COVER-IUP EXPOSED - SECURITY BRANCH COPS KILLED NEIL AGGETT, JUDGE RULES

South Africa
COVER-UP EXPOSED

Security Branch cops killed Neil Aggett, judge rules

Fawu members hold up a banner with Aggett and other unionists' photos outside the Johannesburg High Cour.Photo:Ufrieda Ho
By Ufrieda Ho
4 Mar 2022

The trade unionist and doctor Neil Aggett did not die by suicide but by the hand of security branch cops, Judge Motsamai Makume ruled, calling the magistrate's findings from the original inquest 'a serious error of judgment' and his conclusions 'mind-blowing'.

The overturning of findings of the 1982 inquest into the death in detention of activist and trade unionist Dr Neil Aggett on 4 March brings to close a two-year court journey. It also sets in motion avenues to prosecute the Security Branch police officers linked to his killing.

Judge Motsamai Makume gave his ruling in the Johannesburg High Court, calling Magistrate Pieter Kotze’s finding from the original inquest “a serious error of judgment”. He also said some of Kotze’s conclusions were “mind-blowing”. Makume ruled that Aggett, who was found hanged in his police cell in John Vorster Square police station on 5 February 1981, did not die by suicide, as Kotze had ruled, and he said Security Branch police officers were responsible for Aggett’s murder in the early hours of that morning.

Neil Aggett’s nephews from his older brother Michael and his sister-in-law Mavis were in the Johannesburg High Court to hear the ruling. From left are Jonathan Aggett, David Aggett, Mavis Aggett, Simon Aggett and Stephen Aggett.Photo:Ufrieda Ho

In recapping the key evidence that came before his court on and off over the past two years, Makume was unequivocal about the Security Branch’s culture of torture and abuse of political detainees, an entrenched web of cover-ups and a still-persistent allegiance demonstrated in his court to protect its members – even those who have died in the 40 years since Aggett was killed.

The judge said it was unfortunate that Lieutenant Steve Whitehead, who was the chief interrogator in Aggett’s case and implicated in his killing, died before he could testify in court.

Whitehead died of cancer just days before the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) finally announced that it would reopen the inquest in April 2019. That Whitehead and Major Arthur Conwright, who was head of the Security Branch at John Vorster Square, never had to face questioning in a court has remained a bitter pill to swallow for activists and families of activists who died in detention. It continues to raise questions about the reasons for delays and the political interference standing in the way of bringing conclusion to cases that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended for investigation by the NPA in 2003 already.

Fawu organiser Thabo Kota was among the union members who gathered outside court awaiting the ruling.Photo:Ufrieda Ho

Yasmin Sooka, executive director of the Foundation for Human Rights (FHR) that has supported the Aggett family to find the truth about his final days in detention, said the next step is to explore criminal prosecutions of the surviving former Security Branch police officers implicated in Aggett’s killing.

“This ruling is unequivocal and the judge has clearly set up the next phase of investigation for murder and the cover-up of murder – that’s amazing. We need to place pressure on the Hawks and the NPA to conduct investigations while Nicolaas Deleefs, Johannes Nicolaas Visser, Daniel Elardus Swanepoel and Magezi Eddie Chauke are still alive. If they do this quickly enough we may have indictments for murder,” Sooka said.

DM/MC

*This is a developing story and more in-depth reporting will be published in the next few days.

From the Daily Maverick - Imraan Buccus • 2 February 2020

Remembering Neil Aggett – and others who fought apartheid from outside the ANC

 

The inquest into the death of Neil Aggett is, as with the previous inquest into the death of Ahmed Timol, a most welcome development. This is not just because it raises the possibility of justice for Timol, Aggett and the many others who lost their lives under a brutal state. The renewed attention on Aggett, as we approach the anniversary of his death, is also welcome because it brings forms of leftism and anti-apartheid commitment outside of the ANC to public attention.

 

For a long time, the history of resistance to apartheid was told as if the ANC had liberated South Africa on its own. There was a particular focus on the Robben Islanders and the more or less completely failed attempt to organise a military strategy from exile. The history of the trade unions and the United Democratic Front (UDF) was constantly pushed to the margins. The same marginalisation was true of other liberation movements, such as the Pan African Congress and Azapo.

 From time to time, as we witness the descent into kleptocracy, it is suggested that we replace the figure of Nelson Mandela with Steve Biko or Robert Sobukwe. Biko and Sobukwe are certainly giants in our history and there is much to learn from them.

