Naidoo Death of An Idealist

In Search of Neil Aggett
1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-1-86842-520-4
Verlag: Jonathan Ball
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 516 Seiten

Death of an Idealist is the biography of Neil Aggett, the only white person to die while being held in custody by South Africa's apartheid security police. A medical doctor who worked most of the week as an unpaid trade union organiser, Aggett's stark non-materialism, shared by his partner Dr Elizabeth Floyd, aroused suspicions. When their names appeared on a list of 'Close Comrades' prepared for opposition leaders in exile they were among a swathe of union activists detained in 1981. After 70 days in detention Aggett was found hanging from the bars of the steel grille in his cell in John Vorster Square. He was the 51st person, and the first white person, to die in detention. He was 28. His death provoked an enormous public outcry, his funeral attended by thousands of workers who marched through the streets of Johannesburg. This quiet, intense young man was, in death, a 'people's hero'. Born to settler parents in Kenya in 1953, Neil Aggett moved with his family to South Africa in early childhood. He attended school in Grahamstown before studying medicine at the University of Cape Town. Death of an Idealist explores the metamorphosis of a high-achieving, sports-loving schoolboy into a dedicated activist and unpaid trade union organiser. Beverley Naidoo traces Neil Aggett's life, in particular the years leading up to his detention as a result of a Security Branch 'sting' operation, the weeks of interrogation, and the inquest that followed his death. She recreates the momentous events of his life and, in doing so, reveals the extraordinary impact Neil's life had on those around him including his family, friends and comrades. Today, a generation later, South Africa is free and democratic. Yet the idealism and sacrifice displayed by Neil Aggett and so many others appears to have been replaced by cynicism and hand-wringing. Death of an Idealist is as much the story of a remarkable young man as it is a reminder that every generation needs its idealists.

BEVERLEY NAIDOO was born in Johannesburg where she went to Parktown Convent and the University of Witwatersrand. She was detained under '90-days' in 1964 before continuing her education at the University of York, England. She holds a Ph.D for research into British teenagers' responses to literature and racism, published as Through Whose Eyes? Beverley began writing in exile. Her first two books were banned in South Africa until 1991. She has written novels, short stories, poetry and plays. Her many awards include the Carnegie Medal for The Other Side of Truth and honorary degrees for a body of work. Beverley and illustrator Piet Grobler (co-creators of a South African Aesop's Fables) were the 2008 South African nominees for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. In Burn My Heart, Beverley explored in fiction the colonial world into which her younger cousin Neil Aggett was born in Kenya during the Mau Mau resistance. Death of an Idealist: In Search of Neil Aggett is a fully-referenced biography exploring his transformation into the militant yet gentle doctor-cum-union activist who became the 51st, and only white, detainee to die in security police custody.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Naidoo, Beverley

Leseproben

FOREWORD BY GEORGE BIZOS

Foreword

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

The Aggett inquest was a mirror held up to reflect the unimagined depths of depravity, brutality and destruction employed by the Security Police.

Helen Joseph, Founder member Congress of Democrats, Treason Trialist and the first person put under house arrest

The vast propaganda machine of the State creates a situation in which people do not know their own history. For instance, we have lived through the period in which Neil Aggett died. What steps have we taken to ensure that the lessons of today will be taught to our children?

Dullah Omar, first Minister of Justice in a democratic South Africa

BEVERLEY NAIDOO’S DEATH OF AN IDEALIST IS AN IMPORTANT contribution to the history of the struggle for freedom in South Africa. Dr Neil Aggett, who died in detention on 5 February 1982, was a socially conscious young man. His dedication to his medical and trade union work, his commitment to labour activism, his uncompromising principles and his tragic death make him a very worthy subject of the insightful tribute offered in this book.

Under the apartheid regime, those with close links to African trade unions were closely scrutinised. From the mid-1970s there was a surge of trade union activity by the African workforce. Students across the country, both black and white, became involved in what was known as the ‘Wages Commission’, a euphemism for trade union work used by labour activists to avoid the regime’s scrutiny. The National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) was at the forefront of a campaign for the recognition of trade unions and the release of political prisoners. Charles Nupen and Karel Tip, two NUSAS presidents, Glenn Moss, the president of the Wits Students’ Representative Council, Cedric de Beer, a student leader, and Eddie Webster, a Sociology lecturer at the same university, were acquitted of charges that they were furthering the objects of the ANC and the Communist Party. The trial, in which Arthur Chaskalson, Denis Kuny, Raymond Tucker, Geoff Budlender and I acted as counsel, lasted ten months.

From the perspective of the regime, certain English-speaking universities were more than a mere irritant; they were a veritable anathema. Neil Aggett was a student at the University of Cape Town, where he completed a medical degree in 1976. Aggett worked as a physician in black hospitals in Umtata and Tembisa, and later at Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. He was appointed organiser of the Transvaal branch of the Food and Canning Workers’ Union. He lived with Dr Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Floyd, his companion (who shunned the term ‘girlfriend’), in the depressed area of Jeppe in Johannesburg. Both Neil and Liz had black friends in the trade union movement. In the eyes of the security police, what better proof did one need that they were communists, terrorists and traitors? The fact that Neil Aggett avoided reporting for the regime’s military service put the matter beyond any doubt.

