Do We All Have a Capacity for Evil?

A Human Being Died That Night: Forgiving Apartheid’s Chief Killer

by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela (2003)

Book Review

A Human Being Died That Night explores the political, sociological and psychological influences that lead individuals to engage in torture, assassination and other forms of state terrorism. Psychologist Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela was an adviser to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).* Her book is based on a series of prison interviews she conducted with the ex-commander of the apartheid regime’s death squad Eugene De Kock.

In my view, it’s of special relevance given recent calls to prosecute CIA officers involved in torturing post-911 detainees. At present, it’s fashionable to dismiss all perpetrators of heinous violence as evil psychopaths. The main value of Gobodo-Madikizela’s book is to remind us that we all have the capacity for evil.

De Kock was already in prison serving two life sentences before he made his first appearance in front of the TRC. His role was to testify in the case of five former security police who were applying for amnesty for murdering (on DeKoch’s orders) three black policeman who threatened to expose their involvement in the death of four black activists. Asking to meet with family members of the dead policemen, De Kock appeared to express genuine remorse for ordering their assassination. This gesture – as well as the clear emotional release he experienced afterwards – greatly surprised Gobodo-Madikizela. The psychologist had dismissed him as a sociopath and incapable of remorse.

The Prison Interviews

The purpose of the author’s 1997-2000 prison interviews with de Kock was to gain better understanding of the ways oppressive political systems can numb someone’s conscience to the point they can commit heinous crimes. She concludes the relationship between personal choice and societal pressure is never straightforward in a totalitarian society.

It’s quite clear from his own words that de Kock’s superiors brainwashed him into perceiving African National Congress (ANC) and Pan African Congress (PAC) activists as Communists – as opposed to freedom fighters – who were threatening to plunge South Africa into the chaotic violence Congo, Angola and Mozambique experienced following independence. The apartheid regime also systematically portrayed the battle against liberation activists as a religious war in which God was on the side of the regime. Opting out of their violent role for religious or ethical reasons was impossible. The regime dealt extremely harshly with officers who attempted to do so.

The Role of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)

As Gobodo-Madikizela explains, some restorative process is essential when a civil war ends and victims and perpetrators are forced to live alongside one another. Merely scapegoating and locking up a few “bad apples” does nothing to remediate the psychological trauma victims have incurred, which she blames for the intergenerational cycles of violence that have plagued other African countries.

In her view, the most important benefits of the TRC were forcing perpetrators to see their victims as fully human and allowing victims to experience the rehumanization that occurs when they witness the pain of genuine remorse in the perpetrators who have wronged them. Other positive outcomes include a better understanding of the role the politics of oppression and abuse play in creating monsters who commit crimes against humanity. This recognition forces all participants to confront the not-so-pleasant potential for evil within themselves.

With brutal honesty, Gobodo-Madikizela confesses that her prison interviews forced her to confront her own potential for evil. The book relates an incident in which she stood by while fellow ANC members executed suspected police collaborators with “necklaces” of burning tires and did nothing to stop them.

Moral Exclusion

Gobodo-Madikizela concludes the most important dynamic leading individuals of conscience to commit heinous crimes is “moral exclusion” – a process in which they become convinced the targeted population is less than human. This dynamic is clearly in operation when CIA officers eagerly torture brown-skinned Arabs and when white cops beat the crap out of African Americans.

Scapegoating

The author also describes in details how de Kock was scapegoated in his 1993 trial, conducted by an Afrikaner judge and prosecutor. In several interviews he expresses resentment about being scapegoated – not only by high level officials who gave the orders but by a white middle class who enjoyed a very comfortable lifestyle by repeatedly voting for a political party (the National Party) committed to retaining apartheid.

Gobodo-Madikizela is particularly appalled by the hypocrisy of Nobel Prize winner F.W. de Klerk.** The latter vehemently opposes amnesty for de Koch, despite giving orders for him to “neutralize” the ANC, as well as medals for carrying them out so efficiently.

