15

 

C-Max

Eugene staked his claim wherever he found himself – his bar was his ward, the field of operations his hunting ground. But here in Pretoria Central, the lion was caged.

I kept one eye on the tuck-shop queue. When it shortened, I would join. The prisoners sitting around us talking, animated, to their visitors, looked so harmless, so ordinary – except for the orange overalls.

But this semblance of normality was misleading. Most of them had been convicted of serious crimes. One shouldn’t delude oneself about what goes on behind prison walls. Eugene described it as a merciless place where countless inmates give over to gangsterism, drugs and fraud.

Sitting in the sun in the prison courtyard, I had to keep reminding myself that I was in the bowels of a place of punishment and penance.

When he was sent to C-Max – Pretoria Central’s maximum security section – in September 1997, practically all of Eugene’s police friends and brothers in arms deserted him. Sealed up behind steel and concrete, he was forgotten. He and his wife Audrey had already divorced and she had emigrated with their two small boys. He felt abandoned, by God and humankind alike.

C-Max is designed for violent ‘problem prisoners’ who are classified as highly dangerous.1 Inmates are kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. I wondered how a person could function normally after being in solitary confinement for over two and a half years.

What goes through a man’s thoughts when he is locked up with his regret, rage and anguish? It became, for Eugene, a struggle for a different kind of survival – one for which he had to develop a new set of instincts. In a report by his former psychiatrist, Dr JP Verster, Eugene alleges that he was tortured emotionally in C-Max.

Verster, who treated Eugene for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), writes in his report that it took him almost six months to win Eugene’s trust – and that Eugene had no ‘sociopathic’ (psychopathic) tendencies, that he was a person with a conscience.2

Eugene and his legal representative decided not to lodge a complaint about his detention in C-Max. ‘I had clearly committed very serious crimes and had to take my punishment. I endured the terrible conditions in C-Max for 31 months.’3 Furthermore, Eugene told Dr Verster:

When I asked why I had been placed in C-Max, I was told it was because the psychologists wanted to experiment on me. Mrs Helena du Toit, a social worker at the prison at the time, confirmed this statement.

I was repeatedly tortured emotionally. For instance, they left lights on throughout the night or shone them directly into my face. They hammered on the cell door constantly. From the observation platform above my cell there was always hammering and loud noise. I could only move around for an hour a day – I could exercise in a cage of 1 × 5 metres. They tampered with my food. I was allowed no visitors. I was completely isolated.

Later, when I was in Phase 2 and again in a death row cell, I had human contact for the first time in a few years. After some time I was transferred to the general part of the prison where I was kept reasonably isolated and eventually, from August 2005 – after a period of almost eleven years – I was treated as an ordinary prisoner and held in Medium B. There I had more time to myself as well as the privacy of a single cell.

I was so depressed in C-Max. Mrs Lourentia de Kock [no relation], a psychologist, was the only person who helped me during this deep depression during which I had suicidal tendencies …

Other than her support, I received no additional therapy. I had no help at all from the prison psychologists. Occasionally a visiting psychiatrist would prescribe medication, which neither treated my post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) nor brought any relief.

During one visiting hour a visitor mistakenly dropped a heavy object. On hearing this I experienced a serious panic attack. When I came around I realised that the sound had taken me straight back to the bush in Angola, to a contact. My PTSD was, at this stage, out of control. I also experienced problems with a detached retina and nearly lost an eye before I could persuade the district physician to allow me to receive treatment at the Pretoria Eye Institute.

I feel I was psychologically and physically abused, and emotionally broken, during my 31 months in C-Max. I underwent months of sleep deprivation and long periods of sensory deprivation. For years I saw no daylight. These actions were all of extended duration. I feel I was excessively punished during this time and started to recover from solitary confinement in C-Max only much later.

I realise now, too, that I never really stood a chance and could not defend myself. The worst was the knowledge that the people who were with me, and who had committed much worse crimes than I had, had got off scot-free. I was picked to be punished! I feel no bitterness towards the judge, but am, in every way possible, bitter towards those who issued my orders, and those who were aggressors with me but who now walk free, enjoying their lives.

And I never see the sun.4

The struggle between doing the right thing and facing the consequences – thus taking responsibility for your actions – on one side and the knowledge that you are the only one being punished on the other, must eat away at you like a cancer. I tried to broach this with Eugene a few times, but he remained evasive.

