[DEBATE] : Fwd: Apartheid killer finds religion but not remorse

[Sean Jacobs]

>
>
> Apartheid killer finds religion but not remorse
>
>  Case of freed racist murderer highlights refusal of whites to take  
> responsibility for the past
>
> Rory Carroll in East London
> Friday August 4, 2006
> The Guardian
> South Africa's most prolific mass murderer takes another sip of  
> coffee, eases back in his chair and pauses when asked if it is true he  
> shot more than 100 black people. "I can't argue with that," says Louis  
> van Schoor. "I never kept count."
>
> Seated at a restaurant terrace in East London, a seaside town in the  
> Eastern Cape, the former security guard is a picture of relaxed  
> confidence, soaking up sunshine while reminiscing about his days as an  
> apartheid folk hero.
> Hired to protect white-owned businesses in the 1980s, he is thought to  
> have shot 101 people, killing 39, in a three-year spree. Some were  
> burglars; others were passers-by dragged in from the street. All were  
> black or coloured, the term for those of mixed race.
>
> Convicted of murder but released from jail after 12 years, Van Schoor  
> is unrepentant. "I was doing my job - I was paid to protect property.  
> I never apologised for what I did."
>
> He is not the only one. The whites in East London who turned a blind  
> eye to his killing spree have not apologised and whites in general,  
> according to black clerics and politicians, have not owned up to  
> apartheid-era atrocities.
>
> That reluctance to atone has been laid bare in a book published last  
> week, The Colour of Murder, by Heidi Holland, which investigates the  
> bloodsoaked trail not only of Van Schoor but also his daughter,  
> Sabrina, who hired a hitman to murder her mother.
>
> The macabre tale is likely to reignite debate about those whites who  
> shun the spirit of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and mock  
> rainbow nation rhetoric. "The story is of a family but it is also the  
> story of a divided country and of the people of that country trying to  
> find new ways to live with each other," says Ms Holland.
>
> Since his release two years ago, after benefiting from a sentence  
> reduction for all convicts issued by Nelson Mandela when he was  
> president, Van Schoor, 55, has slimmed down, shaved off his beard and  
> kept a low profile, working as a cattle farm foreman outside East  
> London. During his 1992 trial white residents displayed "I Love Louis"  
> stickers decorated with three bullet holes through a bleeding heart.  
> Sympathy endures, says Van Schoor. "The reaction is 90% positive.  
> Strangers say, 'Hey, it's good to see you.'"
>
> Magistrates and the police, grateful for the terror instilled in black  
> people, covered his tracks until local journalists and human rights  
> campaigners exposed the carnage as apartheid crumbled. Van Schoor was  
> convicted of seven murders and two attempted murders.
>
> Upon his release in 2004, Van Schoor said he had found God and, when  
> prompted, expressed sorrow to his victims' relatives. "I apologise if  
> any of my actions caused them hurt."
>
> In an interview this week, he tried to clarify his position. "I never  
> apologised for what I did. I apologised for any hurt or pain that I  
> caused through my actions during the course of my work."
>
> Thanks to his changed appearance and low profile he has faced no  
> backlash. Few black people recognise him, including the bookseller who  
> took his order for The Colour of Murder. When Van Schoor gave his name  
> the penny dropped. "She nearly fell off her chair," he says, smiling.
>
> Married four times and now engaged to a local woman, Van Schoor,  
> speaking softly and warily, says he is "happy and content". But he  
> does not seem to approve of the new South Africa. "Everything has  
> changed - people's attitudes, the service in shops, it's not the  
> same."
>
> On the contrary, lament black leaders, one crucial thing has stayed  
> the same: the refusal of many whites to admit past sins. Archbishop  
> Desmond Tutu, a Nobel peace laureate, recently said the privileged  
> minority that once feared retribution had not shown enough gratitude  
> for peaceful inclusion in a multi-racial democracy. Nkosinathi Biko,  
> the son of the murdered anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, noted the  
> dearth of white voices during last month's commemorations of the June  
> 1976 Soweto uprising, when police slaughtered black schoolchildren. A  
> liberal white commentator, Max du Preez, called the silence  
> embarrassing.
