Riyaz Patel
Almost 40 years after he died in police custody, the inquest into the death of anti-apartheid activist Neil Aggett will be reopened at the Johannesburg High Court Monday.
Aggett, a medical doctor and organiser for the Food and Canning Workers’ Union, was found hanged in his cell at what was then John Vorster Square police station in Johannesburg on February 5 1982.
He had been in detention for 70 days after being arrested by the apartheid regime’s Security Branch.
In the late ’90s, the TRC heard a 1982 inquest into Aggett’s death, presided over by magistrate Pieter Kotze, declared that no one was to blame for his death.
This was in contrast to the evidence presented by the Aggett family’s lawyers, and the “no one to blame” verdict was overturned by the TRC.
Major Arthur Benoni Cronwright and Lieutenant Stephen Whitehead, both deceased, were held directly responsible by the TRC for “the mental and physical condition of Dr Aggett which led him to take his own life.”
Aggett’s sister, Jill Burger, in an interview with The Guardian in 2013, spoke of the family’s anguish regarding the unresolved matter.
“I was with my dad on the day he died and he said: ‘I wish we could get those bastards’. That was his last thought,” Burger said.
The Hawks registered an official investigation into Aggett’s death in late 2012.
Three years later, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) opened its investigation, and in April last year, then justice minister Michael Masutha authorised the application to reopen the inquest.
Meanwhile, two letters written by former TRC commissioners to President Cyril Ramaphosa calling for an inquiry into allegations of political interference in the prosecution of post-apartheid cases have been received but not yet responded to.
A similar appeal by Lukhanyo Calata, the son of Cradock Four victim Fort Calata, to the Zondo Commission of Inquiry has likewise yet to receive any proper response.
