Mohammad Timol, Ahmed Timol's younger brother, with Struggle activist Laloo Isu Chiba. Mohammad Timol, Ahmed Timol's younger brother, with Struggle activist Laloo Isu Chiba.
Durban - It took 46 years for the truth to be revealed and for anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Timol’s name to be cleared.
Last Thursday a landmark verdict was handed down by Judge Billy Mothle at the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria.
He found that Timol did not commit suicide but was pushed to his death by apartheid police security branch officers.
Mothle’s judgment overturned the initial inquest report which found Timol had jumped to his death from the 10th floor of John Vorster Square police station (now Johannesburg Central police station) on October27, 1971.
This was five days after he was arrested at a police roadblock near Fordsburg, Johannesburg, with his former pupil and friend Salim Essop, then a medical student.
Mothle ordered that former security branch officer Jan Rodrigues, 78 - who was with Timol in room 1026 on the day he died - be investigated for murder as an accessory.
After Mothle delivered his verdict, he received a round of applause from the packed courtroom.
Timol’s nephew, Imtiaz Cajee, who was only 5 years old when his uncle was murdered, relentlessly led the family quest for justice for Timol for many decades.
He said he was overwhelmed by Mothle’s ruling, which reversed apartheid magistrate JL de Villiers’s suicide finding and recommended the prosecution of former security policemen.
“The family’s pursuit of justice began on the day after uncle Ahmed’s arrest. For many years the quest was led by his parents (Hawa Ismail Dindar and Haji Yusuf Ahmed Timol),” said Cajee.
“My own involvement took root after witnessing my grandmother testify at the TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Commission).
“After her death, an application was made to the NPA (National Prosecuting Authority) in 2003 to investigate my uncle’s case, but it didn’t go anywhere.
“It was to take another 13 years In January 2016 we presented new evidence to the NDPP (National Director of Public Prosecutions), again appealing for the matter to be re-investigated. In October 2016, the NDPP agreed to reopen the inquest.”
Social conscience
From the moment news of Timol’s death reached home, his parents and family refused to believe he had committed suicide. Cajee said the family refused to believe the police because Timol was a Muslim, and Islam states that suicide is “sinful”.
He said Timol was a young teacher with a social conscience, a member of the SA Communist Party and an anti-apartheid activist.
He was “a human being”, adored by those he taught at Roodepoort Indian High School.
Timol had a girlfriend in England to whom he planned to return - his life lay before him, said Cajee.
He said it was also well-known at the time that police tortured and assaulted political detainees.
“Although the courts did not acknowledge it, acting as rubber stamps for the versions of psychopathic police and their masters, people in the community knew from the reports of former detainees that interrogations were brutally violent.
“In 1964, Uncle Ahmed attended the funeral of Babla Saloojee, who was killed in police detention. What the police were doing was not a secret,” said Cajee.
It was also Essop who told of how he was beaten to an inch of his life over three days - to the point when his father applied for an urgent interdict to stop the assault.
Cajee said the police story that they had treated Timol well - when there was an overwhelming body of evidence that brutality was routine - was “palpable nonsense from day one”.
He said the police’s entire version was unbelievable, and had now been officially dismissed as lies by Mothle.
Despite the odds against him, Cajee forged ahead in his quest, saying he had total belief he would succeed, with the grace of God.
“My life is a calling to preserve the honour and legacy of my uncle and ascertain what really happened to him. I have been very fortunate to be able to attract a group of like-minded fellow travellers in the pursuit of the truth and justice,” he said.
Cajee said Rodrigues had an opportunity to come clean at the reopened inquest, and had little to lose had he done so. Instead, he chose to take the riskier route of sticking to the old security police suicide story. He might have been feted today as a pathfinder who had lifted the lid on some of apartheid’s dirtiest secrets, he said.
Instead, he chose to try and keep the lid in place.
Cajee said his family had never sought vengeance. But he said it would seem appropriate that Rodrigues should now face the consequences of being exposed as a central figure in the cover-up of Timol’s murder, and for lying in court.
Speaking about his uncle, Cajee said he was totally committed to fighting for freedom and justice.
Educator
His commitment as an educator in the political awareness of his students demonstrated a gift he had to shape the minds of future generations to be compassionate about the poor and oppressed, Cajee said.
His advice to families of activists who died in police custody and are yet to get justice is to “never give up”.
“The wheels of justice eventually turn. No lies are sustainable for ever,” said Cajee.
State advocate George Bizos has been at the side of Cajee and the rest of the Timol family. He was present at Timol’s 1972 inquest hearing and has participated in many political trials. Bizos said he “felt honoured” to have been a part of their pursuit for justice.
“Justice is something you have to pursue,” he said. “A single judgment can help and I am sure it will We have been working on this case for almost two-and-a-half years. This judgment has justified our efforts.”
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, in his letter to the Timol family sent on October 12, said justice took long but led to a path of victory for the family.
“Nineteen years after the TRC found police directly responsible for Timol’s death - and the inquest a sham - the family finally succeeded in persuading the state to re-examine the case,” said Tutu.
“There are so many TRC matters left unresolved - it is exciting the Timol family were driven not by vengeance but by pursuit for the truth and justice.
“And this is what democratic South Africa should be.”