Adriaan Johannes Vlok (born 11 December 1937) is a South African former politician. He was Minister of

Law and Order In modern politics, law and order is the approach focusing on harsher enforcement and penalties as ways to reduce crime. Penalties for perpetrators of disorder may include longer terms of imprisonment, mandatory sentencing, three-strikes laws a ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

from 1986 to 1991 in the final years of the

apartheid era Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

. Facing increasingly intense opposition and political unrest in this period, the South African government – through the State Security Council of which Vlok was a member – planned and implemented drastic repressive measures, including hit squads, carrying out bombings and assassination of anti-apartheid activists.

Early life

Adriaan Vlok was born in the Northern Cape town of Sutherland in the then

Cape Province The Province of the Cape of Good Hope ( af, Provinsie Kaap die Goeie Hoop), commonly referred to as the Cape Province ( af, Kaapprovinsie) and colloquially as The Cape ( af, Die Kaap), was a province in the Union of South Africa and subsequen ...

on the 11 December 1937 to Nicolaas Vlok and Bett Oliver where he grew up on a rural

small holding A smallholding or smallholder is a small farm operating under a small-scale agriculture model. Definitions vary widely for what constitutes a smallholder or small-scale farm, including factors such as size, food production technique or technology ...

along the

Orange River The Orange River (from Afrikaans/Dutch: ''Oranjerivier'') is a river in Southern Africa. It is the longest river in South Africa. With a total length of , the Orange River Basin extends from Lesotho into South Africa and Namibia to the north ...

. He attended Neilerdrift Primary School and matriculated from Keimoes High School in 1956 located in

Keimoes Keimoes is a town in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. It lies on the Orange River and is about halfway between Upington and Kakamas. History It attained municipal status in 1949. The name of the town translates in both the Khoekhoe and ...

. He obtained a Dip. Proc. from the

University of Pretoria The University of Pretoria ( af, Universiteit van Pretoria, nso, Yunibesithi ya Pretoria) is a multi-campus public research university in Pretoria, the administrative and de facto capital of South Africa. The university was established in 1908 ...

in 1962.

Career

Vlok started his career working in the magistrates office for the Department of Justice in Keimoes and

Upington Upington ( Nama: //Khara hais) is a town founded in 1873 and located in the Northern Cape province of South Africa, on the banks of the Orange River. The town was originally called Olijvenhoutsdrift ('Olive wood drift'), due to the abundance of ...

joining the National Party in 1959. From 1959 to 1966 Vlok served in Pretoria as the under-secretary for the Department of Justice whilst studying for an Attorney's Diploma at the University of Pretoria. He was then made assistant private secretary to South African Prime Minister B. J. Vorster. He resigned from the Department of Justice with the aim of entering politics in 1970, running a court messaging service. In 1972 he was elected to the

Verwoerdburg Centurion (previously known as Verwoerdburg and before that Lyttelton) is an area with 236,580 inhabitants (2011 census) in the Gauteng Province of South Africa, between Pretoria and Midrand (Johannesburg). Formerly an independent municipality, wi ...

(now known as Centurion) City Council and was elected to represent the area in the national Parliament in 1974. In September 1984 he was appointed Deputy Minister of Defense and was then made Deputy Minister of Law and Order a few months later in early 1985. During his time as Deputy Minister of Law and Order his ministry was responsible for the suppression and detention of around 30,000 people. In 1988 as minister of Law and Order he oversaw the restriction of 17 anti-apartheid organisations. Vlok's position as minister became especially controversial after 1990 during the negotiations to end apartheid, with the

African National Congress The African National Congress (ANC) is a social-democratic political party in South Africa. A liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid, it has governed the country since 1994, when the first post-apartheid election install ...

insisting on his dismissal. President

FW de Klerk Frederik Willem de Klerk (, , 18 March 1936 – 11 November 2021) was a South African politician who served as state president of South Africa from 1989 to 1994 and as deputy president from 1994 to 1996 in the democratic government. As South ...

responded by moving him to a less controversial post as Minister of Correctional Services in July 1991. In 1993–1994 he was the last chairman of the minister's council of the

House of Assembly House of Assembly is a name given to the legislature or lower house of a bicameral parliament. In some countries this may be at a subnational level. Historically, in British Crown colonies as the colony gained more internal responsible gove ...

, the white chamber of parliament.

TRC amnesty

In 1999, Vlok was granted amnesty by the

Truth and Reconciliation Commission A truth commission, also known as a truth and reconciliation commission or truth and justice commission, is an official body tasked with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by a government (or, depending on the circumstances, non-state act ...

(TRC) – the sole cabinet minister to have admitted committing crimes, including the bombing of the headquarters of the

South African Council of Churches The South African Council of Churches (SACC) is an interdenominational forum in South Africa. It was a prominent anti-apartheid organisation during the years of apartheid in South Africa. Its leaders have included Desmond Tutu, Beyers Naudé an ...

at Khotso House, and the

COSATU The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is a trade union federation in South Africa. It was founded in 1985 and is the largest of the country's three main trade union federations, with 21 affiliated trade unions.One Union expelled, ...

trade union headquarters.

Conviction and apologies

In mid-2006, Vlok came forward with public apologies for a number of acts that he had not disclosed to the TRC, and for which he could therefore be prosecuted. In a dramatic gesture, he washed the feet of

Frank Chikane Frank Chikane (born 3 January 1951 in Bushbuckridge, Transvaal) is a South African civil servant, writer and cleric. He is a member of the African National Congress and moderator of the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs for th ...

who, as secretary-general of the South African Council of Churches, had been targeted by Vlok for assassination. Subsequently, he washed the feet of the ten widows and mothers of the " Mamelodi 10", a group of anti-apartheid activists who had been lured to their death by a

police informant An informant (also called an informer or, as a slang term, a “snitch”) is a person who provides privileged information about a person or organization to an agency. The term is usually used within the law-enforcement world, where informant ...

. He said he had become a

born again Christian Born again, or to experience the new birth, is a phrase, particularly in evangelicalism, that refers to a "spiritual rebirth", or a regeneration of the human spirit. In contrast to one's physical birth, being "born again" is distinctly and sep ...

prior to his public apologies for his actions as Minister of Law and Order and cites this as the cause of his change of heart about his role in apartheid and his need to seek forgiveness. On 17 August 2007, the High Court in Pretoria handed him a suspended ten-year sentence for his role in the 1989 plot to kill

.Apartheid murder plotters guilty
BBC News, 17 August 2007, accessed 18 August 2007 In 2014 he publicly called for more apartheid era perpetrators to come forward and apologise for their actions. As of 2015 he started and runs a child feeding charity named the Feed a Child initiative.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vlok, Adriaan 1937 births Living people People from Karoo Hoogland Local Municipality Afrikaner people South African people of Dutch descent National Party (South Africa) politicians Government ministers of South Africa Members of the House of Assembly (South Africa) Apartheid government Law enforcement in South Africa University of Pretoria alumni