Timol: a time to heal
THE reopening of the inquest into Ahmed Timol’s murder in police detention brings us back to the reality that the past is not really the past. In the tortured history of colonialism and apartheid, there is still so much pain that needs to be soothed.
Harrowing as it is, one hopes that the inquest will get closer to the truth about what happened to Timol at John Vorster Square in 1972. Whether the three surviving apartheid security policemen, of the 23 who were involved in Timol’s torture, will answer the subpoena issued by Judge Billy Mothle remains to be seen.
Timol’s mother died without an answer to her plea that she be told what had happened to her son. Her deep pain is in a short letter in her own hand to the parents of Dr Neil Aggett when he was killed in police detention in 1978.
“My deepest sympathies… I can imagine how you must be feeling because I felt the same when I lost my son also while in detention and the same age,” wrote Hawa Timol.
The letter is reproduced in the moving book Death of an Idealist – in Search of Neil Aggett written by his cousin, Beverley Naidoo. The foreword is by veteran human rights lawyer George Bizos who, since Monday, has sat through the new Timol inquest.
Bizos also served as the lawyer for the family of Black Consciousness leader, Steve Biko, who was murdered in police detention 40 years ago this year. An insight into Biko’s thinking is to be found in I Write What I Like, edited by Aelred Stubbs. Every South African should pause for a few hours to get their minds around that book.
Another compelling story of a young life taken early is that of Umkhonto we Sizwe’s Andrew Zondo, executed for detonating a bomb in Amanzimtoti in 1985, which resulted in civilian casualties. Professor Fatima Meer wrote that as a sociological insight in The Trial of Andrew Zondo.
So many stories wait to be told. Looksmart Ngudle was the first person to be murdered in police detention on September 5, 1963. His brief portrait appears in Phyllis Naidoo’s Footprints series but he warrants more research. John Harris, hanged in 1965, is being written about by his daughter who lives in the US.
As the Timol inquest unfolds, his nephew Imtiaz Cajee’s Timol – A Quest for Justice is well worth a read especially for South Africans who continue to claim they did not know about the sadism of apartheid oppression.
Find Higgins on Facebook as The Bookseller of Bangladesh and at #Hashtagbooks in the Shannon Drive Shopping Centre in Reservoir Hills.
Monuments erected in Overport
COMMUNITY activist Kenny Padayachee recently erected two monuments at the Hartley Estate Tamil and Telegu Cemetery in Overport, which symbolised the effort made by the 1860 Indian indentured labourers to improve the lives of their families. For information about the monuments, contact Padayachee on 0312095972 or 0837771172. – Herald Reporter