THE re-opening
of the inquest into the causes of Ahmed Timol’s death in detention, 45 years
after the fact, is most certainly a long-awaited constitutional triumph.
However, with it comes tremendous pain, and the nightmares of an era when
security policemen were licensed killers.
For
me, it is a distressing story to write – as like so many – these shadowy men were
once an integral, and unpleasant, part of my life. I was one of the lucky ones,
though, escaping a certain Lieutenant Frans Mostert. He’d arrived at Lavender
Hill High School, where I taught then, early one November morning in 1985.
Accompanied
by three cars, a mustard coloured Colt Gallant, a box Toyota Corolla and a red
vehicle (whose make I can’t recall), Mostert’s story to the principal that he
just wanted to ask me “a few questions” was not convincing. I was warned and
managed to avoid the reception committee.
This happened
after the Security Police had been tailing us for some time, even detaining one
of our comrades and beating him up at Maitland Police station. His “crime”? He couldn’t
name a “blonde lady” in the group. In those days I had long hair and the “blond
lady” was actually me. I was only identified later, and as an extremely minor
activist, it seemed as if my time had come.
I had
a narrow escape from Mostert, but I still had to go underground. In those days
you were guilty by association, and I was privy to the location of some buried AK47s
that would not only have incriminated me, but others too.
Mostert
had somehow got wind of this, and he’d become like a rabid dog. My fear of
being detained, like everyone else, was real. By 1985 nearly 60 people had died
in detention and we knew what the torturers were doing – especially at
Culemborg, a disused shunting yard in Cape Town’s CBD.
Last
week, mindful of the Timol inquest and the invitation to do a story, I put up a
post on Facebook and re-visited the TRC files. After a few harrowing hours of
going through testimonies, I grew angry. Very angry. I’d been reminded, again,
of how few of these demented men had pitched up at the TRC.
The
Facebook string was even more illuminating. We’ve really forgotten how many
people were touched by the State of Emergency. The list of security Branch psychopaths
increased with every post. This struggle narrative, the one of the
rank-and-file, is one that must be told.
And even
for those high-profile victims – like Imam Abdullah Haron, Suliman Salojee,
Steve Biko, Dr Hoosen Haffajee, Dr Neil Aggett and Ahmed Timol – there are also
stories that still need to be told.
So
when Judge Billy Mothle of the Gauteng High Court ordered that all the
surviving policemen (three out of 23) who were involved in the detention of activists
Salim Essop and Ahmed Timol, be subpoenaed to testify, I cheered.
For John
Vorster Square is not only responsible for the death of Timol, but six other
activists too: Wellington Tshazibane, Mathews Mabelane, Samuel Malinga, Dr Neil
Aggett, Ernest Dipale and Clayton Sithole.
The inquest
– this time a proper one in response to findings and representations to the NPA
by the Timol family – sits again later this month to further investigate claims
that the police lied to mask the truth of Timol’s brutal killing in 1971.
Magistrate
JL De Villiers, who sat on the enquiry, has been accused of ignoring key
forensic findings in exonerating the police – who bizarrely claimed Timol, a
teacher and member of the SA Communist Party, had jumped out a 10th story window.
It
will be interesting to hear what these men have to say, almost half a century
later, about the killing of Timol and the torture of Essop and so many others
in a vault – called Die Waarkamer (the Truth Room) – in Room 1013.
“I
will authorise the issue of subpoenas to all the police who were involved in
the arrest and interrogation and detention of Mr Essop and Mr Timol. If they
are still alive, I am authorising, through the NPA, to issue subpoenas,” said Judge
Mothle, instructing the police commissioner to help the court.
Salim
Essop, who was detained together with Timol and who is now an elderly figure,
testified how 15 officers had taken shifts, beating him, pulling out his hair,
electrocuting him, suffocating him and urinating on him. They did this to him for
four days, whilst not allowing him to sit or rest. He was hospitalised after
slipping into a coma.
He
recalled having seen a hooded person being escorted by two policemen whom he
assumed to be Timol, because of his clothes. Timol, he said, was in a terrible
state, unable to walk unaided. Essop testified that due to their torture,
no-one would have had the energy to jump out of a window.
Dr Dilshad
Jhetam – who was detained because she knew Timol – was shocked, slapped,
deprived of sleep and forced to urinate in her clothes. She recalled hearing Timol
screaming in a nearby room, his screaming suddenly stopping on the third day of
her interrogation. She said a female security branch officer had later told her
“the Indian is dead”.
Almost
five decades later, those words “the Indian is dead” are as spine-chilling as
the dark day they were uttered. They help to remind us that we come from a sombre
past – 300 years of colonialism and 46 years of apartheid – years hallmarked by
structural violence and institutionalised racism. These are the ghosts that we
have to excorcise. And as Nelson Mandela said on his release from prison:
forgive, yes, but forget not.
