His death was confirmed to News24 by family spokesperson Peet Bothma who said Vlok died in Unitas Hospital following a short illness.
Apartheid-era minister Adriaan Vlok died aged 85 on Sunday morning in a Pretoria hospital.
His death was confirmed to News24 by family spokesperson Peet Bothma who said Vlok died in Unitas Hospital following a short illness.
Born on 11 December 1937 in the then-Cape Province, Vlok started his career in public service working for the Department of Justice where he later became the private secretary of Minister of Justice Petrus Pelser.
According to SA History Online, in 1970, Vlok resigned from public service and went into business with the aim of entering the political sphere.
He had already joined the National Party in 1959 and in 1964, started participating actively in party functions.
In 1972, Vlok was elected to the Verwoerdburg City Council and served on its management committee.
Two years later, he was elected as the MP for Verwoerdburg in 1974, and a decade later he was appointed as the deputy minister of defence.
In 1985, he was appointed as the deputy minister of law and order. He later rose to the position of minister of law and order where he oversaw the brutal police policies that suppressed public anger against white minority rule, News24 reported.
"His ministry was responsible for suppression of the revolt and the detention of an estimated 30 000 people, with as many as 15 000 being held at one time during the declaration of the state of emergency," according to SA History Online.
Vlok was also responsible for administering the controversial national security management system and in 1988, announced the restriction of 17 extra-parliamentary organisations, including the United Democratic Front, National Education Crisis Committee, Release Mandela Campaign, Soweto Civic Association, SA Youth Congress and Azania People's Organisation, effectively freezing their activities.
During the latter part of apartheid, Vlok as a member of the State Security Council, was embroiled in allegations of planning and implementing repressive measures, including police hit squads and carrying out bombings and assassinations of anti-apartheid activists.
During the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), Vlok was the only Cabinet minister to apply for amnesty and admitted to crimes, including the bombing of the SA Council of Churches headquarters and Coastu's headquarters in 1988.
Vlok passed away in the early hours of Sunday morning at the age of 85 following a short illness.
He is survived by his wife, three children, four grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
Vlok was renowned as the only apartheid minister to admit to human rights violations. This includes the bombings of the SA Council of Churches and Cosatu headquarters.
He was granted amnesty in 1999 by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) after he testified about his role in apartheid brutality.
In 2007, he was handed a 10 year suspended sentence for attempted murder after he pleaded guilty to instructing security police to kill anti-apartheid activist Frank Chikane.
Family spokesperson Peet Bothma said funeral arrangements were being made and would be communicated.
"I believed that apartheid was right," he told AFP in 2015. "It was our job to make people fear us."
In his old age he said he had changed his mindset, and sought redemption by handing out food to the poor in a township -- settlements outside cities designed to segregate non-whites.
In 2007, Adriaan Vlok was given a 10-year suspended sentence for attempting to murder a prominent opposition figure.
He had sought to kill Reverend Frank Chikane -- then head of a leading anti-apartheid organisation -- some 18 years earlier by rubbing poison on clothes in the priest's luggage at Johannesburg airport.
"I feel ashamed of many things I have done," he said at his sentencing, admitting that his commitment to the racist regime was "a mistake."
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