Intrepid journalist and author Christi van der Westhuizen expended quite a lot of time and resources working on her book, White Power: The Rise and Fall of the National Party – time and resources that she would not have cared to see come to nought, but which almost did.
In a fascinating article published in the Mail & Guardian, van der Westhuizen writes about when Eugene “Prime Evil” de Kock – one of the figures in the current Presidential Pardon brouhaha – nearly got her book banned, and why it is instead de Kock who should be banned, for life, from ever living as a free man:
On November 21 2007 De Kock succeeded in obtaining, on an ex parte basis, an urgent interim interdict from Judge Willie Hartzenberg in the Pretoria High Court. If made final, it would have had the effect of banning my book, White Power and the Rise and Fall of the National Party.
De Kock complained that a quotation from Leon Wessels, former deputy minister of law and order, in which he said “(a)nother example would be Eugene de Kock, braaiing meat and drinking for hours next to a corpse they had set on fire …”, was defamatory.
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