MONITORING DESK
ISLAMABAD: Adriann Vlok, a police minister during South Africa’s apartheid era in which its white minority ruled has passed away at the age of 85. His style of policing earned him his label of being notorious.
Vlok played a central role in the enforcement of apartheid’s racist system. The system included the police force being used as hit squads to kill, torture, and kidnap activists.
Apartheid-era minister Adriaan Vlok was granted amnesty
He had been the minister of law and order from 1986 to 1991. In 1994, after the end of apartheid, Vlok was granted amnesty after confessing to some of his crimes.
As a gesture of contrition, in 2006, Vlok washed Rev Frank Chikane’s feet. Chikane had been a prominent anti-apartheid cleric.
His detractors considered his actions as a stunt in order to gain sympathy, and also as a way to avoid revealing more crimes of the apartheid rulers.
In 1989, Chikane had been targeted in a poisoning attempt by police officials of the apartheid regime.
According to Vlok’s family, he died at a hospital in South Africa’s capital Pretoria, after a short illness.
