An anti-apartheid fighter convicted in a 1986 bombing that killed three women was officially appointed police chief of a Johannesburg district on Tuesday, making him responsible for the safety of 2 million people.
Robert McBride, now 40, was one of the most famous saboteurs in the underground of the African National Congress (ANC). He was sentenced to death for bombing a crowded beachfront in Durban, served six years in prison, then was granted amnesty in 1992 as a concession by a weakened apartheid government.
He told the local press this week that he saw a certain justice in his appointment to lead the police force that he tried so desperately to undermine during the apartheid era. He promised to support the force with the same passion with which he once opposed it.
"There is no aspect of my past that I am ashamed of," the SAPA news agency quoted him as saying.
McBride won the support of local political officials for the job, as well as an implicit endorsement from South African President Thabo Mbeki. In a monthly newsletter published by the ANC, Mbeki's political party, the president said McBride's rise shows how far the nation has come in reconciling itself to its past.
"We will not agree that Mr. McBride should be condemned for having been a liberation fighter," Mbeki wrote.
But the opposition Democratic Alliance said McBride's appointment indicates the ANC cares more about pleasing its constituency than competent governance.
Douglas Gibson, chief whip of the Democratic Alliance, said it was "lunacy" to pick McBride to supervise police work in the area of Ekurhuleni because he knows nothing about police work.
McBride responded that his past skirmishes with the police have at least taught him "what not to do."
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