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Family’s interminable fight for justice for Dr Hoosen Haffejee overshadowed by protracted NPA investigations

Family’s interminable fight for justice for Dr Hoosen Haffejee overshadowed by protracted NPA investigations
Ismail Haffejee and Sarah Lall with a portrait of their youngest brother Hoosen Mia Haffejee who died in police custody in the Brighton Beach police cells in 1977, 22 March, 2018. (Photo: Rogan Ward) Special Instructions: For Maverick Citizen use only until March 2022 Special Instructions: For Maverick Citizen use only until March 2022

The reopened inquest into the death in police custody of Dr Hoosen Haffejee in 1977 enters its second week in the Pietermaritzburg high court. It is long overdue but his surviving family members still need answers. 

Some dinner times are especially tough for 76-year-old Sarah Lall. As she settles in her dining room chair her thoughts inevitably drift to her youngest brother who was killed 44 years ago; the brother who bought the dining room set for the family with his first paycheque — the same furniture she still uses today.

Last week, Lall sat through the first days of the reopened inquest into her brother, Hoosen Mia Haffejee’s, death in police custody in 1977. She took the stand for the first time last week at the age of 76 in Judge Zaba Nkosi’s courtroom in the Pietermaritzburg high court and also visited for the first time the prison cell where he was found hanged. 

“It has been painful to relive this but I have to carry on because I feel in my heart that I owe it to my parents and my brother Yusuf who fought for justice for Hoosen and didn’t live to see this day,” she says, speaking alongside her other brother, Ismael Haffejee, from her Pietermaritzburg home. 

“Hoosen loved playing with the children — his nephews and nieces. He loved to come into the kitchen to see what we were cooking and he loved to make ice cream with the children. He read to them, played Scrabble with them and always reminded them to brush their teeth before bed, of course,” says Lall of the “baby of the family” who became a dentist. He was the pride and joy of their shopkeeper parents. They had sacrificed financially so they could send their youngest child abroad to study. 

Ismail Haffejee. (Photo: unfinishedtrc.co.za/Wikipedia)

The teenager who left South Africa returned a doctor and a young man with a life of promise and everything to look forward to. But his brutal death and the unanswered questions of how he ended up in police custody still haunt his family.

Ismael is Hoosen’s other surviving sibling. He’s 78 years old now and says “an air of gloom” settled over their family, “the warmth in our house was gone,” he says of the lost decades. Hoosen’s death, he says, meant his parents died heartbroken and his other brother, Yusuf, would turn his life into a quest for justice and answers. It would cost Yusuf his marriage; then cancer claimed his life in 2011. He didn’t live to see justice for Hoosen.

In 1977, Hoosen Mia Haffejee was a fresh, newly graduated dentist who had returned to then Natal after seven years studying in India. The university quota system for non-white students during the apartheid years meant he couldn’t get admission into a local university. And when he returned to South Africa he battled to find employment because his degree wasn’t recognised in South Africa. Hoosen eventually landed a job based at what was then King George V Hospital in Durban, mainly visiting local schools to give dental care to children.

On 2 August 1977, he was driving to work as usual but 20 hours later on 3 August he would be “discovered” dead in the Number 2 prison cell in the Brighton Beach Police Station. His trousers were tied around his neck and affixed to the lowest rung of the cell bars with a handkerchief. His death was declared a suicide but his body had multiple injuries — at least 60 on his back, knees, arms and head, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) final report. 

The subsequent inquest into his death in March 1978 centred on the two Security Branch officers who arrested and questioned Hoosen: Captain James Taylor and Captain Petrus Du Toit. Magistrate Trevor Blunden who presided over the inquest found Hoosen’s death to be suicide and he sanctioned the version that Hoosen’s injuries were sustained in a scuffle during his arrest. Blunden ruled that no one could be held accountable.

Lall and Ismael, even now say they don’t know about their brother’s political affiliations or any activities that would have put him in the crosshairs of the Security Branch, who were the muscle of the apartheid state. He had only been back in the country for about eight months at the time he died.

Ismail Haffejee. (Photo: social.shorthand.com/Wikipedia)

Lall did testify last week about a letter she had found going through Yusuf’s many clippings and files relating to Hoosen’s death. The letter apparently connects how a former girlfriend of Hoosen’s, a nurse he had had a relationship with, accused him of being involved in underground meetings and banned activities when their relationship soured. Details of the letter and further testimony regarding its contents are expected to follow.

“We don’t know about his politics but my brother was a non-racist, he was against discrimination and believed in equality for everyone,” says Lall.