But there are also many other figures who have not been given their historical due. Harris Dousemetzis’s fascinating 2018 book, The Man Who Killed Apartheid: The Life of Dimitri Tsafendas, has an unfortunately overblown title. But it’s a work of impressive research that shows Tsafendas has had a raw deal from our written history and needs to be given a comprehensive reassessment.
The 2012 republication of Emma Mashinini’s autobiography brought another marginal figure to the centre of public attention. Mashinini, who died in 2017, was an important trade unionist and deserves much more consistent public attention.

There are also plenty of important struggle veterans who have not received the biography that they deserve. Phyllis Naidoo, who spent her life in the ANC, Richard Turner, the academic and trade unionist, Victoria Mxenge, the UDF lawyer, and Alfred Temba Qabulua, the poet and trade unionist, were all towering figures in Durban and richly deserve proper biographical attention. In Johannesburg, names such as Abu Baker Asvat, who was known as “the people’s doctor”, David Webster, the academic, and Mthuli ka Shezi, the playwright, immediately come to mind. In Cape Town, figures such as UDF leader Johnny Issel and Mama Yanta, the first chairperson of the Crossroads Women’s Committee of the 1970s, come to mind.

If we had a much richer sense of our history and of some of the personalities who rose up to challenge apartheid we’d also have a much richer history of ideas. That would give us a lot more space and freedom, as well as more tools, to debate the present.

We’ve slipped into a dangerous situation in which the struggle against apartheid, and the left more broadly, are both associated with an organisation that is in profound moral and political crisis. It is often assumed that the rot in the ANC has delegitimised all forms of progressive politics and that the only alternative to the ANC’s kleptocracy is full-throttle neoliberalism.

But if we had a better awareness of the history of the progressive movement in our country, and the ideas of intellectuals such as Neville Alexander, Richard Turner and many others who worked outside the ANC, we’d know that the progressive movement is far bigger and richer than the history of the ANC in prison and in exile. It would then be easy to oppose both the kleptocratic and the neoliberal elements in the ANC and to offer viable solutions for moving beyond this narrow binary.

When it comes to Neil Aggett, we’ve been particularly well-served by Beverley Naidoo’s extraordinarily accomplished 2012 biography. Naidoo’s beautifully written biography of Aggett is, in terms of its sheer literary quality, up there with Mark Gevisser’s biography of Thabo Mbeki as a truly great work.

Naidoo gives a real sense of Aggett as a person, of the radical milieu in which he moved with people such as Emma Mashanini and Johnny Clegg, as well as the politics of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

 In the wake of the Durban strikes in 1973, many young intellectuals joined the growing trade union movement. Aggett began his professional life as a doctor, working in Soweto and Tembisa, and learning some Zulu. But at the same time, he began working to support the trade union movement and by 1981 was a trusted and respected figure in the Food and Canning Workers’ Union.

Like many of the intellectuals who joined the trade union movement, Aggett was inspired by the ideas of the anti-Stalinist new left, kept some autonomy from the ANC, and had a vision of a future society in which the black working class was not simply instrumentalised by the elites in the national liberation movements, but sustained its own independent power.

At the time there were brutal debates between people who took this position, often labelled as “workerists”, and others, who were often described as “populists”, who thought that all the organs of popular power should be subordinated to the ANC. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, it is now obvious that the so-called workerists were correct and that vesting all power in the ruling party was a road to disaster. The trade unions should have retained some independence from the ANC and the UDF should have done the same.

Famously, the mass protest after Aggett’s death in detention was the first time that all the black trade unions came out together and laid the basis for the solidarity that would later be formalised with the launch of Cosatu in 1985. To this day, in Cosatu and in Saftu, Aggett’s name is revered by the progressives in the trade union movement and he continues to serve as a model for how a principled middle-class activist can commit to working to build popular democratic power among the oppressed.

Aggett’s patient, self-denying and democratic form of activism is a world apart from the frequently nauseating self-promotion on social media that so often passes for activism these days. We have much to learn from him and have been very well served by Naidoo’s superb biography. Hopefully, other figures from whom we also have a lot to learn, people such as Abu Baker Asvat, Johnny Issel, Alfred Temba Qabula and many others will also come to be remembered with the same care.

And hopefully, all the other activists whose deaths were never properly investigated will, finally, also get some sort of justice.  

DM

SOUTH AFRICA: FOUR DECADES ON, WILL THERE BE JUSTICE FOR NEIL AGGETT WHEN INQUEST REOPENS MONDAY 20 JANUARY 2020?

