Fifteen hours before Dr Neil Aggett was found dead, hanging from bars in his cell at John Vorster Square in Johannesburg, he met a woman who could have changed his fate. Only she did nothing.  

Aletta Blom, now Aletta Visser, was a sergeant in the detective branch at John Vorster Square. One of her tasks was to investigate charges and complaints laid against police officers. 

On Thursday 4 February 1982, at about 10am, she took the lift to the 10th floor of the police station, reported to the head of the unit, Major Arthur Conwright, asked to see Aggett in connection with her investigation into his assault claims and sat down to take a statement from the trade unionist. He was being held as a suspected treason plotter. 

Aggett’s complaints had reached her a month after he said he had been assaulted by his interrogators. By then he had been in detention for 69 days. Assaults on him had also escalated. As the twentysomethings (he was 28, she 27), sat to address the assault from a month earlier on 4 January, Aggett relayed another incident to Visser from just the previous weekend. This time, in addition to being beaten, he told her, he had been subjected to sleep deprivation, blindfolded in interrogations and handcuffed to the point that he had injuries to his left wrist. He had also been electrically shocked. 

He was wary of giving a statement to Visser – another police officer. This was also taking place in a 10th-floor office, the engine room of the Security Branch in the police building. He did eventually cooperate and was communicative, wanting to set out his case clearly, wanting action.

Visser took Aggett’s statement, reported back to Conwright and her own branch commander and handed over the case for investigation by a higher-ranking officer because police procedure meant she could not investigate someone who outranked her. Aggett had named three people – Lieutenant Steve Whitehead, Constable Eddie Chauke and Sergeant James van Schalkwyk.

To Visser, she had done her job. 

But, not intervening or recommending that Aggett be taken to a doctor or that the interrogators he had accused of assault be removed from his case was the point at which her testimony started unravelling on Friday when she took the stand at the reopened inquest into Aggett’s death.

Visser began her testimony by setting out how she believed she had ticked all the boxes for having carried out her job to the best of her abilities when she investigated Aggett’s claims. She repeatedly used the defence that she had acted within the bounds of duty, procedure and rank in the then South African Police and that she was not politically oriented.

Visser claimed to have no knowledge of the type of work carried out by her colleagues at the Security Branch or acquaintance of any of the policemen connected with Aggett’s case up to the point of arriving at the 10th floor that morning. 

She said she had not been intimidated by more senior officers during the first inquest into Aggett’s death and she was not protecting colleagues or being pressured to fall in line with a police code to protect its own. 

“I was there, not biased, I was there for him [Aggett], not the police,” she told the court. 

But the National Prosecuting Authority’s advocate Shubnum Singh started Friday’s questioning by undoing Visser’s neatly tied up account. Singh pointed to several irregularities and inconsistencies in how Visser portrayed herself as someone with “my hands tied” and that she was “just uninformed” of deaths in detention. There were at least two deaths in detention at John Vorster Square in the time she was based there. Before Aggett’s death, 51 people had already died in police detention. 

Singh put it to Visser that in that climate she could not have been unaware of the importance of so-called Section 6 detainees, those regarded as terrorist threats to the state. 

“After you took his statement and handed in your report what did you do? Did you make arrangements for Dr Aggett to be taken to the district surgeon? Did you impress on your branch commander the seriousness of his situation?” Singh asked Visser. 

Singh added: “You left Dr Aggett at the mercy of the very same interrogators he had complained about. You are a police officer, you were meant to serve and protect.”

In his questioning, advocate Howard Varney, acting for the Aggett family, called Visser’s actions a dereliction of duty. 

He put it to Visser that even though she didn’t have the rank, power or authority to remove Aggett from his cell she could have made recommendations, or requests to ensure Aggett’s protection. 

Varney pulled apart Visser’s claims and actions relating to that Thursday morning at John Vorster Square. He said she should have requested another interview room other than a location on the 10th floor. She could also have started securing evidence – and not just handed in her statement. This would have included looking for the electrical devices used on Aggett or locating Sergeant James van Schalkwyk’s shirt that was stained with Aggett’s blood from when he struck him. 

He also disputed Visser’s claim that she had never met any of her colleagues on the 10th floor or that she had not discussed Aggett’s complaint with them. Varney said their investigations and evidence showed that Visser had in fact returned to a tearoom with Security Branch members after speaking to Aggett and revealed details of Aggett’s statement to them. Those present included Whitehead, who was Aggett’s chief interrogator, and a Warrant Officer KJ de Bruyn, who had been guarding Aggett in the room where Visser took his statement. 

Varney said they had testimony proving that shortly after Visser left the 10th floor, Whitehead entered the room where Aggett was being held and said to him something to the effect of: “Is this the way you treat us after we have been so good to you?” This revealed that Whitehead knew about Aggett’s complaint against him and the two others in the report. 

“You did this to tip off the suspects at the earliest moment possible. It gave them time to deal with the situation before the normal procedures were followed. Your conduct was grossly improper and amounted to defeating the ends of justice,” Varney said to Visser.

Aggett would be found dead before a new day dawned.

Visser denied this and said Whitehead had lied. Private investigator Frank Dutton, acting for the Aggett family, is expected to take the stand in the coming days with further details.

It was Varney’s last question of the day, though, that yielded Visser’s most damning answer.  

He asked: “Did you not find it strange or odd that a smart doctor like Dr Aggett, giving you a detailed statement, wanting to see justice done and wanting reckoning, would allegedly commit suicide 15 hours later?”

Visser answered: “I agree.” DM