Cape Town - More than 50 years after their father’s death at the hands of apartheid security police, the family of Struggle activist Imam Abdullah Haron feel that closure is finally within reach.
Speaking as the re-opened inquest into the Imam’s death resumed in the Western Cape High Court, Imam Haron’s son Muhammed said he and his sisters, Shamela Shamis and Fatiema Masoet-Haron, had already gained partial closure in November last year.
That was when expert witnesses testified that their father had indeed been killed in detention and had not fallen to his death by accident as claimed at the original 1970 inquest.
On Monday, as family advocate Howard Varney began his closing arguments before Judge Daniel Thulare, Muhammed, outside the court, said: “We just hope this will reinforce what has always been top of mind, which is that he was killed, and hopefully that will bring final closure.”
In his opening remarks, Varney said the re-opened inquest had come too late for the Imam’s widow, Galiema Haron, who died on September 29, 2019, exactly 50 years to the day of the funeral of her late husband.
“She went to her grave without the closure she so deserved. The post-apartheid state failed the Haron family and many other families waiting for truth and justice from the apartheid era.”
The Imam Haron case was one of hundreds referred by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA).
The TRC was set up by the Government of National Unity which governed South Africa from April 27, 1994, to February 3, 1997, to help deal with apartheid crimes.
Varney said: “Regrettably, these cases were deliberately suppressed and only picked up again in recent years following pressure by families and civil society organisations.”
He quoted the June 2021 Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) judgment which dismissed former apartheid policeman Joao Rodrigues’s bid for a permanent stay of his prosecution for the 1971 murder of Ahmed Timol.
In that judgment, the SCA said it was “perplexing and inexplicable” why these cases were suppressed.
The SCA accused the executive of having adopted a policy position that TRC cases would not be prosecuted despite the work and report of the TRC advocating a bold prosecutions policy.
Varney said: “Most of these cases cannot be revived. As in the Haron case, suspects, witnesses and family members have died.
“The harm visited upon these families and their communities is incalculable. They deserve nothing less than a full, open and independent commission of inquiry as to how and why justice was denied to them.”
Varney, who will conclude his closing arguments in court this morning, took the court through the testimony of witnesses from both the original 1970 inquest and the current re-opened inquest.
He said getting to the truth of what happened to Imam Haron during his security detention had been a difficult exercise as the events took place more than 50 years ago and the only versions available are that of the police.
“According to the police version, he died alone so there are no witnesses to his last moments.”
There was a poignant moment when the court resumed in the afternoon after the lunch break when the judge gave permission to former political prisoner Shirley Gunn to light a candle in court in remembrance of former SACP and ANC member Stephanie Kemp, who died aged 81 in March this year.
Kemp was one of the witnesses who gave evidence about her suffering at the hands of the old SAP Security Branch which tortured apartheid-era detainees.
Among those in court were a delegation of 13 members of the Turkish branch of the International Jurists Union. The group was made up of members of the Istanbul Second Bar Association, who are in the country to follow the proceedings.
Also present was the Al Jama-ah party leader and MP Ganief Hendricks, who said: “We hope that the outcome will be positive and the Haron family will finally find some sort of closure.”
The closing arguments will continue today with the NPA’s advocate Lifa Matyobeni making his, after which Judge Thulare is expected to write his judgment.
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za