DEATH IN DETENTION

Four decades on, will there be justice for Neil Aggett when inquest reopens Monday?

By Greg Nicolson• 17 January 2020

Jane Starfield mourns dead security police detainee Dr Neil Aggett outside John Vorster Square, 9 February 1982. Photo by Gallo Images / Sunday Times). Less

Almost 40 years after he died in custody, the inquest into anti-apartheid doctor and trade unionist Neil Aggett’s death will be reopened on Monday 20 January. The Aggett family may finally receive some justice, but the policemen who were allegedly responsible have died while the state dragged its feet.

The inquest into Neil Aggett’s 1982 death in detention will finally be reopened on Monday 20 January at the Johannesburg High Court as activists and family members look to overturn the finding that he committed suicide.

 

Aggett, a doctor and organiser for the Food and Canning Workers’ Union, was found hanged with a scarf in his cell at Johannesburg’s infamous John Vorster Square on 5 February 1982 after he was arrested the previous year by Security Branch officers and spent 70 days in detention.

Despite evidence that Aggett was brutally tortured and his family’s belief that he was not suicidal, a 1982 inquest led by magistrate Pieter Kotze found he had committed suicide and no one was to blame for his death.

 

The reopened inquest is scheduled to last five weeks and will be presided over by Judge Motsamai Makume. In April 2019, former justice minister Michael Masutha authorised the reopening of the inquest into Aggett’s death after the family had spent years trying to persuade the authorities to investigate.

Makume, the NPA and law firm Webber Wentzel, which is acting pro bono for the Aggett family, agreed in September 2019 that the reopened inquiry would begin on 20 January 2020.

 

According to reports, Aggett’s family rejected the claim that he committed suicide, but during the 1982 inquest advocate George Bizos, representing the family, argued that the officers who tortured and interrogated him induced his suicide.

 

The original inquest heard from 52 witnesses and gathered over 3,000 pages of evidence. An investigation from Foundation for Human Rights, which has pursued the Aggett case and pushed to hold apartheid-era perpetrators accountable, found evidence that witnesses lied as Security Branch officers sought to protect each other.

 

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) heard that after being arrested with his partner Dr Elizabeth Floyd, Aggett was tortured by a team led by Major Arthur Cronwright and Lieutenant Stephan Whitehead. There’s evidence that he was subjected to electric shocks, assault, had a wet towel wrapped around his head, and was made to perform strenuous physical exercises.

 

Multiple people who were detained at the same time as Aggett told authorities how they experienced similar treatment, according to the Foundation for Human Rights. At least one said he saw Aggett being forced to do exercises and heard him being beaten.

 

The first inquest heard how Aggett reported his treatment in detention to a magistrate who visited the Johannesburg police station and he also submitted an affidavit to a police investigator. He submitted the affidavit on 4 February 1982 and was found dead the next day.

 

“It is possible that Aggett died during a subsequent session of torture,” reads a briefing note from the Foundation for Human Rights, which has pursued the Aggett case and pushed to hold apartheid-era perpetrators accountable, ahead of the inquiry’s reopening.

 

Aggett was the 51st person to die while detained by the Security Branch and the first white anti-apartheid activist to die in detention. A reported 15,000 people attended his funeral.

 

Andrew Boraine, a fellow anti-apartheid activist who was detained around a similar time as Aggett, told Daily Maverick on Friday that it was important to pursue cases like Aggett’s “because the consequences of not following up apartheid crimes is dealing with current transgressions with impunity”.

 

Boraine said Aggett’s death came at a time when there was a battle between liberation movements over non-racialism and black consciousness. “It showed that there were white activists that weren’t just prepared to get involved in the struggle for liberation but were prepared to die for it.”

 

Speaking to Daily Maverick on Friday, Khulumani Support Group director Marjorie Jobson remembered Aggett from when they lived in a community of highly organised activists in Johannesburg’s Langlaagte Deep while Aggett was working the night shift at Baragwanath Hospital and doing his union work during the day.

 

The Food and Canning Workers’ Union, a predecessor to the Food and Allied Workers’ Union, was one of the first non-racial trade unions, according to Jobson, and Aggett led the historic strike against Fattis and Monis in 1980.

 

The TRC found there was sufficient evidence that Whitehead and Cronwright caused Aggett’s death. The TRC referred the case, along with around 300 others, to the NPA to investigate and prosecute. Neither Whitehead nor Cronwright testified or applied for amnesty.