The catalyst for Neil Aggett’s arrest followed the arrest of ANC activist Barbara Hogan, whose list of ‘Close Comrades’ (those sympathetic to the struggle) was intercepted by the security police (through no fault of Barbara’s). Over 60 students, young graduates and others involved in trade unions were detained. Many of the detainees were white. The detentions were triumphantly announced by the regime. The parents of the detainees reacted quickly, and, under the leadership of Dr Max Coleman and his wife Audrey, an organisation called the Detainees’ Parents Support Committee (DPSC) was formed. They demanded access to their children and started a release campaign. No charges were brought against most of the people detained.

Neil Aggett was on that list, as was Liz. They were both detained (but not charged with any offence) on 27 November 1981. During that time, detention without trial was an integral part of the regime’s strategy. The Rabie Commission had been established to placate critics of the detention system. Chief Justice Rabie was charged with reporting on the internal security of South Africa. The biased report was published on 3 February 1982. That same day, the Minister of Police Louis le Grange, when questioned in Parliament on the treatment of detainees, said,

… the detainees in police cells or in prisons are being detained under the most favourable conditions possible … All reasonable precautions are being taken to prevent any of them from injuring themselves or from being injured in some other way or from committing suicide.

Just two days later, Neil Aggett was found hanging from the bars of the steel grille in his cell in John Vorster Square. He had spent 70 days in detention. He was the 51st person, and the first white person, to die in detention. He was 28.

The death of the first white detainee was more than an embarrassment to the regime. There was an outcry among the local and international press led by the Rand Daily Mail in South Africa and The New York Times. Two outstanding reporters, Helen Zille, current leader of South Africa’s opposition Democratic Alliance political party, and Joseph Lelyveld, a future Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, who became executive director of The New York Times, regularly reported on the inadequacy of control over the security police who tortured detainees. The regime described the media’s conduct as a ‘frenzy’ that was becoming too much to bear.

Neil Aggett’s father retained William Lane, an attorney, who in turn asked me to handle the inquest into Neil’s death. Also involved were attorneys David Dison and James Sutherland, as well as advocates Denis Kuny and Mohamed Navsa. We worked very hard to produce nearly 20 statements from former detainees. Our experience told us that if we accepted the police’s version that it had been a suicide, we could open up a wider inquiry into the general treatment of Neil Aggett than if we argued it was a murder. Our hope was that we could convince the magistrate that the security police could still be held responsible for driving Neil to suicide.

It is never easy for a relative to believe that their deceased loved one committed suicide. Neil Aggett’s family members were no exception. But after discussions with a medical doctor, the probabilities tended to show that suicide was a distinct possibility. There was another reason that led me to this view. On the floor of Neil Aggett’s cell was Nikos Kazantzakis’s Zorba the Greek, open at page 246, dealing with the suicide of the young man whose passionate love for the widow had been rejected:

Every minute death was dying and being reborn, just like life. For thousands of years young girls and boys have danced beneath the tender foliage of the trees in spring – beneath the poplars, firs, oaks, planes and slender palms – and they will go on dancing for thousands more years, their faces consumed with desire. Faces change, crumble, return to earth; but others rise to take their place. There is only one dancer, but he has a thousand masks. He is always twenty. He is immortal.

Neil Aggett’s loving father, mother and sister bravely agreed to put forward the case based on suicide, but understandably not without great reluctance.

The inquest lasted 42 days, extended over six months. The magistrate did not make it easy for us. He stopped our cross-examination on relevant matters and ruled half of the detainees’ statements inadmissable. Despite these obstacles, the graphic accounts of the systematic torture of detainees at the hands of the security police were more than embarrassing to the regime. Our argument concluded with an appeal to the court that the rule of law be observed. We argued that ‘this court’s finding will clearly show that we are all subject to the law of the land and its processes which protect the dignity of human life’. It was our hope that the police were not above the law, but we were sorely and sadly disappointed. The magistrate’s judgment of 187 pages took nearly two days to read. The security police were exonerated and the blame was cast on one of Neil Aggett’s fellow detainees, Auret van Heerden. The magistrate found that Van Heerden was not blameless in Neil Aggett’s suicide, remarking that he should have informed the police immediately when he was worried that Neil Aggett had been ‘broken’. The magistrate limited the detainee’s obligation to a ‘moral’ duty and not a legal duty.

The evidence brought to light during the inquest demonstrated the flagrant disregard for human dignity that existed in South Africa. The magistrate’s decision demonstrated the state’s wily ability to maintain a harsh and unjust system. The finding that Neil Aggett was not hanged by his captors may have been correct. But the decision that Neil Aggett was not tortured by the security police and driven to suicide was wrong. Liz Floyd asked the question that the police and the magistrate did not answer: ‘If the Security Police treated [Neil] the way the magistrate accepted they did, why did he die and why have over 50 other people died in detention?’

Where was the blame for Neil Aggett’s death to lie? The Aggett inquest had cleared the security police, but at the same time had implicitly exposed the Rabie Commission’s bogus findings, and the security police’s callous claim that they were concerned with the welfare of detainees. ‘Who would watch the...