Judge Billy Mothle’s judgment, to overturn the 1972 apartheid era inquest into Ahmed Timol’s death, is a victory for justice in this country.
It was a finding that the Timol family has waited to get for 43 years. Timol did not commit suicide, but was pushed to his death either from a window or the roof of John Vorster Square by security branch policemen who had exacted the most brutal torture on him over a period of five days.
Advocate Howard Varney, acting for the family, effectively dismantled the 46-year-old lie regarding Timol’s suicide, and the reopened inquest unmasked a major security branch cover up.
It exposed how the interrogators had lied during the first inquest, as did the ageing security police who testified during the current inquest, and how they hid, destroyed and fabricated evidence.
Judge Mothle found that the methods of torture used on the four detainees arrested with Timol was so brutal and reckless that it showed the security branch had no boundaries for the respect of human life. The two primary torturers of Timol, Hans Gloy and Faan van Niekerk, had a record of brutality against detainees, as they had been previously accused of using iron rods and electric shocks on their victims. Van Niekerk had already been charged with two counts of assault where one detainee had died.
The reopened inquest heard how Timol was brain-damaged from a blow to his head by what must have been an iron rod. All in all, his body had sustained 35 injuries, many of which had been sustained prior to his fall.
Judge Mothle’s ruling was clear and categorical. Joao Rodrigues, who was the security policeman who claimed to have been the last person with Timol before he died, had participated in the cover-up and committed perjury for providing contradictory evidence. Judge Motle’s recommendation is that Rodrigues be prosecuted.
The judge has also recommended that security branch policeman Neville Els, who had an office on the ninth floor of John Vorster Square, must be investigated for misleading the court as witnesses identified him as one of the interrogators who used the brutal “helicopter” method of torture on detainees. He thus could not have only heard about the assault of detainees from the media, as he claimed.
Judge Mothle also ruled that the state has a responsibility to assist the families of those victims who died in police custody to find inquest documents and reopen those cases in order to get closure and healing.
What remains heartbreaking about the Timol case is that it was the party of liberation in the government that stymied every attempt made by the Timol family to get the Timol inquest re-opened. As was captured in the Timol family’s expanded heads of argument in the inquest, “the Timol story is sadly a shameful story of neglect as the authorities in our new democratic order failed or declined to take action while the key suspects were still alive”.
“This was an inexcusable lapse. It regrettably points to a design on the part of the authorities to permit the perpetrators of the past to avoid a reckoning with the truth, and escape justice.” According to advocates involved in the Timol case, in 2007 our political leaders instructed the National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) to cease work on cases from the past.
The advocates have supporting affidavits and official documents from Vusi Pikoli, head of the NDPP at the time, and Anton Ackermann, who confirm that they were subjected to intense political pressure (from cabinet ministers and others) to stop these cases. Such interference constitutes a serious violation of the rule of law.
Pikoli has disclosed that he was told that if he pursued such cases it would open the door to cases against the ANC. He refused to stop pursuing the cases and the rest is history. He was suspended shortly thereafter and the political cases were removed from Ackermann. This explains why hundreds of political cases have never seen the light of day, because they were deliberately suppressed.
Former TRC commissioner Dumisa Ntsebeza has said openly that it was not a coincidence that there have been so few prosecutions, pointing to Pikoli’s affidavit which said political interference was to blame for the NPA’s failure to prosecute.
Of the 300 cases for possible prosecution that the TRC handed over to the NDPP, the Timol case is the only one that has resulted in an inquest being reopened.
This represents a deep betrayal of those who struggled and died to free South Africa.
* Ebrahim is Independent Media’s Group Foreign Editor