A LONE woman’s journey spanning over 12 years to discover the truth about how her mother was killed reached an important step when she met apartheid police hit squad leader Eugene de Kock at the Pretoria Central Prison on Sunday.
Marcia Nhlanhla Khoza was only five years old when her mother Portia Shabangu and two comrades were killed by De Kock and his lieutenants in an ambush in Mbabane, Swaziland, in 1989.
Little Marcia was raised by her grandparents, not knowing what had happened to her mother.
When she was about 12 years old, her elders gathered enough courage to inform her that her mother was killed fighting against apartheid.
It was too big a word for the young girl to comprehend, and secretly she harboured thoughts that her mother had abandoned her to go and live in the mountainous kingdom.
“I have been hurt and had a rough childhood without my mother since February 12, 1989,” she wrote as a note in a book by RT Kendall titled Total Forgiveness, which she gave to De Kock on Sunday.
The words seemed to hit a nerve with the man dubbed Prime Evil, who immediately covered his head with his hands, his eyes becoming watery.
He was clearly touched, Khoza said.
But more than anything, De Kock was in awe, almost flummoxed.
Fate, they say, is the supposed force, principle or power that predetermines events.
Call it fate or destiny but it so happened that a then-young and naive Khoza had randomly chosen De Kock as her subject for a matric essay assignment while at school in Hazyview, Mpumalanga.
In it she had argued that the sentence meted out to De Kock was too “movie like” and that it should at least be halved.
She had no clue that De Kock was her mother’s assassin.
It was after matric that Khoza decided to embark on a journey to find out the truth about her mother’s death.
She knocked on various doors but with little success.
Of the people who assisted her was the late Parks Mankahlana, who was Nelson Mandela’s spokesman, and Godrich Gardee, who gave her certain pointers and contacted various activists in the province like former premier Mathews Phosa and Premier David Mabuza to find out if they had information about how Khoza’s mom died.
It was during that time, almost two years after her De Kock assignment, that she discovered that it was he who had pulled the trigger on her mom.
“I could not believe it. I thought I was dreaming.
“How could the same man I had so much ‘defended’ in my essay be the one who killed my own mom?
“It was one of the most ironic moments in my life,” she said.
Mark Twain describes forgiveness as “the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it”.
In Khoza’s case, she had long forgiven De Kock, even before he went to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to apply for amnesty for, among others, killing her mother.
And now that she knew it was De Kock, she sought to meet him so that he could answer certain questions that had bothered her.
On exactly the anniversary of the day that her mother was killed 23 years ago, Khoza met De Kock, where they had a close to an hour’s discussion.
Khoza wanted to tell De Kock to his face that she had forgiven him, and to find out why her mom was his target.
“I asked him what was so special about my mom that she be killed in that way.
“Again, I wanted to know the exact spot where she was killed in Swaziland so I can go and perform some rituals,” she said.
Khoza recalled that as she was about to enter the prison gates, her knees felt wobbly and her hands became clammy.
Her discussion with De Kock was frank and she felt he was talking to her like a “father to his daughter”.
One thing that De Kock kept on asking her is how she grew up to be such a “big” girl without her mom.
He also encouraged her to continue with her mother’s foundation, telling her that “your mother had it in her and you have it in you to heal others”.
In their wide-ranging discussion, De Kock told her that her mother was “sold out” by the ANC and that they had handed over the three comrades “on a platter”.
But despite being told this, she insists that she is still an ANC member and her faith in the organisation has not been shaken.
What shocked her was when De Kock told her that during “those days of madness” he saw Africans as mere objects, particularly when he was looking through the scope of a rifle.
Although part of his duty was to kill anti-apartheid activists, she said, “everything he killed he buried” – unlike others who threw their victims into crocodile-infested rivers.
He said he was happy to assist all those families who still did not know where their loved ones who were killed during the Struggle were buried.
She said De Kock told her that he was writing his own memoirs in which he would reveal “everything”.
He told her that in some of the cases he was framed, and that those responsible were still out there enjoying their freedom.
And it wasn’t that he did not want parole, but that he would never beg for it or even go to the extent of washing other people’s feet to show his remorse.
He did not expect families of those he killed to forgive him as he could only be forgiven by the people he had killed, he said.
Though he has sleepless nights, troubled by the souls of all those he killed, De Kock told her he believed in God, but not Jesus, and that he was not afraid of death.
Meeting De Kock proved therapeutic for Khoza, and the two have another date soon, where – if Correctional Services approve – they will even pose for a photograph together.