On 30 April 1993 Colonel Eugene de Kock was discharged from the South African Police ahead of further investigations into his activities as head of the Security Police's section C1 at the notorious Vlakplaas Farm north of Pretoria. By then the ruling National Party was engaged in a massive damage control exercise. Many officers of the Security Forces as well as De Kock himself were being eyed as possible scapegoats. As it transpired at his trial, De Kock was the government's chief assassin. But De Kock was not an put-of-control policeman, he was an officer acting under orders. In this book he names the men who gave him orders, what they ordered him to do and for what reasons. He lifts the curtain on a heinous period of South African history when the architects of apartheid thought that any means justified their ends. But Colonel Eugene de Kock is not going to lie down and say nothing. This book lays out in great detail the corruption and moral decadence that pervaded the SADF and the Police. There are still many whose crimes against humanity were just as terrible as his own. Now De Kock tells his story: the one that the politicians and the generals had been hoping would never appear. Review: "From a socio-historical perspective, A long night's damage: Working for the Apartheid State provides the reader with an invaluable insight into the mind-set and the amorality of the South African State during the so-called "Total Onslaught", through the experiences of former South African Police Colonel, Eugene De Kock. The book documents the grim exploits of De Kock, at one time the Apartheid government's most efficient political assassin, when shooting, burning, poisoning and blowing up bodies of anti-Apartheid activists was the "patriotic" norm for certain sections of the Security Branch Police." -Mike Earl-Taylor MTN Centre for Crime Prevention Studies Department of Psychology Rhodes University, Grahamstown.
