Family hopes to find closure 46 years on
THE family of Matthews Mabelane, one of the anti-apartheid activists who plunged to his death at the infamous John Vorster Square, has expressed confidence in the state’s crusade to find them closure.
Lasch Mabelane and Steve Mabelane, brothers to Matthews, sat in the gallery at the South Gauteng High Court in Joburg yesterday, where the case against 80-year-old retired sergeant Joao Rodriques for the 1971 murder of Ahmed Timol was due to continue.
The stories of Matthews and Timol read quite the same. Both plunged to their deaths from the high-rise John Vorster Square, now Johannesburg police station.
Matthews, from Soweto, died in 1977 after being arrested for his activism. The apartheid regime declared both deaths, like several others that happened in police custody, as suicides.
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) charged Rodriques with murder and defeating the ends of justice after an inquest into Timol’s death.
Judge Billy Mothle ruled in the Pretoria High Court last year that Timol was killed by members of the security branch and did not commit suicide by jumping from the 10th floor of John Vorster Square 46 years ago.
He recommended the prosecution of Rodriques, who was present when Timol died.
Yesterday at the South Gauteng High Court, Judge Ramarumo Monama announced that Rodriques’s trial would commence on January 28 next year. His application for a permanent stay of prosecution would be heard before then. Monama gave interested parties until November 5 to file papers against, or in favour of, the application.
Outside court, Matthews’s brothers said that the NPA had also given them hope that his killers would be brought to book.
Lasch said: “The NPA has been very co-operative and have shown willingness to help us. In fact as we’re speaking, we rest assured that evidence is being collected. At the end, I think we will go to court and hear evidence about how our brother died.”
Steve said their father died earlier this year still not knowing how his son died. “He was completely hurt. He used to tell us ‘I’m going to die without knowing what happened to my son’.”
NPA spokesperson Phindi Mjonondwane said the Mabelanes were one of the families being assisted to find closure.