 

Whitehead died in April 2019. Cronwright is also dead. Very few of the over 300 cases the TRC recommended be investigated and prosecuted were ever pursued by the NPA.

 

The reopening of Aggett inquest follows the 2017 reopening of the inquest into anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Timol’s death. That inquest overturned a 1972 ruling that Timol committed suicide by jumping off the 10th floor of John Vorster Square and found he had been murdered by Security Branch officers.

 

Timol’s nephew Imtiaz Cajee had long campaigned to reopen his uncle’s inquest and other investigations into the deaths of activists who died in detention during apartheid.

 

He said on Friday that he had “mixed emotions” about the new Aggett inquest. It is significant for the Aggett family and encouraging for other families striving for justice, but the NPA’s delay in pursuing such cases, despite repeated pleas from families, has reduced the chances of finding the truth as alleged perpetrators and witnesses die.

 

“Why has it taken so long?” asked Cajee, calling for an investigation into the authorities and politicians accused of trying to sideline investigations into apartheid-era crimes.

 

The 2017 Timol inquest overturned the activist’s cause of death but achieving further accountability has been a slow process.

 

Former policeman Joao Rodrigues was charged with Timol’s murder but the case has been delayed due to Rodrigues’s failed permanent stay of prosecution application and pending appeal. The court recommended that former officers Seth Sons and Neville Els be charged for lying to the inquiry, but Cajee said investigations into the pair are ongoing over two years after the judgment was delivered.

 

“The conclusion that can be drawn is that there’s no political will,” said Cajee.

 

In 2019, former TRC commissioners called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to launch a commission of inquiry into the failure to prosecute the cases they referred to the NPA.

 

They wrote: “Even though the TRC had handed over a list of several hundred cases to the NPA with the recommendation that they be investigated further, virtually all of them were abandoned. All these cases involved gross human rights violations such as torture, murder and enforced disappearances in which amnesty was either denied or not applied for (the TRC cases).”

 

Jobson worked with the Neil Aggett Support Group and helped pressure the Hawks to investigate Aggett’s death in 2013. She works closely with victims of apartheid and shared the news of the Aggett inquest reopening with her networks. The responses from victims and their relatives were overwhelmingly similar: if that case is finally going to court, what about ours?

 

“For truth and for full disclosure, it’s never too late,” Jobson told Daily Maverick on Friday.

 DM

FISH ROT FROM THE HEAD - SOUTH AFRICAN POLICE THEN AND NOW

When I read this article, it occurred to me that, just as in Australia, apartheid in South Africa continues unabated, the only difference being that, instead of whites perpetrating injustice and cruelty on Blacks, Blacks - and whites do it now to blacks.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fish rot from the head

Carolyn Raphaely 20 March 2014
 

Torture is routine practice in South Africa's police stations and prisons. A lineage of impunity, traced from apartheid, has meant de facto immunity for perpetrators. With South Africa celebrating its 'Human Rights Day' this weekend, the shocking reality behind its prison walls must be a central focus.

Last month was the 32nd anniversary of the death of celebrated South African struggle-hero Neil Aggett, who hanged himself in police custody after sixty-two hours of non-stop interrogation and torture on the tenth floor of Johannesburg’s John Vorster Square police station. Coincidentally, February was also the anniversary of the 1990 unbanning of the ANC, the organisation for whose ideals Aggett lived and died.

During the 1982 inquest into the then 28-year-old trade-unionist doctor’s death, testimonies by former detainees about torture at the hands of the police were heard for the first time in a South African court of law. Previously, political prisoners like Aggett and Steve Biko routinely endured torture at the hands of the police. Today, criminals suffer the same fate.

Twenty years after South Africa’s first democratic elections, legislative change and a new Constitution, torture and brutal assaults by police and prison officials continue. The “bad apple” paradigm - often employed to explain the excessive use of force - no longer suffices as allegations of torture become increasingly common place.

Take for example, the prison-wide orgy of violence at Port Elizabeth’s St Albans prison at the beginning of March in which 200 inmates claimed to have been subjected to mass-beatings and torture during a midnight search for cell-phones and other contraband. Inmates also said they were forced to lie naked on the floor in a long human chain with their noses in the anuses of the inmate in front of them.

Now, more than three decades after Aggett’s death, a long over-due official inquiry into his death has finally been opened. The investigation follows formal charges of culpable homicide laid by Brian Sandberg, co-ordinator of the Neil Aggett Support Group (NASG), against Aggett’s torturer-in-chief Lieutenant Stephen Whitehead, late last year along with a call for investigation and prosecution.

