will stand the test of daylight – not necessarily the test of constitutionality as embodied in the Constitution. Should any government official be on the receiving end of justice due to a decision taken by the JMS during my tenure, I will accept joint responsibility for it and that official can rely on my full co operation and support.

There has been dead silence ever since. Nobody has ever asked for my support or implicated me in any misconduct. I did not apply for amnesty because there was never anything, judicially speaking, I should have applied for.

Public accountability, however, obliged me to talk about the misdeeds of that era and explain them to the TRC. This was an intellectual and emotional challenge. It was, however, an exercise that I would not have missed for anything. It was my historic duty to be there and explain what had informed our decisions.

It was also nerve wracking: the one moment you had power, and the next moment you had to explain in public what you did with that power. When I had power, there were people around me – generals, senior cabinet colleagues, lawyers and, very importantly, government resources. When the moment arrived to give account, I was alone.

What did you know? What did you not know? What should you have known? What will the TRC throw at you? I was concerned, not about anything I did, but about the things I knew nothing about, but should possibly have known about.

I fretted: What will my children think? How will they experience of all of this? Will my conduct be of such a nature that they will be humiliated? Will the circumstances force them to ask: “Is this my father?” Is that what had kept him busy when he was absent from home? How is it possible that he did not know?

It is clear: all the “I’s” were not dotted and all the “T’s” were not crossed during the TRC proceedings and the aftermath.

Dialogue cannot cure all ills of the TRC, but it will certainly move matters forward. The one lesson I learned from the TRC proceedings – as well as Afrikaner history, specifically the hurt of the Anglo-Boer war – is that victims will never forget and perpetrators will do their best to forget.

Leon Wessels is former National Party negotiator, former Deputy Chair of the Constitutional Assembly and Human Rights Commissioner and author of “Encountering Apartheid’s Ghosts – from Krugersdorp to Constitution Hill”.