De Klerk and other high level apartheid leaders have consistently pleaded ignorance to the crimes against humanity committed by their underlings. In this respect, they stand out from three other regimes responsible for mass crimes against humanity: Germany’s Nazi regime, the Pinochet regime in Chile and Milosevic’s regime in the former Yugoslavia. Documentary evidence shows violence (ie torture and assassination) was encouraged and expected by the apartheid regime but never explicitly ordered (not in writing, at least). In the other three cases there was a clear paper trail connecting high level officials with police officers who carried it out.

* The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was a court-like restorative justice body assembled in South Africa after the abolition of apartheid. Victims of gross human rights violations had the opportunity to give testimony about their experiences, and some were selected for public hearings. Perpetrators of violence could also give testimony and request amnesty from both civil and criminal prosecution.
**In 1993 de Klerk and Mandela were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Letter from a Modern Day Mandela

photo credit: http://www.freeocalan.org/

Open Letter to the Guardian

Guest post by Abdullah Ocalan

On Thursday 5 December 2013, the Guardian published an editorial article on the occasion of Nelson Mandela’s death. The article included a significant(!) comparison between Mandela and some other names like Jawaharlal Nehru, Aung Sang Suu Kyi, and me.  As long as they approach the issue with a hegemon’s mindset, the potentates will certainly continue to make such comparisons among those figures wining the affection of their peoples. However, any comparison has its own inner problems.

The time of the struggles, varying geographic and political conditions and even the characteristic differences between the figures will render such comparisons problematic. First of all, for me, being remembered together with a leader for whom all the world shed tears shows the extent to which our struggle line has taken universal dimensions. It also demonstrates the fact that our case couldn’t be explained as a struggle only against an unjust treatment.

Writing on the capabilities of a leader with exemplary methods of struggle and negotiation just after his death needs some more pondering on the history and politics of risk-takers, in order to get a better understanding of the conditions of those who haven’t been afraid of struggling in the front line throughout history.

There are clear-cut differences between the front-line strugglers and deskbound analysts. The greatest difference is to witness the death of your comrades and your people, live the experience moment to moment, and do right and wrong.  Restricting the esteem and dignity of such an important leader with ‘the prison’ is a beleaguered approach which holds in contempt the self-realized political struggle of a people with over 40 million population voluntarily approving this leader as the representation of their own will.  How objective and just would it be to turn a blind eye on the national identity the Kurdish people have achieved after a 40-year-long freedom struggle, and on our peace efforts for a democratic solution to the Kurdish question.

Comparing me with Nelson Mandela in your article, you had referred to me as “feared and worshiped”. Here, not only can I see more easily the writer’s desire to be the state chronicle of a history which tramples on the world’s oppressed, but also I discern the codes of the purposive enmity harbored against both of the compared figures, whose only resource for facing the enslaving, massacre and denial policies is their own self-belief.

It is too evident to need proof that a person who has spent the last 14 years of his life in a prison-island alone and under solitary confinement can be a “source of fear” only for those who have put him into chains. The chains speak for themselves ….

In reply to those who, instead of analyzing the fear spread by the hegemons, are busy giving advice and teaching lessons to those struggling against these hegemons, I should say, in all modesty, that Dear Madiba and me have more parallels than contrasts.

Everybody knows that the ordeal succeeded in facing the Apartheid regime was an accomplishment of not only the South African people, but at the same time of the leader in whom they had unsuspectedly confided their fate.  No matter their numbers, the many ludicrous comments made on Mandela’s credibility come from the quarters which  adopt a remote and trivial approach to the ‘struggle of the oppressed’ rather than making a close and reasonable analysis.

The self-organization processes of the communities subjected to suppression and discrimination would differ from the common practices, especially when they begin to make a true analysis of the notion of capitalist modernity. Traditionally, the organizational options of ‘the book’ are already known. But time proceeds forward and circumstances change, in company with historical determinism. Changing conditions will bring about changes in the behavior and attitude of individuals and organizations, either captive or free. When it comes to the PKK, instead of bringing about pragmatic progress, these changes have led to the political and ethical progress for a movement which has transformed itself on the basis of the struggle for democratic modernity and the developing direct democracy examples in the world.

