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Justice seems tipped for Waterkloof Four
Date Posted: Saturday 03-May-2008Andrew Babeile felt like it was "a newborn day" when he signed with his parole officer for the last time. "That was how I felt, but at the very same time, there is something I will miss," he says, the warmth in his voice rapidly disintegrating.
"My entire lifetime, I will bond with my criminal record. This means there are certain places I will never reach."
Babeile - who was first sent to prison after he lashed out with a pair of scissors at a fellow Vryburg High School pupil 10 years ago - finally stepped out as a free man a week ago. He'd spent nearly seven years of his 29 under prison sentence or parole, and will, he fears, forever be known as the black boy who stabbed a white classmate in a racist attack.
His is indeed an unfortunate, contradictory chronicle. Babeile was labelled dangerous a decade ago in different political weather, paraded as one of the few brave enough to directly take on the anti-democratic establishment of a fascist small town. The media took him apart, and that enhanced his cachet. But the political embrace is long cold.
Now Babeile - who was a teenager when he struck out at a taunting Christoff Erasmus in the playground as the bell rang for the end of break - says he experiences persistent reminders from whites in the town of their perception of his cowardice. In his own community, convicts are shunned.
On the day he walked alone into Vryburg from his grandmother's two-roomed house in the adjacent Huhudi township to sign for parole for the final time, "sore and excited in my heart", four white murderers not much younger than him were considering this week's appeal against their sentence for a race killing seven years ago.
The Pretoria families of the notorious Waterkloof Four - who were teenagers when they beat a man to death - say they will fight to the last, standing with their sons as they have suffered deeply. Society, they claim, has been unforgiving since a court found that Christoff Becker, Gert van Schalkwyk, Frikkie du Preez and Reinach Tiedt were guilty of a vicious, unprovoked race slaying, sentencing them to less than the minimum, 12 years in prison, in 2005.
The men are now aged around 22 and have yet to spend time behind bars. They will know the closing words of this chapter - their first appeal - on Wednesday .
Oeloff de Meyer, who is on their legal team, is consistent in his view that they were after all mere schoolboys, not the rapacious monsters of the media's invention, when they beat one homeless man, as a group, and - not hours later - killed another. The reference to their adolescence is a judicious qualifier, yet it was only when one member of the teenage mob was so embattled by the spiritual vacuum of his conscience, that he finally told the truth about that December night in 2001.
Certainly, seven years of investigation, arrest, interrogation, court processes, bail and hundreds of thousands of rands in legal costs would take their toll on anyone. So would nightmares, paranoia and violence. But the men have spent the years of their bail emboldened by suburban comforts, enriched by the valour of their family and friends.
Babeile has become an introvert through necessity. He says he still has few moments of positive contact with white people, his experience consistent with a survey which shows there remains relatively little social interaction between black and white South Africans. There is a view that for too many people, the relationship stultifies as that of perpetrator and victim.
Babeile - who has not denied his culpability - may argue that he finds himself in the precarious position of being both, although compassion may dictate that, like the Waterkloof Four, he is stained by the systemic race violence in which he grew up.
None of these men are the children of a post-revolutionary consciousness: if it exists at all, they just missed it. But while the historical privilege attached to the four Pretoria men has been a source of protection, they would argue that it is also packed with assumptions. By virtue of their race, they must have money. Enough to keep them outside?
By virtue of his race, Babeile has said, he knows the jail cell, he lives in poverty, is unemployed and, he fears, unemployable.
"Just imagine, Andrew was once a hero," he is rueful. "Now, I'm also trying to figure it out, why I do not belong. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I am always being accused of doing a thing that is not related to how it is to be a human being. I wish I could be another human being. I will never survive in this country - they've ripped me up, and now they're gone. The Andrew who we knew from then, he was a symbol. Today, I'm wearing my own flag."
The standard has flown at different heights for the Waterkloof Four.
Tiedt, who is now 22, works as a personal trainer at a gym. He lives quietly with his mother, Liz, in Pretoria. Immediately, there's a bristle when she hears a journalist is on the end of the line. "I don't want to talk about anything now." She is disarmingly polite, but those around them say the years have been tough on the Tiedts, who are not well-off. They've tried desperately to support Reinach, who was 15 when he participated in the bloody attacks after a night out with his friends at a club in Hatfield. He has expressed his remorse.
Becker, who has never shrugged off the reputation of an arrogant young man, was shut out of a dream acceptance at the New York Film Academy after his conviction, but that has not deterred him. He's been studying drama in Cape Town anyway, doing casting calls for TV advertisements.
His probation officer, Erna Pieterse, says the 22-year-old believes the trial was a "vendetta". So does his father, Dr Christo Becker, who is substantially influential in his white Afrikaans community - a tightknit middle-class establishment that buoys the Klofies, the affectionate nickname of learners at Hoërskool Waterkloof where he has remained principal.
The pursuit of herrings appears to have burdened Becker. He has warned of the threats which he says his family has received. In one instance, he told his parole officer, an employee of his mother's was forced into a car. The people inside instructed the woman "to injure herself" and then say that Becker had raped her.
Du Preez's probation officer, Heidrun Buhrow, says he battles "emotional tension", his persona utterly changed from that of a sociable, high-achieving schoolboy whose mother was a teacher at Hoërskool Waterkloof.
Most controversial is Van Schalkwyk - parodied for his perpetual smile outside the courtrooms. He plays rugby for the Mpumalanga Pumas, and it is understood his mother is married to Jimmy Stonehouse, a member of the coaching staff there. His inclusion in the team has invited distaste, notably from newspaper letter writers, yet there has been no retribution.
One writer stated that South African rugby had "once again shamed us", and urged that Van Schalkwyk's appointment be condemned "by all decent South Africans". Parliament's portfolio committee on sports and recreation later warned it would haul the Mpumalanga Rugby Union before its members to explain why a convicted race murderer was included in its premier team. Committee chairperson Butana Komphela called the decision "immoral" and demanded an apology, but the Mpumalanga Rugby Union says their player is simply being given an opportunity to advance his sporting career.
The Waterkloof Four are said to be afraid of ever being photographed striding side by side again, their preferred pastel shirts and ties having invited labels, like the Gucci killers. They say this has dogged public objectivity, but the pews in the Pretoria High Court this week were nonetheless packed with their friends and family.
Babeile had no one with him when he signed for the last time. His mother is battling an abrasive depression, but he was disappointed that there was no party in the Huhudi recreation hall, "no ubuntu."
But he is proud that a play about him is going to the Fringe of the Grahamstown Festival. That gives him an unsteady sort of hope, as does the fantasy of a presidential pardon.
De Meyer says his clients will continue their fight. If this appeal, to high court Judge Willie Seriti and Acting Judge Piet Ebersohn, fails, they "will go all the way to Bloemfontein". Senior counsel Jaap Cilliers argues that the lower court erred in convicting them of assault and murder committed when they were minors.
Babeile, who was 19 when he was arrested, was already serving out a three-year suspended sentence after spending 18 months in juvenile prison, guilty of attempted murder, when the four teenagers kicked and punched to death the man in a park. Evidence during their trial was that Du Preez (16 at the time), had shown off his "Naas Botha" kicks during the attack, denting the steel-point of his shoes.
For none of these five young men, will life ever be the same again, their childhoods are gone forever. All that lies ahead is uncertainty.