‘Prime Evil’ helped change racist killer’s mind

When he met “Prime Evil” Eugene de Kock, Stefaans Coetzee’s prison nickname was “Hitler”. The portents were not promising.

But Coetzee, who killed four people and injured 67 in a Western Cape Christmas Eve supermarket bombing in 1996, claims it was his conversations with apartheid assassin  De Kock that started his process of transformation.

“He saved every life I would have taken if I would have been released,” said Coetzee, reflecting on how until he met De Kock in Pretoria's C-Max, imprisonment had  only fuelled his hatred.

Now out on parole after serving half of a 40-year sentence, Coetzee is the focus of a documentary that left audience members in tears at its premiere in Cape Town this week.

The 57-minute film, Black Christmas, tells the story of Coetzee’s quest for forgiveness, and how the victims and survivors of his atrocity at Shoprite in Worcester finally granted it.

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It ends with a monologue by Coetzee that director Mark Kaplan hopes will help South Africans escape from the limbo they were left in after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission 20 years ago.

Kaplan’s dream is to show Black Christmas in prisons and schools around the country to drive the twin processes of restorative justice and racial reconciliation.

“There is a chance to use Worcester, as  unlikely a place as it is, as an incubator for reconciliation,” said Kaplan after the applause died down at the premiere.

“The ultimate goal for any documentary is to create conversation. The film is very pertinent in the current climate.

“It raises the issue of black pain coming from the words of a white bomber who is sort of a poster boy for right-wingers across the world. It addresses a wider audience who will normally switch off if they feel they are targeted.” The film explains how victims of the bombing could heal only once Coetzee had asked them for forgiveness.

“Stefaans was the first person who really convinced me that there was genuine change, that there was remorse,” said Kaplan, whose previous work includes Where Truth Lies, about the murder of student leader Siphiwo Mthimkhulu by security police in 1982, and the subsequent meeting at which former colonel Gideon Nieuwoudt asked Mthimkhulu’s family for forgiveness. 

Survivors who attended last week’s premiere voiced their frustration at being “forgotten” and hoped that the film might highlight their plight.

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“The people who were hurt and who are still undergoing operations, why should they pay their own bills? And the people who lost loved ones, they haven’t gotten a cent,” said Emma Hermanus, who has worked for Shoprite for 29 years and witnessed the bombing.

But Hermanus, like Kaplan, believes Worcester’s journey from hate to reconciliation can be replicated in other communities to  form bonds across the racial divide.

And the municipality has given township residents land to plant crops and vegetables that  they hope to use to feed themselves.  being raised to provide community members with transport and training.

 Harris Sibeko, deputy chairman of the Worcester Hope and Reconciliation Process, said he hoped Coetzee’s parole conditions would allow him to travel from his home in Pretoria to help the initiative.