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Suicide was not a part of SACP policy – Ronnie Kasrils at Timol inquest

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Former minister of intelligent services Ronnie Kasrils testifies on day 14 of the reopened Timol inquest today. Picture: screengrab/sabc
Former minister of intelligent services Ronnie Kasrils testifies on day 14 of the reopened Timol inquest today. Picture: screengrab/sabc

A prominent member of the underground South African Communist party in the 1970s, Ronnie Kasrils said in court today that it never had a policy of suicide should anyone have been caught by the security police.

His testimony shed some light on the document Inkululeko Freedom No 2, which is what was used by apartheid magistrate JL de Villiers when he ruled in the 1972 inquest that Ahmed Timol had committed suicide.

Kasrils, a former intelligence minister, helped compile the document, which he told the court was updated and distributed every three or four months.

Kasrils was given a copy of the document that De Villiers had used in his judgment, and said that the wording was incorrect.

“I am not an Afrikaans linguist but to me this sounds as if it was translated by an Afrikaner,” he said. Kasrils pointed out that the grammar was incorrect and that all members were trained to survive and to hold out for as long as possible.

He said his own wife, who died in 2009, also fought in the struggle. She was captured and pretended to be mentally unstable. She was transferred to a mental facility from which she escaped.

These, Kasrils said, were the kinds of tactics SACP members were taught, not suicide.

Advocate Howard Varney, on behalf of the Timol family, asked Kasrils about the distribution of leaflets and other underground propaganda, which Kasrils said was being distributed across the country by the early 1970s.

“The newspapers at the time, both English and Afrikaans, project that fully. From ministerial statements to police statements, they didn’t know what the source was and it really affected them to a great degree,” Kasrils said.

“And so would you be of the view that throughout the course of 1970 through to October, the month in which Mr Timol was arrested ... your recollection is that the security branch had no success getting to the bottom of who distributed these leaflets?” Varney asked.

“Correct. There were no arrests made up to that point,” Karils said.

Timol was a part of a four-man unit. Kasrils said the units would receive a copy of the propaganda, and copy and distribute them.

Kasrils knew Timol through Jack Hodson, a senior member of the party who trained Timol.

Kasrils maintained in his testimony today that the document the judge used at the original inquest to prove that Timol had committed suicide was “edited”.

When asked about the risks of escaping from the security police once the activists were arrested, Kasrils laughed and said that “jumping out of the 10th floor of a building” was not an escape.

This week saw the cross-examination of former state-security policemen Joao Roderigues, who was the last person to have seen Timol alive. He claimed to have seen him jump from the window of the tenth floor of John Vorster Square.

During an intense grilling session on Tuesday and Wednesday by National Prosecuting Authority attorney Advocate Torie Pretorius and Varney, Roderigues maintained that he was innocent and that he played no part in the death of Timol.

This morning, a witness told the court that he had been at what was then known as the Dollars petrol station the morning Timol plunged to his death. Muhammad Ali Tokhan told the court that he was certain that the time of the incident was “mid-morning” because he was on his way to Pretoria that morning to apply for a business licence.

His statement showed a major discrepancy in the case because Timol’s death had been recorded at about 4pm.

Tokhan alleged that he heard a “thud”, and that a passing pedestrian exclaimed that someone had fallen from the building. When they ran to see if they could help, they were ushered away aggressively by policemen in unmarked clothing, with one of them telling Tokhan to “F*#k off”.

Judge Billy Mothle asked if he was perhaps mistaken, to which Tokhan replied with a firm “no”.

This afternoon Colin Savage, an architect, was called in to analyse the building plans of John Vorster Square and he confirmed to the court that the Dollars filling station was indeed across the road from the building.


Avantika Seeth
Multimedia journalist
City Press
p:+27 11 713 9001
w:www.citypress.co.za  e: avantika.seeth@citypress.co.za
      
 
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