Three cops hold key to Timol’s death
Family thought last men to see activist alive were dead
AGHOST long believed dead is alive and could just solve the 45-yearold mystery of an anti-apartheid activist’s death.
The family of Ahmed Timol were shocked to hear this week that the three policemen who interacted with the activist at the time of his death were still alive.
Police Sergeant Joao Rodriques told investigators 45 years ago that he was in the room when Timol allegedly leaped to his death from the 10th floor of John Vorster Square, which is now Johannesburg Central police station.
But the Timol family had believed that Rodriques and the other policemen who were involved in interrogating Ahmed were dead.
This week the family learnt that not only were three of the policemen still alive, but that they would be subpoenaed to appear in the Timol inquest.
“The gods above have intervened. We, the family just can’t comprehend it,” says Timol’s nephew, Imtiaz Cajee. “Our investigations had come to the conclusion that they had passed on.”
The former cops are Rodriques, N Els and JP Fourie.
On Thursday, Judge Billy Mothle told the Johannesburg High Court that he would issue subpoenas.
“To the extent that such officers may still be alive, I’m authorised through the office of the national directorate of public prosecutions that subpoenas must be issued for those officers to come and testify in these proceedings when we resume in our next sitting,” the judge told the court.
For the past 20 years, Cajee has been trying to piece together what happened to his uncle after he was detained by police and taken to John Vorster Square in October 1971.
At his home, Cajee even has a reconstruction, made from Lego blocks, representing Fuel Street in Coronationville, where Timol was stopped at a roadblock. There is a model yellow Ford Anglia, the car Timol was driving at the time.
The family hopes the inquest will overturn the 1972 finding that Timol had committed suicide.
On June 22, 1972, magistrate JJL de Villiers found that Timol had committed suicide, and no one was to blame for his death.
Rodriques testified that Timol had asked to go to the toilet and had rushed passed him to the window.
The high court this week heard harrowing details from Salim Essop, who was detained with Timol, about how he was given electric shocks, had a plastic bag placed over his head, and dangled by his feet over a staircase.
Essop said he saw a person he believed to be Timol being dragged by two policemen.
The court was also shown the exact spot on the 10th floor from where Timol is believed to have fallen to his death.
Many other apartheid security police have gone to their graves with their secrets.
The fear is these men might stick to their original testimonies because of the possibility of prosecution.
But for Timol’s family there is still hope.“We are counting the days until they appear,” says Cajee.