Neil Aggett’s family deserves answers and closure

Predictably, there have been some people who have criticised the current inquest into the death of anti-apartheid activist Dr Neil Aggett in detention in 1982, arguing that the proceedings will achieve nothing and that it is time that everyone “moved on”.

While it is certainly true that hanging on to history – and keeping alive its enmities and anger – can hold back a person, or a country, it is also a basic human characteristic to want to know the truth about events … and particularly when it comes to the death of a loved one.

So Aggett’s family – and his girlfriend at the time of his arrest by security police, Liz Floyd – deserve to know what happened to him and whether his death was really a suicide as ruled by the courts at the time.

He was found hanging in his cell on 5 February 1982 at the John Vorster Square police station in Johannesburg.

The station was also the scene of the death of another detainee, Ahmed Timol, who also supposedly committed suicide by jumping from a window.

In Timol’s case, an inquest hearing last year recommended that one of the cops involved at the time should be prosecuted.

Whether or not a similar recommendation results from the Aggett hearing remains to be seen. However, the process cannot ever be considered a waste of time or an unnecessary raking over old coals.

Many people died or disappeared during the years of apartheid and all their friends and relatives deserve the closure that the truth will bring.

And, there should also be no statute of limitations for crimes committed in that time.

Sticking to the tenets of criminal, and natural, justice helps all of us, because it entrenches the rule of law and says all of us deserve equal treatment, no matter who we are.

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