Unfinished business of apartheid era will deny us accurate account of SA’s history

The death this week of former Security Branch cop Joao Rodrigues who was finally charged with the murder of Ahmed Timol was a sobering reminder about the unfinished business of apartheid, and the restlessness of its ghosts.

Time is slowly taking away the chance of justice for the families of those who died at hands of members of the former South African security services … because many of the alleged perpetrators are passing on before
they can be held to account.

Apart from Timol, there are other cases where the likelihood of closure for families is vanishing.

These include that of Dr Neil Aggett, the doctor and trade unionist who died in detention in 1977. Aggett’s chief interrogator and the key suspect in his death, Lieutenant Stephan Whitehead has himself passed on.

All of these unresolved cases are the business which the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) never got to, or left unfinished. A process that was meant to bring healing through revealing the truth and then, hopefully, reconciliation never achieved its goal.

By leaving more questions than answers when it completed its work, the TRC failed the victims of apartheid. And, in that failing, it left the space for anger and bitterness to grow.

In allowing such a lapse of time – between alleged perpetrators being prosecuted after they refused to go through the amnesty process – our prosecution authorities have also been complicit in this failure to exhume the truth of the past.

There will be those who argue that the sleeping dogs of apartheid are best left to lie, particularly as so much time has passed.

Yet, that would not allow us an accurate account of the history of our country, no matter how unpalatable it might be.

And history, as the best teacher of life lessons, should never be ignored.