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‘Post-apartheid govt did little to go after apartheid-era killers’

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The post-apartheid government has done little to aggressively go after apartheid-era killers. That’s the view of the Foundation for Human Rights.

On Monday, former Security Branch Sergeant Joao Rodrigues was charged with murder and defeating the ends of justice. He was implicated in the murder of anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Timol in 1971.

Ahmed Timol’s mother, Hawa, testified at the 1996 TRC, just 25 years after her son’s death. “They killed him and said that he committed suicide. I want to know who assaulted him.”

Last year, the Pretoria High Court overturned the ruling – changing the cause of death to murder.

Former TRC Commissioner Yasmin Sooka was assigned to lead the questioning back then.

“All of us were overcome by what she was saying and her description of having looked at the body of her son in the mortuary because, you know, they had to bathe the body. She also raised that his finger nails and toe nails in some instances had been pulled off.”

Ahmed Timol was pushed to his death from the 10th floor of the former John Vorster Square Police Station in 1971.

A year later, an inquest ruled his death suicide.

In 2017, the Pretoria High Court overturned the ruling, changing the cause of death to murder.

Sooka says, “In the case of the Timol matter, Joao Rodrigues had an opportunity to come forward when the truth commission was holding its hearing but at that time he refused to talk at all.”

The 79-year-old Rodrigues faces charges of pre-meditated murder and defeating the ends of justice. Now, a call for intensive prosecution.

“I think attitudes have hardened because in this 20 year period, we have seen very little movement, either on the part of the state or on the part of perpetrators. And so inevitably these days many families are turning to the state to prosecute. We are also dealing with people who are dead – some of them are dying.”

After Rodrigues’s successful bail application on Monday, the NPA made the concession.

NPA Spokesperson Phindi Mjonondwane says, “We are willing to go an extra mile to ensure that those who allegedly committed such atrocities face the full might of the law.”

Rodrigues will return to court on September 18th.

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