Read the full judgment on Saflii

[1] This is the judgment on the re-opened inquest into the death in detention of a political detainee during apartheid South Africa in September 1969. From the 18th of February 1970 a formal inquest was held before Additional Magistrate JSP Kuhn (the magistrate) into the circumstances attending to the death of Abdullah Haron (the Imam). The Inquest was held in Cape Town in the district of the Cape. On 10 March 1970 the magistrate made four findings in terms of section 16 of the Inquest Act, 1959 (Act No. 58 of 1959) (the IA). The findings were:

(a) On the identity of the deceased: Abdullah Haron (also known as Abdulah Haron, Malay male, about 45 years of age, Shopkeeper.

(b) On the date of death: 27th September 1969.

(c) On the cause or likely cause of death: Myocardial Ischemia; a likely contributing cause being a disturbance of the blood clotting mechanism and blood circulating due, in part, to trauma superimposed on a severe narrowing of a coronary artery.

(d) On whether the death was brought about by any act or omission involving or amounting to an offence on the part of any person: A substantial part of the said trauma was caused by an accidental fall down a flight of stone stairs. On the available evidence I am unable to determine how the balance thereof was caused.

[2] For the past 54 years, the Imam’s family, friends and comrades in the anti-apartheid struggle never accepted the findings of the magistrate as regards (c) and (d). According to them, the Imam was one of those ‘for whom before and after their deaths justice was not only blind but also deaf and dumb’ ‘to what was being done to those who suffered under and had the courage to oppose a racist regime turned brutal tyrant” [No one to Blame, In pursuit of Justice in South Africa, Adv. George Bizos SC, David Philip Publishers, Cape Town, Mayibuye Books, University of the Western Cape, Bellville]. In its introduction, the book quotes two outstanding thinkers of their time in the opening stanza. Milan Kundera said:

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

President Nelson Mandela when he signed the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act on 19 July 1995 said:

“We can now deal with our past, establish the truth which has so long been denied us, and lay the basis for genuine reconciliation. Only the truth can put the past to rest.”

Simply put, the questions that the family, friends and comrades of the Imam have, in respect of the disputed findings, can be reduced to the following: Was the Imam killed? and if so by who and how?