Muslim cleric and activist Imam Abdullah Haron allegedly endured physical torture and inhumane prison conditions.
Police brutality at the hands of the notorious Special Branch security policeman, Seargen Spyker Van Wyk, threw light on the operations of apartheid police during the reopened inquest into the death of Haron.
The Haron family said they had "known all along, that our Imam Haron was murdered by specific Special Branch people and the apartheid system".
But the reopened inquest, which will determine the cause of Haron's death and identify those responsible, will help the family in the search for truth.
Legal experts said the inquest findings might recommend further investigation and prosecution.
The inquest, which were open to the public, also attracted the interest of politicians including Public Works Minister, Patricia De Lille and Deputy Minister of Land Reform, Mcebisi Skwatsha.
Struggling to contain her emotions, Haroon’s daughter Fatiema Haron-Masoet told the inquest: "One day (after the burial of the Imam in September 1969) I saw myself standing next to my mother outside of our home in Repulse Road, Claremont.
"I wondered, as a 7-year-old, what is happening around me ... as I looked up into my mother's face I noticed and saw her eyes filled with tears and sorrow I held tightly onto her hand feeling completely helpless because I could not console her sadness.
"All she said to me was, ‘we lost the house’".
Forensic pathologists said the possible cause of Haron's death was severe injuries sustained as a result of assault at the hands of Spyker and other Special Branch policemen.
The Haron family submitted recommendations to presiding Judge Daniel Thulare, calling for findings of the previous inquest to be overturned to ensure that the apartheid state was held responsible for his death.
The family also wanted all the apartheid police involved in Haron's death to be posthumously found guilty of "intentional torture" and "calculated murder".
They further recommended that the police officer’s pensions be withdrawn from their families.
Before the start of the inquest, executive director of the Foundation for Human Rights Yasmin Sooka said the apartheid state refused to accept any responsibility for Haron's death and protected those responsible for his murder from being held accountable.
The initial inquests found no one was to blamed for the deaths of political detainees, and often claimed that prisoners "fell down a staircase, hung themselves or slipped on a bar of soap".
This week the inquest heard evidence that Van Wyk, who was among the security police who interrogated Haron, was a "posture of evil" who threatened the political detainees to suffer the same fait as “done to Imam Haron".
Former Umkhonto weSizwe operative, Shirley Gunn, who was detained with her baby Haroon, named after Imam, described how she was subjected to psychological torture.
"My son was probably the youngest to be a victim of human rights violations at the time. At one point they took him away from me although I was breastfeeding. They recorded him crying and would play that to me to force me to give a statement. But I refused,“ she told the inquest.
The police wanted to link her to a cache of firearms they had planted in their cars, and when this failed, they accused her of bombing the headquarters of the South African Council of Churches, Khotso House.
"On one particular occasion I woke up and found an elderly white man standing next to me. When I asked him what he was doing there he scurried out of the room. There was no record of who he was," said Gunn.
Another activist and member of the South African Communist Party, 81 year-old Stephanie Kemp, told the inquest that Van Wyk and his colleagues told her on her arrest that "they would treat me like a man since I wanted to behave like one".
"Initially, I would be interrogated five times a week. On one occasion I was taken to a storeroom where the interrogation continued until around 2am.
"Van Wyk hit me across the face, banged my head on the wooden floor and I lost consciousness," she told the inquest.
She was charged with sabotage, which carried the maximum death penalty or minimum of five years.
Kemp was sentenced to five years, which was suspended for three years.
"As a white Afrikaner I feel responsible for what happened to the Haron family. I am sorry,“ said Kemp.
Thulare would now look at all the evidence and make his findings, possibly in the first term of the court in 2023.