Cold Turkey: Stories of Truth and Reconciliation (“De Kock Ready to Sing"

The ability to understand and share the feelings of another may be the most challenging heroic power.

South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) offered a radically new approach to human rights violations, promoting restorative justice in the form of reconciliation over retribution. To achieve the amnesty offered to those who confessed their crimes and sought forgiveness, however, the TRC first had to unearth some truly chilling evils.
This assemblage refers to two cases brought before the TRC. Using images taken from newspapers, South African artist and activist Sue Williamson intended the prints to appear “as they might perhaps be displayed in a courtroom for the information of the jury.”
Eugene de Kock, a police commander known as “Prime Evil,” was reputed to be the apartheid state’s most efficient killer, responsible for the death of numerous activists. De Kock asked to testify before the TRC in the hope that he would be pardoned. Instead, he spoke without shame. Images of a pig’s head in the second line symbolize the victim of a bombing for which de Kock was responsible. In an experiment, a bomb placed in a cassette recorder blew up a pig’s head; a similar bomb killed human rights lawyer Bheki Mlangeni. Failing to demonstrate remorse, De Kock was convicted on 89 charges and sentenced to 212 years in prison.