An opportunity to set right a cruel injustice
It has been a week of traumatic memories and the revealing of uncomfortable truths from SA’s past for those who have been present in the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg for the reopening of the inquest into the death of Dr Neil Hudson Aggett.
The inquest, which is being heard by judge MA Makume, marks the second time that the death of a political detainee during apartheid has been investigated in the democratic era.
The first was that of Roodepoort teacher and activist Ahmed Timol, who plunged to his death from the window of a 10th-floor office at John Vorster Square on October 27 1971. A much-publicised inquest into his death in 1972 found that no-one was to blame for his death and that he had committed suicide. Forty-five years later, judge Billy Mothle overturned the verdict of the original inquest and found that members of the apartheid Security Branch were directly responsible for Timol’s death.
Ten years after the original inquest into Timol’s death, in the early hours of the morning of February 5 1982, Aggett’s body was found hanging from the bars of cell 209 at John Vorster Square. He was the first white person to die in police detention and his death sparked outrage and international condemnation and led to the gaining of significant subsequent rights for political detainees in SA.
The original inquest into his death, much covered by the media, found, like Timol’s before it, that no-one was to blame for Aggett’s death, which was ruled a suicide.
Thirty-eight years later, after much selffunded investigation by Aggett’s family and increasing pressure on the government to reinvestigate his death, proceedings finally got under way on Monday morning.
While Aggett’s chief interrogators — Maj Arthur Benoni Cronwright, the then head of the security branch at John Vorster Square, and Lt Stephen Whitehead — have both died, the Aggett family will be questioning those members of the Security Branch who are still alive and were involved in his interrogation.
As they did in the original inquest, many of Aggett’s former comrades who were detained at the same time as him in 1981 will also give evidence of torture and intimidation at the hands of the security branch in their notorious offices on the 9th and 10th floors of what was once SA’s most nefarious and feared detention centre.
In his opening address, advocate Howard Varney, representing the Aggett family, told the court: “It is the Aggett family’s firm belief that Neil was killed at the hands of the SB [Security Branch] officers, either directly or through unrelenting systematic torture, abuse and neglect, which pushed him to take his own life, for which the relevant Security Branch officers must be held accountable.”
One of those relevant officers who is due to give testimony next month is Nicolas Johannes Deetlefs, who was present during
Aggett’s most intense period of interrogation — a long weekend at the end of January 1981.
Aggett was questioned, assaulted and given electric shocks during a prolonged 62hour session at the hands of the security police under the command of Whitehead.
Like Cronwright and Whitehead, Deetlefs did not apply to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission [TRC] for amnesty for his involvement in Aggett’s detention and interrogation.
During an in loco inspection of what is now the Johannesburg Central Police
Station on Tuesday, judge Makume, members of the Aggett family and the media were taken to the cell where Aggett’s body was found.
It was the first time since the building’s opening in 1968 that the media was allowed to see inside what was once the section reserved for political detainees, on the second floor of the station’s cell block.
During a re-enactment of how police said Aggett died — they claim he may have used a kikoi to tie a noose around the bars of his cell before hanging himself — an emotional Jill Burger, Aggett’s sister, was unable to watch proceedings.
In her testimony on Wednesday, Burger described her younger brother as “generous, kind … and soft-hearted” and told how on hearing of his death she had felt that the security police “had reduced this proud, strong man to such a degree of insanity, really, that he had taken his own life”.
She also told judge Makume that her father, Aubrey Aggett, had gone to his grave in 1996 still hoping that the government of the new SA “would get those bastards one day”.
Aggett’s former partner, Dr Elizabeth Floyd, who was arrested with Aggett on November 27 1981 and would never see him alive again, spoke of her own traumatic experiences of detention and the posttraumatic stress disorder she suffered as a result — leading to lifelong effects on her short-term memory and the necessitation of having to re-teach herself to read and write after her release from detention in March 1982.
Floyd also detailed the harassment that she and Aggett underwent at the hands of the Security Branch prior to their arrests — with policemen often following Aggett in several cars, tampering with the pressure in the couple’s car tyres, forcing her off the road and raiding the offices of the trade union where Aggett worked.
Aggett’s chief interrogators are no longer alive and it will be difficult without their testimony to establish with any certainty what exactly happened to Aggett during his final days in John Vorster Square. But this inquest remains an important reminder to South Africans of the terrible and terrifying experiences of many of those who fought against the apartheid regime and the families they have left behind who still so desperately seek answers and justice for their loved ones.
With various appeals having been made to President Cyril Ramaphosa and the Zondo commission into state capture to investigate allegations that political interference has hampered the ability of the National Prosecuting Authority to properly deliver on the promises made to victims and their families after the conclusion of the TRC process, it is important, as Floyd reminded the judge during the conclusion of her testimony, that we remember that: “So long as the state continues to protect perpetrators at the expense of victims, the project of reconciliation will remain incomplete. We must never forget the ultimate sacrifices made by people like Neil for our freedom, and we should always remember that freedom is not free.”