Vindication and victory for the Aggett family return the spotlight to why justice is delayed for so many other families of Struggle activists and why the ANC government continues to let them down.
‘Thank you,” were the just-audible words from the back of courtroom GC of the Johannesburg High Court as Judge Motsamai Makume rose from his seat, completing his ruling in the reopened inquest into the death in detention of the activist and trade unionist Dr Neil Aggett.
The judge found it impossible too that Aggett would have climbed the bars in his cell to affix a kikoi — a prohibited item for a detainee — to the bars and then have been able to suspend himself from the cloth to commit suicide. Judge Makume said the absence of more death-scene photographs and the fact that there was only a solitary fingerprint lifted from the scene smacked of tampering, staging and a cover-up.
The statement welcomed Judge Makume’s conclusion that it was nonsensical that Aggett had killed himself because he was supposedly embarrassed at having confessed, sold out and incriminated his comrades, as was testimony put forward in the reopened inquest. “Some of the medical forensic evidence was not conclusive though, so I was not confident we would get the judgment of murder. But the results that were achieved in the ruling have been achieved through thorough investigation, analysis, legal strategy and powerful detainee witnesses. This ruling is the final step,” Floyd said.
She added: “So many other families have no idea what the truth is, they just know that their relatives and loved ones never came back to them. And you really need to know. And beyond that, there needs to be justice — to see perpetrators standing in court would be very good as well.” The murkiness of trade-offs and backroom deals as South Africa’s democratic transition was negotiated means that 28 years into democracy there are unanswered questions about why certain people or groups had — and still have — sufficient leverage to be protected from prosecution and the depth of political influence that makes those deals stick even now.
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