Martyrs’ families deserve answers

THE rheumy eyes of Phillip Mabelane, looking out of the frame in yesterday’s Cape Times, have known pain. But, now aged 95, Mabelane has one last hope – that he will know the truth of what happened to his son Matthews 40 years ago. This hope comes from the finding of Judge Billy Mothle in the Ahmed Timol inquest in the Pretoria High Court last week – that Timol did not kill himself by jumping from the 10th floor of the former John Vorster police headquarters in Johannesburg as was found in the initial inquest.

Judge Mothle found that he had been pushed out of the window or off the roof by his interrogators, the apartheid Security Branch police.

The judge said the Timol inquest revealed there were many more families seeking closure on unanswered questions about relatives’ deaths in detention during apartheid, and he urged that such families be assisted with records and other information required to have the initial inquests reopened.

Timol’s family spent years tirelessly gathering evidence to build their case and have been vindicated. It is to their credit, and that of activists such as George Bizos – who represented the Timols in the 1970s – that they are willing to assist other families who lost loved ones in a similar way to also seek redress.

The Mabelane family are among the first to have approached the National Prosecuting Authority and the Human Rights Commission to help them in their quest to find out the truth about Matthews’s death.

Like the Timols, they cannot accept that their son died by accident. We trust that Phillip Mabelane will get the answers he wants, and find justice so that, as he so poignantly stated, “both he and Matthews can rest in peace”.

We also cannot believe Imam Abdullah Haron sustained all the injuries he did, falling down stairs at Maitland police station. Or that Ashley Kriel, handcuffed behind his back and shot in the back by apartheid security branch policeman Jeffrey Benzien, posed a threat.

It’s time for the truth to come out.