As a result, apartheid-era cop Whitehead looks set to become an unlikely poster-boy for combating the culture of impunity currently characterising South Africa’s prisons and police. “Neil’s story is bigger than him,” his old school-friend Sandberg explains. “It’s about police brutality and a State that acted with impunity and continues to do so … In re-igniting the memory of Neil, I’m trying to re-ignite the values he stood for. If he were alive today, these are the kind of issues he’d be fighting for.”

The torture never stopped

An entrenched culture of impunity with scant regard for consequence or culpability indicates that South Africa has learnt little from the lessons of the past: Not from the deaths of Aggett and Biko or Andries Tatane, Mido Macia, the 34 Marikana miners, the Groenpunt prison violence which left three inmates dead last year and the Mothutlung service delivery protests.

“Torture hasn’t suddenly reared its ugly head. It’s never stopped…,” Wits Law Clinic torture expert Professor Peter Jordi told the Wits Justice Project (WJP). “It was carried out at local police stations before and continues today…The police torture people all the time - in their homes, in police cells, in the veld, in cars…Torture is standard police investigation practice. These policemen are serial criminals. They have methods of investigation which are unlawful and for which they could be prosecuted but they never are…”
Whitehead, who never bothered to apply to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) for amnesty from prosecution for his role in Aggett’s death, was no exception. Though the TRC report handed to government in 2003 held Whitehead directly responsible for the conditions that led to Aggett’s death, Whitehead has spent the intervening years as a successful businessman consulting to government on security issues.

 As a result, following publication of Death of an Idealist: In Search of Neil Aggett by his cousin Beverley Naidoo late last year, Sandberg decided to form the NASG.  A loose coalition of family, friends and members of the Food and Allied Workers Union, members of the Khulumani Support Group and other NGOs, its aim is to obtain closure for those closest to Aggett, to champion restorative justice and to develop legacy projects and awareness of Aggett’s life work.

Meanwhile, government lethargy in the face of repeated reports of violence, assault, excessive use of force and torture seems indicative of an unwillingness to hold perpetrators accountable. This month’s mass-beatings at St Albans are an almost direct replication of a 2005 brutal mass-torture and beatings episode in the same prison. Yet, nine years later, Department of Correctional Services (DCS) Ministerial spokesman Logan Maistry says “the investigation into this case by the relevant agencies is at an advanced stage.”

De facto impunity

In 2009, frustrated St Albans inmate Bradley McCallum, after exhaustng all domestic legal options, lodged a complaint with the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) in Geneva alleging gross human rights abuses, torture and other ill treatment by South African State officials. McCallum told the UNHRC how he had been shocked, beaten and raped by a warder with a baton and also forced to lie naked in a long human chain with his nose in the anus of the inmate lying in front of him.

After ignoring five requests by the UNHRC to respond to McCallum’s allegations, South Africa was found guilty of human rights violations. This month’s St Albans mass-beatings are likely to lead to the first prosecutions under South Africa’s new torture legislation – 'The Prevention and Combating of Torture of Persons Act' promulgated last July.

The latest St Albans episode was probably not surprising - none of the 60 - 80 warders implicated in the 2005 McCallum case have been dismissed, according to McCallum’s lawyer Port Elizabeth-based Egon Oswald.

“A fish always rots from the head,” Sandberg notes tersely. “Torture and a lack of accountability are symptomatic of an arrogance that needs to be turned around. In ensuring that the interests of justice are served, we’re hoping this Government will demonstrate by its actions that it’s different to the Apartheid government.”

Civil Society Prison Reform Initiative (CSPRI) director Lukas Muntingh says that dismissal of DCS officials is a very rare sanction:  “In 2010/11, there wasn’t a single prosecution of a DCS official - despite thousands of complaints and a body of evidence telling us there is a serious problem.  Dismissal is an extremely rare occurrence within DCS and occurs in less than 1% of cases.”

According to Maistry, DCS does not keep records of the numbers of officials prosecuted in criminal cases and only records the number of officials who have been disciplined internally: “More than 3,000 correctional officials were charged with misconduct and corruption in the 2013/14 financial year. 250 were dismissed and demoted while 2,850 were subjected to misconduct and disciplinary proceedings.”

Muntingh says there has not been a single prosecution of a correctional official implicated in the death of a detainee in the last three years – though thousands of complaints have been recorded by DCS, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID), Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services (JICS) and the South African Human Rights Commission.