So, I started looking around for more information about this dark time of his life. Among Eugene’s documents is an insightful article by journalist Jann Turner that appeared in the Mail & Guardian on 28 May 1999. Turner’s father, Rick, was an anti-apartheid activist and political scientist affiliated to the University of Natal [now the University of KwaZulu-Natal]. In 1978, Turner was shot through the window of his Durban house and died in 13-year-old Jann’s arms. While the perpetrators were never found, it was widely believed that he was shot by the security police.

Turner visited Eugene several times in jail after he made it known that he wanted to talk to her: he had information about the members of the Security Branch whose names had come up in the investigation into her father’s murder. She did not expect to like him, she writes. ‘His glasses are so thick you can’t see the colour of his eyes. I found I watched his mouth more than his eyes. His politeness and intelligence disarmed me. His shyness took me by surprise …’5

Turner experienced Eugene as ‘starved for company and good conversation’. They talked, among other things, about guilt and forgiveness. ‘He talked about the horror that comes back to him at night. How he smells it, tastes it, sees it and can’t sleep.’6

Although Turner writes of Eugene with hints of compassion, she notes: ‘I remember at the time I found that reassuring, such a man shouldn’t be able to sleep at night … he described himself as a “veteran of lost ideologies”.’

Three days after their first meeting, De Kock was moved to C-Max; when Turner saw him again, he was thin, depressive and disoriented. He spoke a great deal about death and felt that he deserved to die. In her view he was overwhelmed by remorse.7

A handful of interventions were, indeed, part of Eugene’s detention in C-Max. Two women, psychologist Lourentia de Kock and social worker Helena du Toit, were involved in his emotional recovery process. Lourentia de Kock began treating him as early as 1996 and saw him until October 2001. In 2002 she wrote as follows in a clinical report:

‘We met weekly initially, and then monthly. Mr De Kock is a highly functioning, intellectual person, with excellent insight into himself. His condition is strongly connected with his present prison situation and he is being treated for major depression. He is apsychotic. He is fully conscious and orientated in terms of place, time and person. No personality disorders have been detected.

‘Mr De Kock provided excellent co-operation during his individual psychotherapeutic sessions … He shows intense remorse in respect of the actions that led to his conviction and is highly motivated not to repeat them. His present circumstances have had a destructive influence on him, which have impacted his functioning negatively.’8

Helena du Toit, head social worker at Pretoria Central at the time, reported that she had counselled Eugene since 1996 and that topics such as post-traumatic stress disorder, his suicidal tendencies during his incarceration in C-Max as well as his feelings of despair had come up.9

According to Du Toit, Eugene’s only moral support at that stage was his aunt. ‘Both his parents have passed away. His brother does not have regular contact with him. The prisoner was divorced in 1997. Currently his ex-wife and two sons keep in contact by messages. The prisoner was, and still is, of the opinion that his ex-wife and children are in danger. He fears that his former colleagues or members of the Security Police who were in power during the apartheid era may use his family to prevent him from testifying truthfully during the hearings [of the TRC] … He feels abandoned and that his family is suffering because of his actions.

‘The prisoner is a person with integrity and an overdeveloped sense of loyalty. He also has high morals. He is talented, ambitious and not inherently criminal. No negative behaviour has occurred in prison. The prisoner is not involved in gangsterism or drugs … He has been able to build relationships with fellow prisoners. He is respected and accepted by the wider prison community.’10

Lourentia de Kock’s report recommended that Eugene be released to invest his knowledge and abilities into the country as a citizen. Her report was part of Eugene’s first application for presi­dential pardon, submitted in May 2002.

This request for pardon to erstwhile President Thabo Mbeki included representations from generals Mike Geldenhuys, Johann Coetzee and Johan van der Merwe. Eugene was no longer being held in C-Max by this time.

As part of their submission, the three generals described the circumstances of political unrest, conflict and violence that had prevailed when Eugene had served in the police force. They claimed that covert actions such as those executed by Vlakplaas operatives were necessary, because South Africa had practically been a war zone.

‘Seen in its proper perspective … there can be no doubt that this sort of scenario led to the foundation upon which sound and normal policing, namely the will and desire to protect and serve … being seriously undermined and even destroyed … Subsequent to his redeployment in the Republic of South Africa, Colonel De Kock was posted to the ranks of the Security Branch’s fighting unit … [I]n this role he was intimately involved with violence and death, often on a daily basis … Very few people would have survived and been able to face the world at large if subjected to the same work exigencies and experiences that Colonel De Kock was.’11

The three generals requested Eugene’s deeds to be seen in the light of the political climate of the apartheid era and that he should be reprieved as a result.

His application was rejected.