By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
@GalloImages.
Former apartheid-era law and order minister Adriaan Vlok died in hospital during the early hours of Sunday.
Family spokesperson Peet Bothma said Vlok died, after a short illness, at the Unitas Hospital in Centurion, Pretoria.
He was 85 years old.
“Funeral arrangements are currently being made and will be announced shortly, Bothma said.”
Vlok served as South Africa’s minister of law and order from 1986 to 1991. He was also a member of the State Security Council at that time.
He was born on 11 December 1937 in Sutherland, Cape Province to Betty Oliver and Nicolaas Vlok.
He grew up on a smallholding close to the Orange River, attending Neilerdrift Primary School and Keimoes High School, where he matriculated in 1956.Following three months of military training in Pretoria during 1957, he began work for the Department of Justice in the magistrate’s offices of Keimoes and Upington. Between 1959 and 1966 he served as an under-secretary at the department’s head office in Pretoria. During this time he completed his Dip Proc at the University of Pretoria in 1962.
In May 1990, Vlok served on the government team, which held talks with ANC delegation at Groote Schuur, Cape Town.
In April 1991 the ANC requested the dismissal of Vlok and subsequently FW De Klerk refused. At the end of July 1991 De Klerk reshuffled cabinet portfolios and Vlok became Minister of Correctional Services In 1994 Vlok resigned from active party politics. On 20 July 1998 Vlok testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that De Klerk knew of the bomb planting countrywide a move aimed at destabilising the ANC and he asked for amnesty for his role in that regard.
Vlok survived by his wife Antoinette, three children, Nicolaas and Adriaan Johannes Vlok and Annemarie Coetzee, four grandchildren and one great-grandchild.