“Though the legislative framework presents no major obstacles to holding state officials accountable for gross rights violations, officials are rarely prosecuted and convicted for assault, torture and actions resulting in the death of criminal suspects and prisoners. Prosecution is so rare that a situation of de facto impunity results.”

In May this year, the case of the first four 2005 St Albans’ plaintiffs - McCallum, Bafo Dhuru, Xolani Siko and Simphiwe Mbena – who are suing the Minister of Correctional Services for torture-related damages, will be heard in Port Elizabeth. “The department believes they did nothing wrong,” says Oswald, who is representing 231 survivors of the 2005 St Albans assaults.

“This case is more than just a simple damages claim which would only serve to put funds in the hands of the individual victim at the taxpayer’s expense,” Oswald says. “I want the St Albans human rights abuses to be brought to light, for individual perpetrators to be held accountable and for the system to be reformed so this type of atrocity will never happen again…

“I handle cases like this on an on-going basis. I’ve issued numerous demands against the Minister on behalf of alleged victims of torture. In addition to more than 100 St Albans’ inmates I’m representing as a result of this month’s episode, I’m also involved in other mass beatings cases like the one involving  15 St Albans claimants that occurred as recently as June last year. Torture, assaults and beatings continue unabated as organised searches often degenerate into beating slug-fests.”

Given recent events at St Albans, it appears that neither the Torture Act, nor the Constitutional obligation to promote and protect the human dignity of all prisoners, appear to have made a tad of difference to those entrusted with their care.

A legacy of apartheid?

To what extent is the legacy of apartheid to blame? During the apartheid-era, a culture of impunity prevailed and was essential to the functioning of both prisons and the police. As Muntingh points out, “both institutions were closed, secretive, conservative, resistant to change and unfamiliar with accounting for human rights violations. Impunity was necessary for their functioning.”

Not much appears to have changed in the intervening years. South Africa’s increasingly dubious human rights record seems indicative of an equal disregard by the former “darling” of the international human rights community for its venerated Constitution, its domestic law, and its international treaty obligations.

Though South Africa ratified the UN Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT) in 1998, which required the criminalisation of torture domestically, until July last year torture was not a crime in South Africa. In addition, South Africa signed the Optional Protocol to the UNCAT in 2006 but has not yet ratified the treaty.

Ratification would necessitate the establishment of a national preventive mechanism and oversight body authorised to conduct unannounced, and announced, visits to places of detention by independent national and international bodies. According to Muntingh, independent oversight has proved to be the most effective means of preventing torture and promoting transparency and accountability.

“The McCallum case is an example of a complete breakdown of internal and external oversight mechanisms,” he added. At present, the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services (JICS), South Africa’s under-staffed, under-resourced prison oversight body - viewed by many inmates as a “toothless dog”- has limited oversight powers.

“How can the organisation be truly independent if JICS salaries are paid by DCS whom their job is to oversee?” ponders one JICS source.  “JICS doesn’t have the financial resources, capacity or investigative skills to carry out its mandate effectively."

“Last year 93 inspections and 39 investigations were conducted by a small team of just five investigators who investigated complaints from 242 correctional centres with about 150,000 inmates. By definition, this means investigations have to be hit-and-run...”

As for the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID), the watchdog which has a legal duty to investigate crime and torture allegations involving the police, few allegations are thoroughly investigated and prosecutions and convictions of implicated officials are rare. Only one conviction was obtained in 217 deaths allegedly at the hands of the police, or in police custody investigated by IPID in Gauteng Province alone in 2011/12, notes Muntingh.

The recent appointment of Robert McBride as IPID head has done little to allay public concerns. McBride’s controversial history includes the 1986  bombing of a Durban restaurant in which three people were killed and 69 injured for which he received the death sentence, as well as more recent arrests for crimes involving gun-running, violence and drunken driving.

Though all prisoners have a Constitutional right to conditions of detention consistent with human dignity, there appears to be a vast difference between the Constitutional promise and the reality. “We can’t let this continue,” says Sandberg. “Torture is never acceptable. Perpetrators must be called to account. To combat impunity and heal apartheid’s deep wounds, government must be accountable and be seen to be accountable.” Neil Aggett’s family, friends, and all those who have endured torture at the hands of the South African state, deserve no less.

About the author

Carolyn Raphaely is a member of the Wits Justice Project (WJP) investigating miscarriages of justice related to the criminal justice system. The WJP is located in the department of journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. 

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