Former apartheid enforcer still faces skepticism after public repentance

The name Adriaan Vlok still haunts many non-white families in South Africa.

Vlok was the nation’s minister of law and order from 1986 to 1991. Part chief of police, part racial gestapo, his job was to put down any resistance to the strict segregation laws of apartheid.

In 1990, South Africa was under a state of emergency. Vlok was prepared to do whatever it took to maintain order. Under his leadership, the apartheid government and police were often ruthlessly violent themselves, authorizing bombings, torture, imprisonment, and assassinations of anti-apartheid leaders.

“At that time we called them terrorists, and they were fighting and coming for us,” Vlok said.

Apartheid ended in 1994. A year later, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission began investigating human rights violations under the previous regime. And in 1997, Vlok testified about his role in violent acts committed by his office.

During that time, Vlok began to feel the conviction of another judge. He said Jesus compelled him to admit his guilt and seek forgiveness from those he hurt.

“I have hurt people, and there are many people who are angry with me,” he said. “If I want to try and make things right, I must go to them. I must go public, and this is what I did. I must go public and say I’m sorry … please forgive me.”

Vlok was the sole South African cabinet minister to admit he committed crimes. He was eventually granted amnesty, but in 2006, he came forward with additional information about his actions during apartheid. The High Court in Pretoria handed him a suspended 10-year sentence for his role in the plot to kill Frank Chikane, an influential resistance leader and pastor.

In the late summer of 2006, Vlok went to Chikane’s office with a basin and towel in hand. He asked if he could to wash Chikane’s feet.

“It was the ultimate humiliation for me, a white minister, in cabinet, the white cabinet, the national party cabinet, to stand on my knees in front of a black person,” Vlok said. “But that changed my whole outlook. Since that day, color doesn’t matter because he is a creation of God, and I am a creation of God. Who am I now to think I am better than he?”

Today, the 77-year-old grandfather drives his pickup truck twice a week into a black township outside South Africa’s capital of Pretoria and delivers food to the poor. He also shares his house with a young black entrepreneur, a homeless family, and an ex-convict.

Still, not everyone is willing to forgive Vlok or to recognize the genuineness of his changed life. Just last week, Puppet Nation, a South African satirical puppet show, mocked him.

Over the years, Vlok has urged his former government colleagues to come forward and apologize for their actions. So far he remains South Africa’s only apartheid-era minister to ask his victims for forgiveness.

Listen to Paul Butler’s profile of Adriaan Vlok on The World and Everything in It.