Hardline Nat police minister
1941-2015
HERNUS Kriel, who has died in Cape Town at the age of 73, was made minister of law and order in 1991 after the exposures of police financial backing for Inkatha.
Under pressure from the ANC, then president FW de Klerk appointed Kriel to replace the irredeemably compromised police minister, Adriaan Vlok.
Kriel’s previous portfolio was planning and provincial affairs. He did not have the ability, the authority or the will to get to the bottom of allegations of police complicity in the violence sweeping the Witwatersrand and KwaZulu-Natal.
Apart from fearing a backlash if he probed too deeply or acted against senior officers, he led the pro-Inkatha faction in the cabinet and argued for closer ties with Inkatha. One of the most savage incidents of Inkatha brutality with the alleged connivance of the police, the Boipatong massacre, occurred about a year after he became police minister.
The ANC broke off negotiations until a record of understanding was agreed in September 1992 that ordered the fencing-off of Inkatha hostels and banned the carrying of “traditional” weapons by Inkatha hostel dwellers.
Kriel, whose critics in government felt he didn’t understand the complexities of the situation, was incensed.
He was a leading member of the so-called “antis” in cabinet, those who opposed the agreements that led to elections. He felt the government had caved in to ANC demands too easily without extracting enough in return. “We had no plan, no strategy, no bottom line . . . no clarity on the goal at which we wanted to arrive,” he said.
He thought De Klerk’s leadership during the negotiations was disastrously weak. He was “constantly seeking a compromise”, he said, and was “unable to draw a line”.
Kriel was born in Kakamas in the Northern Cape on November 14 1941. His father was a dominee of the Dutch Reformed missionary church and baptised Hernus on the same day and in the same church as he baptised future anti-apartheid cleric Allan Boesak.
Kriel graduated from Stellenbosch University with BA and LLB degrees. He practised law until 1981, when he left the Bar after his election to the executive committee of the Cape Provincial Council, which he joined in 1977.
PRO-INKATHA: Hernus Kriel In 1984, he became the MP for Parow. Kriel was a political street fighter, by turns cunning, devious, ruthless and charming. He saw that the only way he would wield any sort of power after 1994 would be in provincial politics. He gave up his seat in parliament and manoeuvred himself into position to become the first premier of the Western Cape.
In 1995, he took the national government to the Constitutional Court when it tried to interfere in the composition of the provincial demarcation board, and won. The court ruled that government had exceeded its powers.
He called for the reinstatement of the death penalty and warned that theWestern Cape “could” secede if national government turned it into the country’s “milch cow”.
He resigned in 1998 and in 2000 led a group of Nat heavyweights into the Democratic Party.
This dealt a mortal blow to what was left of the National Party led by Marthinus van Schalkwyk, whom he detested and whose bid to succeed De Klerk he had bitterly opposed. When the Democratic Alliance was formed a couple of months later, he applied to be a DA city councillor but was rejected. He never spoke to DA leader Tony Leon again.
Kriel was a big drinker and very heavy smoker. This took a drastic toll on his health — he was bedridden for the last three years of his life.
He is survived by his second wife, AnnaMari, and three children. His first marriage ended in divorce in 1993. — Chris Barron