>
> Nowhere is it more deafening than East London. Van Schoor's rampage  
> was made possible by a white establishment that made no outcry as his  
> victims piled up, many of them impoverished children such as Liefie  
> Peters, 13, gunned down while hiding in the toilet of a Wimpy  
> restaurant after breaking in to steal cash.
>
> This week, eating a burger yards from where Van Schoor cornered his  
> prey, Jacques Durandt, a 33-year-old white former member of the  
> security forces, defended the killer. "I won't say he's a murderer.  
> For him it was a job."
>
> Wannitta Kindness, a 36-year-old white taxi driver parked outside the  
> restaurant, says the security guard might have fired even if the  
> intruder was white. "But you don't find white people breaking into  
> places."
>
> Others echoed the refrain: denied jobs reserved for black people,  
> targeted by criminals, harassed in the street, victims in South Africa  
> these days have pale skin and they see no reason to apologise. "The  
> blacks don't want equality," says Ms Kindness. "They want to be on  
> top."
>
> East London does boast at least one white advocate of racial harmony:  
> Van Schoor's daughter, Sabrina, 25. While her father was in jail she  
> shocked the white community by dating black men and giving birth to a  
> mixed-race child.
>
> In 2002, in a grisly irony, she hired a black man to slit her mother's  
> throat, claiming she was a racist bully.
>
> Convicted of murder and sent to the same prison as her father, Sabrina  
> van Schoor is seen as a martyr by some black people. She seems popular  
> among fellow inmates at Fort Glamorgan jail. "That girl, she's not  
> like the whites outside of here. She's OK," says one inmate.
>
> Speaking through iron bars, Sabrina van Schoor, powerfully built like  
> her father, says she is nervous about her family history coming under  
> public scrutiny again because of the book. "I'm afraid it might open  
> old wounds."
>
> Blame game goes on in a society dogged by murder and violence
>
> Each time someone is murdered in South Africa - which happens about 50  
> times more often than it does in Europe - 2010 flashes through the  
> minds of football administrators and politicians. That year, when the  
> country stages the World Cup, has become as much of a test of South  
> Africa's ability to rule itself as the 1994 election which introduced  
> majority rule.
>
> While most World Cup hosts get nervous at some stage of preparations,  
> about the capacity of stadiums or transport systems, in South Africa  
> the worry is murder. Just as violence threatened to derail the peace  
> train heading for majority rule 12 years ago, so there are fears that  
> it is about to humiliate the country.
>
> One of the most puzzling aspects is that the violence, long associated  
> with tensions arising from racial divisions, has failed to disappear  
> with apartheid. The statistics are unreliable; the police and  
> government do not like releasing them because of their impact on  
> tourism. But it is believed that the only country to rival South  
> Africa in the crime stakes over recent years has been Colombia. The  
> issue is intrinsic to life in South Africa.
>
> Blame tends to be coloured by political perspective. The government  
> blames illegal immigrants and organised crime. Farmers who see  
> neighbours killed on lonely homesteads blame the ANC, which they claim  
> is after their land. The rich blame the poor and, of course, whites  
> blame black people. Crime replaces the weather in small talk - until  
> an incident of particular savagery, such as the recent case of a white  
> farmer who threw a black farmworker into a lions' cage, to be eaten  
> alive.
>
> The South African author André Brink fell victim to crime when gunmen  
> raided a country restaurant where he was having dinner with his  
> family, assaulted them and locked them in a storeroom. He said he  
> received a flood of letters in response to an article he wrote about  
> the experience.
>
> "Each one of them has encountered, either personally or through family  
> and close friends, examples of the violence which has come not only to  
> cloud all the laudable achievements of our young democracy but to  
> threaten the very likelihood of success for this democracy," Brink  
> said.
> David Beresford
>  
>   
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
-----------------------
I've never felt myself to belong to any establishment of any kind,
any mainstream.
I'm interested in mainstreams, I'm jealous of them,
I sometimes, occasionally, envy people who belong to them
-- because certainly I don't -- but on the whole I think they're the  
enemy. 
I feel that authorities, canons, dogmas, orthodoxies, establishments,
are really what we're up against.
At least what I'm up against, most of the time.
They deaden thought.
--  Edward Said, 1994