Aggett: Chikane recounts detention torture
FORMER anti-apartheid activist Reverend Frank Chikane detailed how the apartheid security police subjected political activists to severe methods of torture, sometimes killing them if they refused to disclose the information they wanted.
Chikane was giving testimony at the Johannesburg High Court during the re-opened inquest into the 1982 death of fellow activist Neil Aggett, who was found hanging in his cell at John Vorster Police Station, and whose death was declared a suicide by a previous inquest.
Chikane, who was detained in the same station during Aggett’s death, said the security police had used thirddegree methods of torture on detainees in a bid to enforce co-operation.
“They trampled on you and did anything they could do to you. About three people died during that detention,” Chikane said.
He remarked on how he was personally tortured to the point that when he was released seven days later, he was completely disoriented. “I couldn’t even say where home was,” he said.
He said the torturing techniques during his second detention included assault, being chained against a heater and being made to stand for 48 hours while security police were changing shifts.
“I went through six weeks of torture and I would say every method (was used) – direct assault, chaining me... They hanged me head-down until I lost consciousness,” he said.
Chikane recounted his last sight of a visibly weakened Aggett being walked by security police through the corridors to his cell a week before he died.
“That is the last picture I have of him and it is not a good picture to talk about. I had seen him walking with the police before, normal and fit, but when he appeared from that corridor – because you hear sounds when you are in the cell – and then I saw him coming with the police, struggling to walk and bending forward almost like he was not able to pick up his body,” Chikane said.
Aggett was the second among those who died in police custody during apartheid to have an inquest into his death re-opened.
In 2017 an inquest into the death of Ahmed Timol was re-opened, and several police have since been charged, despite the previous apartheid inquest ruling that he had voluntarily jumped off the 10th floor at John Vorster Square in 1971.
Chikane said the security police had admitted to him that they had pushed Timol out of the window.
“I was taken to a window on the 10th floor where I was told this is where they took out Timol and that they were going to throw me out of that window if I don’t talk. I didn’t tell them what they wanted and they actually put me on the window as if they were throwing me out and brought me back again,” he said.