The Son of Imam Haron, Muhammed Haron, broke down in the dock many times on Thursday as he recalled the painful memories related to the detention and torture of his father. Picture: Chevon Booysen
Cape Town - There wasn’t a dry eye in the Western Cape High Court on Thursday as the children of late Imam Abdullah Haron took the stand, recollecting memories of their slain father.
Day four of the reopened inquest into Haron’s death in detention saw Shamela Haron-Shamis, the eldest of the three siblings, take the stand. She told the court it was a day the family had anticipated.
“We waited for a long time to come to court. So far it’s been an ordeal for us but we are managing.
“My mom died three years ago and she didn’t get the closure she wanted while she was alive,” said Haron-Shamis.
She described the late Imam endearingly as someone who was “jovial, kind, a prankster and always approachable with a listening ear... he had no airs or graces about him”.
Haron-Shamis, who in her late teens moved to England to study, said the only time she recalled her dad being “angry” was when he received the document used to classify by race (dompas).
“We didn’t know much about his political activities. He never shared it with us but I do recall him being very angry the day he received this document. And he threw it in the drawer and I realised at that point, he was very upset about it,” said Haron-Shamis.
She told the court that she last saw her father alive in 1968, when he was about to go on pilgrimage in Mecca, but he “only stayed in England for a short while”.
She had learnt of her father’s detention after receiving a letter from him written on July 26, 1969. It was written on a cardboard biscuit box.
Haron-Shamis said the letter from her father, making sure of her well-being and that she was taken care of, gave her hope “that we would meet again”.
“When he wrote this letter, he was in good spirit and that’s what I believed from the letter. But after hearing about the torture he survived while being detained, it all comes together and we understand how his dignity was taken away from him.
Even hearing (Dr Itumeleng Molefe's) testimony of how he suffered shows us he didn't want us to worry," said Haron-Shamis.
In another letter addressed to Barney Desai, together with the letter sent to his daughter, anti-apartheid icon Haron wrote to Desai: “I will give my life but I will never divulge any of my compatriots”, reassuring his comrade in the fight against the system that their information could be trusted with him and that it was secret at all times.
He further wrote that only “me, you and Allah knows”.
Judge Daniel Thulare asked Haron-Shamis if she believed that members of the Security Branch (SB) had tortured her father because he was so tight-lipped about information they hoped to get from him.
“That’s the reason he was beaten up and died... because he wouldn’t divulge information.”
Haron-Shamis said: “(My dad) had dignity. The SB humiliated him into his death. “We accept death but we do not accept the verdict of the 1970 inquest.
Today we are all very proud of his work. He kept his promise to the people.”
Son of Haron, Muhammed Haron, broke down in the dock many times on Thursday as he recalled the painful memories related to the detention and torture of his father.
Muhammed Haron told the court of the emotional turmoil his father’s death and circumstances leading to his death had caused.
Muhammed Haron said he was always cynical of getting justice as “we always believed the Imam died in detention due to torture he suffered”, but said he now felt confident with the reopened inquest, presided over by Judge Thulare.
“The baggage still sits with me and we are hoping for some sort of closure to come from this. We can see there is development taking place,” said Muhammed Haron.
At the brink of his teenage years, an emotional Muhammed told the court he had to deal with the sudden death of his father who he had last seen on the day of the arrest.
"Things changed radically for us that day. We were all deeply affected by it and it was also a turning point in our lives.“
Muhammed Haron said his father may have been taken as a soft target but “the Imam had hardened himself against the system... they had to mistreat him as badly as possible to get information... they humiliated him”.
“It had bottled up inside of me. You don’t express it to anybody, not even your closest friends. It’s an internal battle every day,” said Muhammed Haron.
Cape Times