TRC Final Report

Volume 5

Chapter 7

Subsection 5

Lack of discipline/restraint: “Us and them”

40 A lack of discipline exercised by the state over its security officials, and by other parties over their activists, could clearly have contributed to the escalating spiral of violence. The Commission specifically questioned the leading parties in the conflict regarding their tolerance for violent acts among their own members, and efforts they made to discipline transgressors. Psychological factors appear to have played a role in the general pattern, on all sides, of condoning lack of restraint in their own members, and the relative absence of tough discipline regarding violent offenders. The UDF submission, in an honest attempt to get to grips with what they admitted was a “dilemma”, put the case most clearly:

The way we approached this question is like a father, like parents would approach, let’s say, an aberrant child: that child is part of your family, these were people who were oppressed people, part of this history. Now if a child misbehaves and hopefully [the parent] disciplines that child and shouts at the child and does what is possible within the limits of the family … alright, but they don’t disown these people. For us to disown these people would mean that we don’t understand the history of these people [who] tended to do these sort of things.

So they were undisciplined in some instances. When they did that they were not acting within the UDF policy – but we own them, they are part of us, and they are part of our history and we accept them as part of our family.

41 The dilemma posed for the UDF, and similarly for other organisations, is highlighted in the response to a question about the ‘young lions’. The UDF expressed pride in the efforts of this generation:

In general, the generations of young people from 1976 onwards have been … should be amongst the most admired citizens of this country. They laid down life and limb to wage the struggle … Generally the young lions were doing a wonderful piece of work.

42 Although various efforts were made to impose restraint and discipline in all parties concerned (for example, the ANC and MK developed codes of conduct, and attempted to discipline conduct through political education), evidence before the Commission showed that all parties fell short, in some respects, in imposing restraints and discipline on their own members, followers and supporters. The dilemma, as clearly indicated in the UDF quote above, is that harsh discipline imposed on “our own” (even where it was feasible to track down transgressors) would have risked alienating their own supporters.

43 This phenomenon is exacerbated in a highly conflictual war-like situation. Militaristic authorities were clearly at times covertly proud of the violent actions of ‘their own’.

44 Sometimes, this pride was not even covert. Colonel Eugene de Kock was awarded numerous medals for his actions. It is claimed that the former Minister of Law and Order, Mr Adriaan Vlok, attended a party with Vlakplaas operatives after they had blown up Khotso House.