When the humanity of brutal perpetrators becomes the story

The recent Khampepe Commission of Inquiry into alleged interference in the investigation and prosecution of apartheid-era crimes has reopened what has often been described as the repository of our transition, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).The inquiry has once again revived questions of accountability, healing and reparation for victims and survivors of the gross human rights violations committed during apartheid.In the midst of these efforts, however, journalistic reporting has also emerged that holds the potential for the whitewashing of memory, the flattening of historical atrocities and the displacement of the harm caused by these violations, and risks retraumatising both the direct and indirect victims of the apartheid regime.Established by President Cyril Ramaphosa on 29 May 2025, the Khampepe Commission is mandated to investigate matters relating to the alleged interference in, and halting of, investigations and prosecutions arising from the TRC process.Over the past months, the commission has issued summonses to figures including former presidents Jacob Zuma and Thabo Mbeki to account for allegations of “backdoor” amnesties granted to apartheid-era perpetrators. It is alleged that the former presidents were involved in arrangements for shadow amnesties that bypassed the formal amnesty process established by the TRC.Eugene de KockThis renewed search for truth has also brought apartheid-era perpetrators, including former Vlakplaas commander Eugene de Kock, back into the spotlight.Vlakplaas was a state-sponsored counterinsurgency unit and operational base associated with the apartheid government’s Security Branch. The unit was involved in enforced disappearances, assassinations and the torture and forced conversion of anti-apartheid activists into “askaris”, who were made to work against the liberation movement. Its operations extended beyond South Africa’s borders, reaching countries such as Swaziland (now Eswatini), Botswana and Mozambique.The unit has been directly linked to the murder of anti-apartheid activist Griffiths Mxenge, as well as the murder and torture of Swaziland-based MK operative, Jameson Ngoloyi Mngomezulu. Behind the direct victims of such violations are many families who continue to live with the consequences of injustice.Marianne Thamm’s account of De KockOver the past year, I have been sporadically catching up on developments surrounding the commission. On 28 October 2026, I encountered an article by Marianne Thamm in Daily Maverick, titled, Apartheid’s scapegoat — the jarring paradox of mass killer Eugene de Kock. I had followed some of Thamm’s editorials on the commission, but this article left me unsettled.While Thamm points to questions about forgiveness and atonement, the article, in my reading, also showed how thin the line is between that quest and losing sight of the victims and survivors of the atrocities committed under De Kock’s command.Thamm explored publicly documented accounts, including De Kock’s confession, conviction, and time served before his release on parole. While his acknowledgement of some of his crimes and his subsequent efforts to assist families in recovering the remains of their loved ones speak to aspects of the TRC’s restorative ambitions, the article raises the question of what happens when our writing, particularly in the media as an important site of memory, becomes preoccupied with recovering a perpetrator’s humanity.Victims’ ordeals risk being eclipsedI believe that this particular fixation, especially at a time when apartheid victim families (including families of the Cradock Four) remain in a quest for justice, risks displacing the experiences of those whose lives were irreversibly altered by the actions of former commanders such as De Kock.It further poses a danger of undoing the affirmation and validation of their experiences, something that hearings such as the TRC had provided for victims and survivors, especially those who have not gathered the capacity to forgive perpetrators of apartheid atrocities.Thamm writes that De Kock “did not emerge fully formed into the world” and was “shaped by the ideologies and violent forces that surrounded him, participating first as a soldier, then as the state’s assassin and commander of death squads”.The framing of De Kock is passive, and demonstrates the disproportionate weight of De Kock’s actions against the harm caused by these atrocities under his command. When we reduce a perpetrator’s actions to the systems in which they operated, and foreground those systems at the expense of individual agency and choice in their ideological commitments, we flatten the documentation and the lived experience of many who are still left reeling from the atrocities of the past.A choice was made; violence followedThis further downplays the power that people within systems such as the apartheid regime exercised. Therefore, de Kock’s actions cannot be understood exclusively through the apartheid system that enabled him; they must also be examined through the choices he made and the violence he actively participated in.It is therefore important for journalists reporting on such cases to consider the implications that the glorification or disproportionate humanisation of apartheid-era perpetrators may have for victims, survivors and their families.These proceedings should serve as a reminder of the many ways in which individuals and families were left bereft of something precious as a result of apartheid’s atrocities. They should also prompt greater consideration of those who continue to live with the consequences of the violence.As we engage with the Khampepe Commission, we must remain mindful of the people whose experiences and pursuit of justice have brought us back to these unresolved histories.The media remains an important site of memory in post-apartheid South Africa. Its role in documenting this country’s history also carries a responsibility to preserve the complexity of that history, particularly where the consequences of violence remain unresolved.As we reopen this repository of an ugly, deeply contested and unsettling past, we must also consider the ethics of how we narrate perpetrators of apartheid violence, particularly when those narratives risk displacing the experiences of those who survived and those who did not. DM