S. Africa Prisoner Release Reopens Wounds : Amnesty: Some are ready to forgive and forget. But those who lost limbs and loved ones say it’s too soon.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa —  On a Saturday night in 1986, Robert McBride parked a car loaded with 110 pounds of explosives in front of a busy tavern on Durban’s beachfront. It exploded precisely at 10:15, killing three young women and angering millions of white South Africans.

In the week since McBride and 150 other political prisoners walked free from prison, many South Africans have had trouble putting their country’s bloody past behind them.

“I don’t think something like that should be forgotten,” said Helen Kearney, 46, whose legs were scarred by McBride’s bomb. “I’m not a violent person. But I’d like to blow him (McBride) to smithereens.”

Many others seem to agree. Several white inmates stabbed McBride with a pair of scissors the day before his release, wounding him slightly. A few days later the brother of one of McBride’s victims, Angelique Pattenden, was burned while making a bomb in his home. Now McBride has an around-the-clock African National Congress guard.

South Africans are wrestling with a moral dilemma since some of the nation’s most notorious political prisoners went free in an agreement between ANC leader Nelson Mandela and President Frederik W. de Klerk.

Of all the peace initiatives taken by De Klerk in the last three years, this one was the most difficult for many in the country to swallow.

To be sure, many have been willing to forgive and forget, in hopes of restarting constitutional negotiations. But for many others, especially those innocent civilians who lost limbs and loved ones in political violence, it is too soon to forget. For them, the desire for retribution outweighs the need for reconciliation.

“There is a widespread, sullen anger, especially among whites,” said David Welsh, a political scientist at the University of Cape Town. “The more sensible people realize that if the process (of negotiations) is to go ahead, then they must swallow hard and accept that all of these characters are going to be free.”

But, for people personally touched by political violence, “the anger is understandable, and probably justified,” Welsh said.

De Klerk won wide praise last year when he freed nearly 1,000 political prisoners. But those inmates had committed either minor crimes or capital offenses that involved the deaths of police and other symbols of the white minority government.

This time, De Klerk freed ANC guerrillas who had killed farmers, children, bar patrons and “suspected” township informers. And, in an effort to show his impartiality and to appeal to right-wing whites, the president also freed Barend Strydom, an avowed white supremacist who had laughed when he randomly shot seven blacks to death in downtown Pretoria.

The decision was “very, very difficult,” De Klerk said. He acknowledged society’s need for retribution, but he argued that the need for reconciliation was greater.

None of the deeds of the newly freed prisoners “can be morally excused,” he said. “But we are trying to close the book. Retribution and reconciliation are mutually exclusive terms in South Africa.”

As satisfying as De Klerk’s reasoning may have been to some, many South Africans are finding it difficult to accept. And their criticism of De Klerk’s actions has focused on two men on opposite sides of the political divide--the ANC’s McBride and the right-winger Strydom.

Both spent several years on Death Row. Their sentences were commuted to life in prison. And now they are free. McBride says he’d do it again under the same circumstances. And Strydom also says, “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“They should have hung both these guys from the word go,” said Lorraine de la Rosa, 39, of Durban. “They’ve been lingering on and on and now they’re free. Mr. De Klerk is giving everything away so quickly that you can’t keep up.”

De la Rosa had settled down in front of an Irish coffee when McBride’s bomb exploded at Magoo’s Bar on June 14, 1986, killing two whites and an Indian woman. One of her close friends was among the dead, and De la Rosa still carries scars from the shrapnel that McBride later testified he had carefully packed in his bomb.

While McBride did not renounce his actions last week, he tried to address the concerns of the Magoo’s Bar survivors and the families of his victims.

“I’m not a bloodthirsty person,” the 29-year-old said after his release. “But you must remember that the reason behind all the acts (of the ANC), not only mine, was for the achievement of peace and democracy in South Africa.”

In a letter written before his release, McBride said he could “never expect the families of those who died to forget, nor can I expect them to welcome my release. But reconciliation is not about forgetting our pain. It is about forgiving.”

Memories of McBride’s deeds and his trial remain alive in Durban, though. On the stand, the mixed-race defendant coolly admitted to the bombing and ascribed his actions to a hatred for whites that began in early childhood.

Now many whites in Durban say that McBride is more likely than any of the other prisoners released last week to become a target of assassination. His life might be a little safer, though, because of De Klerk’s decision to also free Strydom, a hero to many right-wing whites.

Strydom gave little comfort to his victims when he left Pretoria Central Prison last week through a side entrance, having sold his story for a large sum, said to be about $10,000, to a weekly Afrikaans-language newspaper. Strydom’s friends and family said he had no regrets about his actions, which he considered an attempt to start a war that would rid the country of blacks.

Unlike the ANC guerrillas who were released, Strydom’s goal--to protect the white race from an ANC government--has yet to be achieved. And, in that newspaper interview, the 26-year-old former policeman said he saw nothing wrong with what he did.

“Words fail me,” said Geelbooi Mabena, one of 22 blacks who were shot by Strydom in 1988 as he stalked Pretoria’s streets with his 9-millimeter handgun. Seven of those blacks died, and Mabena was paralyzed from the waist down.

“He is a cold-blooded murderer,” Mabena told the Sowetan newspaper, “who smiled his way through the streets, killing black people indiscriminately.”

Mabena was hospitalized again last week with complications from his spine injury. That injury forced him to leave his job with the city of Pretoria. Now he supports his wife and two children on a $160-a-month disability pension.

Dr. Ronel Greyling, a Pretoria criminologist who has counseled many victims of left-wing and right-wing political violence, says the best medicine is knowing the perpetrators are behind bars.

“I used to help victims accept what happened to them by telling them that justice had been done,” Greyling said. “And it worked. But now we can’t say that. Because justice hasn’t been done.”

Some of South Africa’s victims, though, especially those whose attackers were never caught, have found comfort in believing that national reconciliation may mean an end to political violence.

“People who were maimed or killed by either side are just unfortunate,” said Gordon Eddey, who lost his leg in a 1988 ANC bomb explosion that killed three at a rugby match in Johannesburg. “It’s no more complicated than that.”

“I think it’s great that all these people are being let out,” Eddey said. “Let’s be mature about it. There’s just not going to be peace until we all forgive.”

The ANC’s guerrilla war was aimed primarily at government installations. But about 60 people were killed, some in shopping malls and other “soft targets,” angering and frightening white South Africans.

By contrast, many more innocent black South Africans have been killed by police in protest marches or, the ANC contends, at the hands of government assassins. And thousands have died in township fighting that the ANC contends is the result of direct or indirect government involvement.

The ANC and the government now are arguing about a general amnesty for state officials. While the government supports an immediate blanket amnesty, the ANC has rejected any amnesty before an interim government is established.

“Is a person entitled to pardon his own crimes?” Mandela asked recently. “The government wants to pardon state officials and all those who have committed crimes for the purpose of upholding apartheid.”

But that is an issue for the future. Now the release of ANC guerrillas and Strydom has triggered memories of the everyday South Africans who died in the cross-fire. And the residual anger hasn’t been eased by the unrepentant remarks made by the newly freed prisoners.