Ahmed Timol.
It’s been 45 years since Ahmed Timol died, but his family is celebrating – the inquiry into the anti-apartheid activist’s death is set to reopen in June.
The first hearings will run from June 26 to 30. The judge president of the high court in Johannesburg has appointed Judge Billy Mothle to preside over the inquest. The final dates for the case are August 10 and 11.
Timol, who was a schoolteacher and member of the South African Communist Party, died in police custody at John Vorster Square in Johannesburg in 1971. Police said Timol had leapt to his death from a 10th floor window of the prison building.
The magistrate agreed, concluding in an inquest in 1972 that said Timol had committed suicide. Nobody, the magistrate said, was to blame. At one point during his detention, Timol was seen to be in severe pain with an uneven walk. No mention of torture was made in the magistrate’s findings.
For decades the Timol family and human rights activists investigated the circumstances of the young activist’s death – Timol was 29 when he died. In January 2016, the family handed their investigation over to the National Prosecuting Authority and in October NPA boss Shaun Abrahams announced that the inquest into Timol’s death would be reopened.
Timol’s nephew Imtiaaz Ahmed Cajee said at the time that the family’s immediate concern is to reverse the finding that nobody was to blame.
Cajee praised his grandmother and Timol’s mother, Hawa Timol, who appeared before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1996 to testify about his death.
“My grandmother has since passed away, but she will be smiling in heaven today,” Cajee said.
At the TRC, Hawa Timol was shaken and tearful when she spoke of her interactions with the apartheid security police and how they had stopped her from seeing her son. She described how, one evening, they came to her house and, after violently shoving her, told her that her son had committed suicide.
“After the early evening prayers, they came back again. I asked who were they. They identified themselves as security police. They stood and I asked them to have a seat. One of the policemen pushed me violently on to the seat. I stood up and I asked what happened and they told me that my son had jumped from the 10th floor of John Vorster Square and that [he had] died,” Timol said at the TRC.
She never believed that the police were truthful about the suicide. Hawa Timol died before the NPA announced that it wa re-opening the inquiry.
Timol was the 22nd person to die in police custody during apartheid. He was posthumously awarded the National Order of Luthuli in 2009.
The family has established a website of documents and findings that emerged during their investigation in his death, but key information remains missing.