TRC Final Report

Volume 6

Section 3

Chapter 6

Subsection 19

Killing of an unknown black person

214. AWB supporter Mr Vernon Vosloo [AM1003/96] was refused amnesty for stabbing an unknown black victim to death in Johannesburg on 10 May 1992. The deceased was identified neither at the hearing nor during the course of Mr Vosloo’s murder trial – which resulted in his conviction and sentencing to fifteen years’ imprisonment.

215. Mr Vosloo told the Committee that he had grown up in the south of Johannesburg where the majority of people were ‘conservative’. He had regarded black people in general as ‘the opposition party’. Mr Vosloo said he was not a registered member of any political organisation, although he had strong sympathies with the AWB .

216. He said that:

As long as Black people did not come into conflict with me, and as long as their ways and goals were not enforced on me, I did not have any problems with that, but I did not want any interference with myself from them. …[F]rom time to time, we were in conflict… There was enmity in the sense that I didn’t want them to be in control of my life. (Johannesburg hearing, 7 April 1997.)

217. At around 22h00 on the night of 10 May 1992, Vosloo was standing next to the road in a residential area and in front of a shopping complex in South Hills, Johannesburg, having a few drinks with friends. They saw a black person walking on the other side of the road and Vosloo took a knife from the boot of his car and followed the man for about thirty or forty metres before grabbing him f rom behind and stabbing him in the chest and all over the body. He said he did not know the victim at all and that the victim had done nothing to provoke the attack .

MR VOSLOO: He didn’t do to anything to me; he walked past. He walked past and I saw him as the person who could possibly govern me some day. (Johannesburg hearing, 7 April 1997.)

218. Vosloo testified that he attacked and killed the man because he was afraid that, in the then political climate, he would not have a say in anything at the end of the day. The Afrikaner felt threatened and could not allow blacks to take over the country without resisting in some way.

219. He testified further that, although he had believed at the time that he had done the right thing, he was sorry today about what he had done: ‘I took the life of an innocent person and it is something which no rational person will do.’ He said that if he had been sober on that occasion, he wouldn’t have done this as, ‘any rational person would certainly have found other ways of resisting’. The liquor had given him ‘the false courage to act in accordance with that which I felt so s t rongly’ (Johannesburg hearing, 7 April 1997).

220. Vosloo testified that he had been aware of the negotiations taking place at Kempton Park at the time and was afraid of a black take-over from the National Party-led government. He was aware that the AWB had threatened to take up arms to protect itself against the rule of others. However, he had not considered enrolling with a commando:

MR VOSLOO: I am a solitary person; I see things very individualistically. I understand things in my own view and I act in those terms. If things continued in that direction and if I was forced to join such a action group, I might have, but I would still have preferred to act on my own and do things in my own way. (Johannesburg hearing, 7 April 1997.)

221. Killing an unknown black person was, in his view, a contribution to the Afrikaner resistance movement. He never attended meetings of the AWB or any other similar organisation but kept up-to-date with their policies and activities by watching television and associating with people who were more directly involved. He testified that during 1992 he had become uncertain about the political situation in the country and feared that he would not have a voice in the changing South Africa. He had a growing feeling that something should be done about the situation, which he saw as advancing rapidly towards black majority rule.

222. The Committee found that the act committed by Vosloo amounted to no more than a purely criminal deed and he was denied amnesty [AC/1997/0026].