IN PICS: Emotions run high as inquest visits Neil Aggett death cell

Amidst the crude graffiti lining the walls of what was struggle activist Neil Aggett’s cell, a poignant – if likely unintentional – nod to what Aggett must have thought in his final days, sits scrawled beside the grills where he was found hanged: “Take me home. I don’t belong here”.

A perspex screen that has been installed in front of the grills, in an apparent bid to curb future suicides, is the only vestige of his stay.

The cell where Neil Aggett died at the Johannesburg Central Police Station, 21 January 2020. Picture: Paul Botes/Pool

Aggett died on 5 February 1982, more than two months after he was arrested and detained by the apartheid police’s security branch. An inquest into his death at the time saw magistrate Pieter Kotze rule it a suicide.

But that inquest was this week reopened at the behest of the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, Ronald Lamola, and on the back of sustained pressure from the Aggett family and civil society.

Yesterday, as the newly reopened inquest got into its second day, the court conducted an onsite inspection of what was then known as John Vorster Square, where Aggett was held.

Aggett’s sister, Jill Burger, yesterday wept quietly in the corner of her brother’s cell.

When her family’s lawyers had a man of the same height as Aggett demonstrate how he might have climbed to the top of the grills and hanged himself, Burger looked away.

From left, Collin Savage, Neil Agget’s sister Jill Burger and Sue Grant in one of the lifts on the 10th floor where Neil Aggett and other detainees were interrogated, 21 January 2020, during a site visit to Johannesburg Central Police Station. Picture: Nigel Sibanda

It was a day fraught with emotion.

Earlier yesterday, on the notorious 10th floor, Maurice Smithers – another activist who was detained at the same time as Aggett – stood in the same room he had, almost 40 years earlier, been detained in.

Smithers recalled being brought to the room ahead of an optician’s appointment in Hillbrow, about 10 days before Aggett died.

Judge Motsamai Abraham Makume, left, speaks to former detainee Maurice Smithers at Johahannesburg Central Police Station, formerly John Vorster Square, 21 January 2020, during a site visit to Johannesburg Central Police Station. Picture: Nigel Sibanda

“I saw there was some activity taking place and I realised that it was Neil,” he told court officials, “He was basically being made to run up and down on the spot and to go down and do push-ups”.

Smithers returned from his appointment, about an hour later, to find Aggett still there.

“I wanted to pick up a chair and throw it through the window to both alert the security police that they were being watched, but also to tell Neil that he wasn’t alone,” he said.

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