Eugene De Kock offered a home in Namibia

Apartheid assassin Eugene de Kock has been offered a home in remote northern Namibia - where he led operations that killed hundreds of Swapo fighters.

The offer comes from the ruling South West Africa People's Organisation itself, once the sworn enemy of the paroled killer.

A Swapo delegation has been visiting De Kock in prison, offering him the option of a quiet life on an isolated piece of land near the Okavango.

De Kock, who headed the notorious Koevoet anti-insurgency unit in its early years, is apparently considering the offer.

Koevoet was exposed for the number of people it killed . By his own admission, De Kock killed hundreds of Swapo soldiers.

Details of his friendship with Swapo, his hopes to live out the remainder of his life quietly - and perhaps remarry - are contained in reports attached to his application for parole.

In a social worker's report, De Kock spoke of his estrangement from his children, and the kindness of strangers who had paid money into his prisoner account over the years.

The report reads: '' He was offered a piece of land nearby the Okavango and will grab the opportunity if the South African government does not want him to stay [ within] South Africa's borders."

De Kock's former wife, Audrey, and their two sons, Eugene and Michael, fled to Europe after he was arrested. De Kock said he had lost contact with them.

''His ex-wife married again and she moved on with her life ... his children are now adults and they are total strangers to [him]," the report states.

De Kock has received letters from women who proposed marriage .

He was sentenced in 1996 for multiple counts of murder, conspiracy to murder, kidnapping, robbery, illegal possession of a firearm with intent to cause serious injury, and fraud.

His role in counterintelligence, as the commander at Vlakplaas, near Pretoria, was well documented by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission when he applied for amnesty.

De Kock turned 66 on Thursday - a day before it was announced he would be released . He has spent almost 20 years at Pretoria's C-Max prison.

Advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza, former head of the TRC's investigation unit, said De Kock's parole was long overdue.

Ntsebeza himself escaped De Kock's hit squad in 1985 when a unit was sent to kill him.

Instead, they found his cousin Bathandwa Ndondo, who was executed in broad daylight in Cala, in the Transkei.

''People would expect me to be aggrieved by this and say: 'Let him rot in jail for the rest of his life.' But I don't think so.

''Eugene was the fall guy and I think it's quite unfair, frankly, that he was the only person to have gone to jail," he said.

Not everyone is celebrating De Kock' s release.

In 2012, he asked Catherine Mlangeni, the mother of ANC lawyer Bheki Mlangeni, for forgiveness after she declared that he should ''rot in jail".

De Kock told the TRC that after blowing up Mlangeni instead of Dirk Coetzee in 1981, the result was acceptable, since Mlangeni was a member of the ANC.

However, De Kock did not talk at the TRC about Jacki Quin.

Quin, a teacher in Lesotho, and her husband, Leon Meyer, an Umkhonto weSizwe operative, were murdered a few days before Christmas in 1985 at their home in Maseru.

Nor did De Kock talk about Japie Maponya, whom he beat to death with a spade.

Last year Quin's sister Jane Quin wrote an open letter to Justice Minister Michael Masutha, urging him not to grant De Kock parole.

She said De Kock had ordered the killing of her sister and had not paid his debt to society.

Candice Mama grew up without her father, Gelnak Masilo Mama, who was killed by De Kock's hit squad in 1992.

Mama, 23, from Randfontein in the West Rand, ''celebrated" De Kock's release .

She was eight months old when her father was killed.

A meeting between her mother, two brothers and grandfather and De Kock last year changed her life, she said on Friday. ''During that meeting he gave us in-depth details of what happened to my father," she said. The meeting allowed her family to forgive him.

Mama said public opinion would be critical of De Kock.

''I understand that. We can't condone what he did.

"But what do you do when a system grooms you to become like that?" she said.

laganparsadm@sundaytimes.co.za