South African bishop: Official's apology for apartheid is not enough

Published: 2006-08-29

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) -- While a South African apartheid-era police minister must be commended for his courage and humility in apologizing to the former general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, the apology needs to include some form of restitution, said Bishop Kevin Dowling of Rustenburg, South Africa. The former police minister, Adriaan Vlok, 68, visited the Rev. Frank Chikane, a former anti-apartheid activist and current director-general in the South African Presidency, a government ministry formed for the president's special focus areas. At the ministry's Pretoria offices in late August, Vlok washed Rev. Chikane's feet in an act of contrition for the atrocities committed by apartheid police under his command. "It was a gesture of repentance and of seeking reconciliation, but it must go wider," Bishop Dowling, vice chairman of the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference justice and peace department, said in an Aug. 28 telephone interview from Rustenburg. Vlok, as police minister during the height of apartheid in the 1980s, "was responsible for atrocities committed against many others besides (Rev.) Chikane, and if he truly is committed to being forgiven he should seek to make some form of restitution," Bishop Dowling said.

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