The 12 September 1980 fascist coup followed by many organized coups against our community as well as the international conspiracy act against me and our movement share one thing in common with other interferences in other struggles of the oppressed; and that is the silence of the international community in the face of these interventions.  Despite the progress in the international democratic standards in the 21st century, due to the state propaganda characteristic of the international conspiracy, the dehumanization of the struggling leaders held captive still continues, based on poor intellectual standards.

How odd it is that a credible newspaper in Britain has not noticed the recent democratization progresses that we have made in Mesopotamia. As far as the approach is concerned, I hope it to be only ‘odd’, not more. Looking at the general approach of the article, what I see is not only the “oddness”; rather, every line is a dead giveaway to a hierarchic and ‘from above’ viewpoint.

Here, those opposing peace are accusing us of starting negotiations, are dehumanizing me in the eyes of the new generations and defaming our movement which has adopted peace and settlement as its main principle.  They are running and organized activity to blacken the reputation of our efforts for democratic modernity.  How odd it is that racist notions and old propaganda rhetoric which have even lost their reputation in Turkey are still being repeatedly covered in the international press.

The only topic to be discussed after Mandel’s demise should be Apartheid, a regime which history would remember only with shame. Nobody would keep a memoir of Apartheid and its leaders; nobody would shed tears for them; whereas Mandela has become a shining star for the peoples of Africa.  Our historical mission is to ensure the ever brilliance of this star for the peoples of the Middle East. The friendship developed on the basis of principled and political integrity between the peoples’ movements and particularly our movement, relies on the changing dynamics and the horizontal nature of their policies.  To believe that these laws of goodwill and friendship have been developed on the basis of fear can only be explained by having no knowledge about the metamorphosis eras the Kurdish political movement has undergone and failing to observe its democratic inner reflections of the peaceful and negotiating perspective of this movement.

Likewise, negotiation and struggle are both important processes in determining the future of peoples’ movements and those leading these processes are figures winning the confidence of the peoples, not ‘feared’ ones. If not so, it wouldn’t be possible for these movements to be represented both in the parliamentary system and the local politics , as it wouldn’t have been possible to succeed in the years-long armed struggle.

My recommendation to the editorial board of the Guardian is to do more research and analysis on the role of the women in our political movement and the resulting transformative effects. Then, they would certainly encounter such an infinite experience so as to take off their colonialist hat, though ashamedly.

Abdullah Ocalan
The Prison Island of Imrali

Abdullah Öcalan Apo, is one of the founding members (1978) of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey. Like the early ANC, the PKK is labeled as a “terrorist” organization by the US and its allies. Link to “Free Ocalan” website: http://www.freeocalan.org/

Honoring the Real Nelson Mandela

In “The Mandela Barbie,” BBC journalist and investigative reporter Greg Palast’s eulogy of Nelson Mandela provides a rare breath of sanity in the media stampede to remake a legendary Marxist revolutionary into an icon of free market capitalism. According to Palast, “The ruling class creates commemorative dolls and statues of revolutionary leaders as a way to tell us their cause is won, so go home.”

Al Jazeera America also offers a fairly balanced assessment of Mandela’s accomplishments. In “Mandela Sought Balance Between Socialism and Capitalism,” Martin O’Neill and Thad Williamson acknowledge that Mandela and the African National Congress totally failed to deliver on economic provisions – freedom from poverty, genuine equality of opportunity and a fair share of national wealth – in the ANC’s 1955 Freedom Charter. They also note that despite the advent of majority rule, poverty and living standards are much worse for black South Africans under the ANC.

I frankly expected Democracy Now, the Nation, Mother Jones and other “alternative” media outlets to do a better job of distinguishing between superficial ballot box democracy and the genuine freedom that can only come from true economic democracy. Instead they were all happy to ape CNN and the New York Times in celebrating the cosmetic reforms masking the reality of brutal South African living conditions.

