South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has confirmed that it will open an inquest into the death of leading anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Timol who died in police custody 45 years ago.
Timol was a member of the South African Communist Party (SACP), and the first political detainee to die at the hands of the Security Police at the notorious John Vorster Police Station in Johannesburg. He was the 22nd person to die in police custody.
Police claimed he took his own life by jumping from a tenth floor window. The tragedy sparked a nationwide reaction of shock, anger and demands for an inquiry.
His death was ruled a suicide in 1972, but a private investigation launched by his family into his death uncovered new evidence which it presented to the NPA, asking for the inquest to be reopened.
The Timol family issued a statement saying “the National Director of Public Prosecutions has requested the Minister of Justice to approach the Judge President of the Gauteng High Court to allocate a judge for the hearing of the inquest”.
Former President Thabo Mbeki previously described Timol as “the light in a darkening room”.
“The apartheid regime had banned us earlier and had brutally set out to break and torture our scattered comrades. They believed that they had broken the back of the underground. And then they found Ahmed. It was their own neurosis that spoke through every blow, because in him our revolutionary spirit was made flesh and they simply could not believe it. He was and remained, even after his death, the spectre that was haunting South Africa,” he said.
