State should fund inquests into apartheid atrocities
AFTER THE end of an emotional week at the reopened Ahmed Timol inquest, Yasmin Sooka was adamant about one thing: the government needs to fund inquests into apartheid atrocities.
Sooka is the chairperson of the Foundation for Human Rights (FHR), an organisation that played a key role in assisting the Timol family reopen the inquest into the death of the anti-apartheid activist.
Timol’s family wanted to counter the original inquiry’s findings in June 1972, headed by magistrate JL de Villiers, which stated that the activist committed suicide by jumping out of a 10th story of John Vorster Square police station.
The station gained infamy during apartheid for the torture and deaths of scores of activists who opposed the regime. It is now Johannesburg Central police station.
Sooka, who was speaking on the sidelines of the inquest at the high court in Johannesburg on Wednesday, said the government needed to explore hiring retired judges at a special inquest court for families of activists who died or went missing in mysterious circumstances to find closure.
“The next case we have in the pipeline is (Dr Neil) Aggett, and we are waiting for the government to communicate with us on (when it will be opened).
“There are just so many. It’s about how we can bring closure for families and how we can also turnaround these verdicts that people committed suicide – that is so implausible,” she asserted.
Dr Aggett was a white physician and trade unionist who worked predominately in black townships. He died at John Vorster in February 1982 after 70 days of detention without trial. The apartheid police said he hanged himself.
Sooka said the time the Timol family lawyers, led by advocate Howard Varney, spent in court this week “cost a lot of money”, which is why the FHR is advocating for the government to play its part with funding. “This is really the job of the state and we want to find a way for it to assume its responsibility.
“Under international law, the state has an obligation to ensure that proper investigations are carried out and, where appropriate, prosecutions follow. Victims and their families have what we call an imprescriptible right to the truth – which means it’s not time-bound. In this instance, the state must do its job.”
Questions sent this week to the Department of Justice about whether government was willing to assist in reopening inquests went unanswered.
It was an emotional week at the inquest; where testimonies were heard from Timol’s brother, Mohammed, and Dr Salim Essop, who was arrested with Timol in October 1971 after they were caught with banned SACP and ANC “propaganda material” in the car they were travelling in. Timol died shortly thereafter.
Essop told the court of torture he said was meted out by the security police.
It was a three-day testimony from Essop, where he relayed torture tactics such as his head being put in a black plastic bag until he felt like he “was suffocating”, being repeatedly kicked in a method known as “mule kickers”, and being electrically shocked, which he said caused “excruciating pain”.
At the end of his first day of testimony, Essop told Independent Media: “While it’s not nice to relive a nightmarish experience and go through the details of what I experienced under torture, it’s good that I can publicly relate what happened to me.”
Mohammed Timol relayed what he called the brutally of apartheid’ policemen, who he said humiliated his mother.
“They were at our flat daily, looking for things, intimidating them and so on.
“The day before they came to inform my mother that Ahmed was dead, my mother asked one of the security policemen in Afrikaans, ‘please, I want to see my son.’
“And the security policeman said, ‘you will not see your son. You did not give him a hiding when he was small – we are now giving him a hiding.’ That was the humiliation for my mother.”
Judge Billy Mothle will oversee the reopened inquest, where the final dates will be August 10 and 11.