Naomi Klein and The Shock Doctrine

Naomi Klein has an excellent chapter on the Freedom Charter and South Africa’s worsening economic apartheid in her bestselling 2007 The Shock Doctrine. In “Born in Chains: South Africa’s Constricted Freedom,” she offers a blow by blow description of the secret negotiations between the ANC and the outgoing apartheid regime. In her view, the ANC was clearly outmaneuvered at the negotiating table. This happened in part due to political naïveté, in part due to the threat of civil war (the South African police were continuing to massacre ANC leaders and white industrialists were arming black gangs to terrorize the black townships), and in part due to the ANC’s misplaced confidence in Thabo Mbeke, a London-trained admirer of Margaret Thatcher (who would succeed Mandela as president in 1998).

The Trap of “Trickle Down” Economics

The economic package Mbeke accepted at the negotiating table contained standard “trickle down” provisions aimed at attracting foreign investment, in the hope economic benefits would “trickle down” to the black townships. Among its provisions were

1. establishment of a private, independent (unaccountable) central bank to issue and control South Africa’s money supply. This was a classic Chicago School neoliberal move the ANC took against the advice of their economic adviser Vishnu Padayachee. When Padayachee subsequently learned that the white finance ministers from the apartheid regime would run both the central bank and the treasury, he knew the economic provisions of the Freedom Charter could never be enacted and refused to serve in the ANC government.
2. an agreement to honor the $14 billion IMF debt the apartheid government had racked up.
3. an agreement to sign onto the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades (GATT), the precursor to the World Trade Organization (WTO).
4. an agreement to guarantee (and pre-pay) lifelong pensions of former white officials under the apartheid regime.

Because the apartheid regime and Mbeke minimized these economic concessions as merely “technical” and “administrative,” they received no serious examination by either the media or ANC loyalists. Only in 1994, after ANC leaders assumed positions in government, did they recognize this economic stranglehold left them with no real power.

Between 1994 and 1996, the ANC government attempted to make good on the Freedom Charter’s promises of wealth redistribution through government investment in 100,000 new homes and subsidies to connect millions of households to water, electricity and phone services. In the end, however, mounting government debt forced the ANC to raise rents and utility prices, as well as evicting families and cutting off services when poor residents couldn’t make their payments.

A Missed Opportunity

Once the threat of civil war abated, Klein feels the ANC missed a historic opportunity to launch a second liberation struggle against economic apartheid. Instead, under the neoliberal stranglehold of an independent central bank, the IMF and the WTO, the economic welfare of black South Africans steadily worsened. Instead of creating new jobs, the ANC was forced to shut down hundreds of auto plants and textile factories because of WTO rules outlawing government subsidization of manufacturing. They were also required to abide by WTO intellectual property rules which prevented them from providing generic drugs to millions of AIDS patients.

Poverty and Living Conditions Worse Under ANC

After three decades, there is no longer any doubt that neoliberal trickle down economics benefits wealthy corporations at the expense of people and always increases income inequality. South Africa is no exception. As Klein notes, the effects of economic apartheid were already brutally clear after only twelve years under a majority black government. By 2006

• the number of South Africans living on less than $1 per day had doubled (from 2 million to 4 million) under the ANC.
• unemployment among black south Africans had more than doubled, from 23-48%.
• close to 1 million people had been evicted from farms under the ANC.
• despite the 1.8 million new homes build by the ANC, 2 million black South African had lost their homes.

The Shock Doctrine is available digitally at TheShockDoctrine.pdf

Klein’s website also has links to some of the source documents she used in compiling her chapter on economic apartheid Shock Doctrine Resources

Originally published in Dissident Voice

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I’m really stoked this morning that my new $3.99 ebook A Rebel Comes of Age has been nominated for a Global Ebook Award. Purchase link (all formats): A Rebel of Age

I’m even more pleased to learn it’s been pirated by at least five Torrent download sites. None of my earlier books have been pirated, so I should be flattered, right?