Ahmed Timol commemoration: 50 years on

27 October 2021

Dear Friends and family members

It’s hard to believe that fifty years have passed since Ahmed Timol was brutally tortured and killed here at John Vorster Square by the apartheid state. Ahmed was a teacher, an activist and a member of the banned communist party. John Vorster was notorious for the more than 8 deaths in detention during 1970 and 1990.

For those of us who were privileged to be part of the negotiations, we believed that when our own democratically elected government came to power, victims and their families would recover the right to the truth about the death of loved ones. We would finally be in a position to establish who was responsible for ordering apartheid crimes including the killings, assassinations and deaths in detention during the apartheid years and we would put them on trial. After all apartheid had been declared a crime against humanity.

Despite our deep disappointment that the ANC capitulated to the apartheid government on prosecutions, we were willing to accept the deal as necessary despite our misgivings so as to allow the new South Africa to come into being. The amnesty deal was such a bitter pill to swallow but we did not object on the basis that the Rule of Law would be restored by punishing those who did not provide the truth or who refused to come forward. We were also so hopeful that we had managed to build an accountable process in which the rights of victims and their families were center stage.

What we did not anticipate was the unwillingness of many apartheid order killers and the politicians that led them to come forward. Rodrigues was identified during the TRC process, despite being asked to give testimony he refused. He was not pursued. It would take many years of advocacy by the family of Ahmed Timol before the NPA was compelled to reopen the inquest into Ahmed Timol’s death. It was only after Imtiaz Cajee, the Foundation and Frank Dutton met with Shaun Abrahams in 2016 that the NPA finally decided to take the matter forward.

At the inquest they were still going down the road of an induced suicide and it was only after the family’s legal team led by Advocate Howard Varney indicated that we intended to pursue a finding of murder and would seek to set aside the earlier inquest finding of suicide that the state came on board.

Even then they withheld critical information about the role played by the state, the NPA and the Hawks in suppressing investigations in the TRC cases. Bear in mind that in 2005 the FHR and other organizations went to court to compel the state to set aside Prosecutorial guidelines which in effect gave the perpetrators another bite at impunity.

The inquest was groundbreaking in South Africa’s history of dealing with apartheid. We were able to hear from Mohamed about his own detention and torture. From Imtiaz, his pursuit of the truth over so many ears. It was however the similar fact evidence of survivors of torture like Salim Essop that one was able to get a glimpse of the real horror of the apartheid system. Salim was not alone and countless survivors including Dr Dilshad Jetham, Prema Naidoo, and Professor Kantilal Naick to name but a few spoke to the brutality of their torture at the hands of the apartheid state.

Sadly though, had the state reopened this inquest when Imtiaz first approached them in 2009, Gloy and Van Niekerk the primary interrogators of Ahmed Timol would have been alive to testify about their roles. Joao Rodrigues evaded any accountability for his role- he talked about his failing memory, his age and refused to provide any evidence of his role on that fateful day.

Nevertheless because of many good people who did come forward, the court was able to establish when he was killed and also that he had been murdered by the security branch.

Judge Billy Mothle’s ruling was historic. He found that “ members of the Security Branch who were interrogating Timol on the day he died, through an act of commission or omission, murdered Timol. “

This resulted in Joao Rodrigues being indicated for murder for his role in the death of Ahmed Timol. Rodrigues sought an application to stay his prosecution and that’s when we got another shock- two NPA prosecutors filed affidavits in which they alleged political interference by the state, also that there had been a moratorium on investigations by the Hawks and that as far back as 2003, the investigation into the TRC cases were suppressed.

The Full bench was quite unequivocal in its ruling that Rodrigues should stand trial and that his age and infirmity were not issues that precluded his indictment. They went further and said that the state’s conduct was inexplicable and that there should be an inquiry into the political suppression of the TRC cases. Rodrigues using our money (taxpayers) went to the Supreme Court of Appeal. Judge Cachalia was scathing in his ruling and said that justice would not have been possible if not for a continued and tireless efforts by the Timol family who:

…have waged what can only be described as a heroic struggle with dogged determination to bring the alleged perpetrators of these crimes to trial. The public interest demands that their efforts are not in vain. [Par.60].

He also denied Rodrigues’s application to go to the Concourt. The majority ruling did allow for Rodrigues appeal -another expensive frolic to avoid standing trial.

By January of 2020, more than 3,5 million rand had been spent on Rodrigues and his lawyers.

Rodrigues died on 7 September 2021 without having to account for his actions.

Why is pursuing Apartheid criminals important

South Africa’s transition was premised on restoring the rule of law. Amnesties are generally prohibited under international law for serious crimes. In our case it was permitted as it was before the Rome Statue came into being and also because the Amnesty Committee was seen as a quasi-judicial process operating under an accountable process to obtain the truth. Nevertheless, the fact that the law would step in when the commission completed its work and indicated who had not applied for amnesty or who had been refused amnesty is what made the unjust -more bearable.

Sadly, the state conspired with apartheid criminals to make more dirty deals in secret. They also hid this from victims and South Africa. The De Klerk Foundation recently released a statement in which he said that he found the revelations at the TRC “shocking and as abhorrent as anybody else" but insisted that he and other senior party members were not willing to accept responsibility for the "criminal actions of a handful of operatives", stating that their behaviour was "not authorised [and] not intended" by his government.

He also refused until August 2020 to acknowledge that apartheid had been declared a crime against humanity. He has never accepted that the apartheid government was a criminal state and established death squads to kill and assassinate its opponents.

He himself is said to have been at a meeting of the state security council when the orders were given to kill the Cradock four-for that he must be called to account too.

The reason we need to pursue these cases is because victims and their families are entitled to the truth about the past. Our society is entitled to know to truth about who was responsible.

We also need to know of the state is still riddled with these apartheid relics and whether the old order is still calling the shots in the NPA and the Hawks

Ahmed Timol – find me something he said.

Another quote from De Klerk

Mr De Klerk went on to acknowledge that it was a crime, and to apologise profusely for his role in it, but he insisted that apartheid was responsible for relatively few deaths and that it should not be put in the same category of "genocide" or "crimes against humanity.

Issued by the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, 11 November 2021