Publications

Academic Publications by the Team

Yusuf Patel recently published two blog-posts on the Anti-Apartheid Legacy website in relation to his PhD research.

The apartheid agenda propagated the division of wealth, pooling of resources and infrastructural advancements in areas of racial dominance. Post-democracy, The African National Congress (ANC) took a position in the overhauling of these systems and chose to incorporate the memory of apartheid in its legacy and gradually address spatial reform and inequality. This approach led to the successful stabilisation of the nation during a period of political unrest and had been heralded by the international community. However, the influence of apartheid’s architecture and spatial planning is still identifiable in contemporary South Africa. Inscribed in the nature of racial enclaves, this is where the most notable impact of the regime remains. On the one hand are monuments and buildings signifying wealth and symbolising power, and on the other are underdeveloped spaces, described as ‘townships’, ‘squatter camps’ or ‘informal settlements’. Another explicit reminder of South Africa’s difficult past is the presence of apartheid specific monuments such as police stations and prisons. The existence of these spaces continues to encourage debates on how to treat sites of torture and violence. 

John Vorster Police Station and The Old Fort are two examples of opposing treatments of apartheid spaces, the one being developed to celebrate the liberators of justice and the other choosing to ignore the difficulties of its past.

Disclaimer: Please be advised this blog contains content, including descriptions of and references to torture and suicide, that some readers might find disturbing and/or upsetting. 

In October 1974 Ahmed Timol was arrested at a roadblock, handcuffed, and driven to the Newlands Police Station in Johannesburg. The reason for his arrest was that anti-apartheid pamphlets were found in his car. Eventually, the police constructed a report wherein Timol admitted to working with the South African Communist Party in London to overthrow the apartheid regime. Timol’s body was handed over to his family later that month (Myburg, 2017). As the family began the painful task of preparing his body for burial, they noticed that Timol’s nails had been removed, his elbows burnt, his body savagely bruised, and his neck broken. The result of a magistrate’s inquest into his death a few months later found Ahmed Timol to be responsible for his own death – as he had willingly chosen to commit suicide by jumping from the tenth floor of the John Vorster Police Station (Cajee, 2005: 54). No details of torture were mentioned, leaving the apartheid state absolved of any responsibility for Timol’s death (Myburg, 2017).

As with previous deaths in detention, apartheid inquests confirmed police accounts and absolved the Security Branch of wrongdoing. According to police officer Joao Rodriguez’s version of events, Timol committed suicide by jumping out of the tenth floor of John Vorster Police Station. Other deaths-in-detention were ascribed to suicide or accidents, such as hanging or slipping in the shower. At the time, those who knew Timol and were aware of the brutality of the apartheid state police, strongly believed the sequence of events detailed by the police officers to be untrue, however, there was no avenue to appeal the inquest findings. 

Years of pressure on the South African justice system eventually resulted in a re-opening of the inquest in 2017. After days spent in court hearings listening to testimonies from pathologists, trajectory specialists, fellow detainees and former Security Branch members, Judge Billy Mothle ruled that Ahmed Timol did not commit suicide but ‘died as a result of having been pushed to fall, an act which was committed by members of the Security Branch with “dolus eventualis” as a form of intent, and prima facie amounting to murder’ (Mothle, 2017). During the inquest spatial consultants, including architects, were brought in to analyse and assist in the court’s decision. The re-opening of the inquest is the first of its kind in South African history and has encouraged families of other death-in-detention inmates to pursue similar legal recourse.