South African apartheid rule enforcer has died aged 85. Mr Adriaan Vlok died in a hospital in Pretoria after a short illness.
Vlok is known in South African corridors of power as one of the perpetrators of the segregative arpethied regime that tore the southern African Republic into two, along social and racial classes. Arpethied rule was enforced in South Africa by the white minority for 45 years before Nelson Mandela, being the first black president of South Africa, came into power with African National Congress (ANC) in 1994.
During the period, many locals were mistreated by the white supremacists – and Mr Adriaan Vlok, a notorious Minister of Law and Order at that time, played a very key role in ensuring that locals were properly mistreated. Mr Adriaan Vlok, an apartheid rule enforcer, was brutal to the extent that many South Africans were kidnapped, tortured and decapitated for any slightest of provocation.
However, the arpethied rule enforcer would later on ‘gain’ his senses, and would go ahead to show and demonstrate contrition. When arpethied ended in 1994, Vlok is said to have shown a lot of remorsefulness for the atrocities that he committed – and was later on given amnesty. He also washed a prominent anti-apartheid cleric, Rev Frank Chikane’s, feet in 2006 in a gesture of contrition.
His critics saw the washing of Reverend’s feet as a stunt to gain sympathy by the arpethied rule enforcer, and to avoid making a full disclosure of all the crimes committed by the apartheid regime. “I feel ashamed of many things I have done,” he said at his sentencing.
Adriaan Vlok was a Minister of Law and Order from 1986 to 1991, during the time when the discriminative rule was at its peek in South Africa.