Both Lall and Ismael also say Hoosen, who visited the family every weekend, including the weekend before he died, was as always, “jovial, fun-loving” and “in perfect health emotionally and physically” — not depressed, troubled or suicidal.

Lall also testified that their Muslim community never accepted that Hoosen’s death was a suicide, which is why he was not buried in a section of the cemetery reserved for those who take their own lives.

It was during the TRC hearings in 1996 that the Commission would receive a statement from another former Security branch policeman, Mohun Deva Gopal. In his statement, he confirmed he was present at Brighton Beach police station the day Hoosen was arrested. Gopal said he witnessed Hoosen being interrogated, assaulted and tortured. He said: “Haffejee was stripped naked and Taylor initiated the assault by slapping and punching him when he refused to divulge any information. Later, Du Toit joined in. As the day wore on, the assault became more violent. Although they continued until midnight, Haffejee refused to divulge any information”.

The TRC’s final report goes on to state that “the following morning Du Toit called them [Taylor and Gopal] into his office and told them they had to prepare their stories for the inquest. Gopal was told to say that Haffejee had tried to escape and in so doing, had hit his body on the car.”

Taylor was subpoenaed to appear before the TRC. He denied all allegations of assault and maintained that at the time of his death, Hoosen was in the custody of the police’s uniform branch. He never applied for amnesty relating to Hoosen’s death.

Both Taylor and Du Toit are now dead. 

Lall, who remembers having to be sedated for three days after hearing the news of her brother’s death, says: “I would have called them monsters if they had lived to be in court. And I would have wanted to ask them why they had to do what they did to him.”

Ismael was present at the ritual body washing in preparation for Hoosen’s burial. He was choked up when he took the stand last week, remembering the horror of pulling back the calico sheet to see his brother’s face swollen, Hoosen’s broken neck so floppy he cradled it as the men washed him. Bruises covered his body especially around his wrists and curiously also in his armpits.

“If this inquest had taken place sooner we would have been able to get Taylor and Du Toit to face the music. I would have wanted to ask them why did they have to be so brutal, so sadistic? Our brother meant the world to us,” he says. 

The TRC’s final report also states: “…the South African Police made routine use of assault and severe torture as part of a systematic campaign to silence and suppress opponents of the South African government … The SAP is held accountable for these gross violations of human rights.”

Only they haven’t been held accountable. Even 27 years into democracy, the ANC government that hasn’t moved with any urgency on the recommendations made by the TRC in 2003 that cases like Hoosen Haffejee’s and about another 300 people who died or disappeared — likely at the hands of Security Branch police — be reopened for investigation and possible prosecution. The government has also not answered for the delays or outlined how they intend to speed up the National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA) work to bring justice to families like Hoosen Haffejee’s, even as time runs out to bring ageing perpetrators to book.

“I do feel the family has been let down by the democratic government. They have allowed the NPA to dilly dally to reopen this case and now Taylor and Du Toit, the main suspects, are dead,” says Ismael.

Attorney for the Haffejee family, Anwar Jessop, says the Haffejee siblings do have mixed emotions. At last their day in court had finally arrived but it was overshadowed by sadness that it had arrived so desperately late. 

Jessop says questions remain why it took the threat of legal action to get the NPA to shift gears on the matter, despite then-Minister of Justice, Michael Masutha saying in 2018 that all TRC cases should be reopened.

Jessop says: “When people in a position to do something positive fail to do so timeously they are, in our eyes, equally as guilty as the perpetrators. It is complete lack of respect for those of all races, from all walks of life who gave their lives for the country we have today.” DM/MC

Court proceedings continue and are being live-streamed by the Foundation for Human Rights.

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Comments - Please in order to comment.

  • Fanie Rajesh Ngabiso says:

    My heart goes out to your family. I can’t even begin to imagine what you must have been through.

    To anyone reading this – please take a moment to think how you might be feeling if this article was about your son or daughter. And if nothing else, remember, for all our sakes, that it should never be allowed to happen again.

    • Rod H MacLeod says:

      Indeed yes.
      My friend’s grandfather was killed in 1972 by a man who struck him over the head with a clay brick and stole his watch and wallet. His murderer has never been apprehended.
      I don’t know how justice will ever be obtained for him. But maybe he was just a lesser man than Haffejee.

      • Fanie Rajesh Ngabiso says:

        My word – I do hope I’m not understanding you correctly.

        …because if I am then you are using bad to justify worse / worse to justify bad, the way my 10 year old nephew does when picked out for doing something wrong. (which would make you a very sad individual indeed)

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