I saw Neil Aggett being tortured, police officer testifies
ONE of the black apartheid police officers who was responsible for routinely fetching anti-apartheid activist and trade unionist Dr Neil Aggett from his cell for interrogation has testified how he witnessed Aggett being tortured for more than an hour.
Mohanoe Makhetha was testifying at the reopened inquest into the death of Aggett, who was found hanging in his cell in 1982 at the John Vorster Square Police Station.
No foul play was found in Aggett’s previous inquiry and Makhetha told Judge Motsamai Makume yesterday that he had lied during the previous inquest by claiming not to have witnessed his torture as he was scared of also being brutalised.
“Anything could have happened to me. I was going to put myself into trouble. They could have tortured and assaulted me and I could have lost my job. My family would also be in danger if I said I did see something,” Makhetha said.
He also told the inquest that the statement he submitted to the previous probe had not been written by him but by the security branch and given to him to rewrite and submit.
“I could see him as he was being made to jump and exercise. His hands were also stretched while jumping. This happened the entire time while we were in the next room until we left,” he said.
He remarked that Aggett was “healthy and handsome” when he first saw him shortly after his detention and that he was a different person a week before his death.
Fellow detainee Jabu Ngwenya, whose cell was close to Aggett’s, also recounted how Aggett once showed him scars which demonstrated that he was being subjected to severe electrocution a few days before he died.
“He pulled up his sleeves and showed me the marks of electric shocks. He told me that he was being tortured. His face looked very thick and the colour had changed,” Ngwenya said.
Former detainees have testified before the inquiry on how severe torture had taken a toll on Aggett, some describing him as having been “finished” a day before he was announced dead.
The activists blamed the security police for being responsible for his death and of covering it up.
Ngwenya pointed out that Aggett was taken in and out of his cell for interrogation more than any other detainee during their period of detention.
He said security police had been suspiciously busy around his cell the night before it was claimed he committed suicide.
“I jumped and looked through the window, and I saw a lot of white policemen moving up and down. They were hiding something that day and it was something big,” he said.
Former intelligence minister and Struggle stalwart Ronnie Kasrils also detailed how security police tampered with documents that were distributed by the liberation movement in a bid to make it look like detainees were being instructed to commit suicide in custody.
Kasrils testified how one of the documents he helped pen for the SACP was amended by the security police to include an instruction for activists to “rather commit suicide than betray the organisation”, and that detainees must act insane and tell lies while being subjected to interrogation and torture.
“To make statements such as this would be like saying straight to the security police, the media and so on that we tell our people to commit suicide, to lie and so on and from that point of view, this could never be the case,” Kasrils said.