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SAFRICA-APOLOGY Aug-29-2006 (600 words) xxxi
South African bishop: Official's apology for apartheid is not enough
By Bronwen Dachs
Catholic News Service
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) -- While a South African apartheid-era police minister must be commended for his courage and humility in apologizing to the former general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, the apology needs to include some form of restitution, said Bishop Kevin Dowling of Rustenburg, South Africa.
The former police minister, Adriaan Vlok, 68, visited the Rev. Frank Chikane, a former anti-apartheid activist and current director-general in the South African Presidency, a government ministry formed for the president's special focus areas. At the ministry's Pretoria offices in late August, Vlok washed Rev. Chikane's feet in an act of contrition for the atrocities committed by apartheid police under his command.
"It was a gesture of repentance and of seeking reconciliation, but it must go wider," Bishop Dowling, vice chairman of the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference justice and peace department, said in an Aug. 28 telephone interview from Rustenburg.
Vlok, as police minister during the height of apartheid in the 1980s, "was responsible for atrocities committed against many others besides (Rev.) Chikane, and if he truly is committed to being forgiven he should seek to make some form of restitution," Bishop Dowling said.
At an Aug. 26 news conference at his Soweto home, Rev. Chikane said Vlok's gesture was genuine and that Vlok had asked for forgiveness and said he wanted to reconcile with God.
In 1999, Vlok was granted amnesty by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the 1988 bombing of Khotso House, the Johannesburg headquarters of the South African Council of Churches. The blast injured 21 people.
Vlok, who was the only Cabinet minister of the apartheid era to apply for amnesty, told the commission in 1998 that he took "full political and moral responsibility" for the bombing. He admitted that he had conducted a smear campaign against activist Shirley Gunn of the African National Congress, then a liberation movement. He had alleged Gunn was the bomber of the church council building.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed by Nobel Peace laureate and retired South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was set up in 1996 to probe human rights abuses under apartheid.
Gunn "suffered appalling psychological torture that he (Vlok) was responsible for," Bishop Dowling said, noting that Gunn and her 16-month-old son spent more than two months in prison after Vlok's false accusations. The truth commission heard that during Gunn's imprisonment police took her son away from her and used tapes of him crying to torture her.
Gunn is among victims owed a personal apology from Vlok, Bishop Dowling said.
"Vlok could discuss with her what gesture of restitution would be a worthwhile symbol of healing," he said.
The South African Council of Churches, of which the bishops' conference is a member, welcomed Vlok's apology but said that he and his former colleagues still owe South Africans a full confession.
"Many high-ranking members of the former government failed to participate unreservedly in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process. As a result, we are left with many unanswered questions concerning responsibility for gross human rights violations during the apartheid years," the council said in an Aug. 28 statement.
It urged Vlok and "others with knowledge of these crimes to demonstrate their repentance by identifying those responsible and offering both a public apology and personal apologies to the victims."
Rev. Chikane is still seeking justice for a 1989 poisoning that nearly killed him. Apartheid police agents are suspected of placing an organophosphate, such as that found in the insecticide malathion, on his clothing.
END
Copyright (c) 2006 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
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