Symbol of Past Horrors Holds Hope for the Future
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| Neil Aggett, a medical doctor and committed trade unionist, died at John Vorster Square on February 5, 1982 after 70 days in detention without trial. |
| Picture © Sunday Times |
Every time I pass the plain, blue-framed bulk of Johannesburg Central Police Station I am reminded of Christopher van Wyk's dark satire on death in detention. You read it once and it is difficult to forget.
He fell from the ninth floor
He hanged himself
He slipped on a piece of soap while washing
He hanged himself
He slipped on a piece of soap while washing
He fell from the ninth floor
He hanged himself while washing
He slipped from the ninth floor
He hung from the ninth floor
He slipped on the ninth floor while washing
He fell from a piece of soap while slipping
He hung from the ninth floor
He washed from the ninth floor while slipping
He hung from a piece of soap while slipping
The poem was a savage swipe at the old Security Police, who inhabited the top floors of John Vorster Square, the nondescript office block that squats at the bottom of Ferreirasdorp and gazes blankly onto the top deck of the M1 South.
Between October 27 1971 and January 30 1990, eight people died there after being detained by the Security Police: Ahmed Timol ("fell" from the 10th floor); Wellington Tshazibane (found hanged in his cell); Elmon Malele (died after hitting his head on a table); Matthews Mojo Mabelane (fell from the 10th floor); Dr Neil Aggett (found hanged); Ernest Moabi Dipale (found hanged); Maisha Stanza Bopape (probably killed during electric shock torture and his body disposed of - it was never found); Clayton Sizwe Sithole (found hanged).
Other than 10 policemen who applied for amnesty to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in connection with the death of Stanza Bopape, not one policeman was ever found to have been complicit in any of the other deaths, in spite of clear evidence that police were beating and torturing detainees.
The day before he was found hanged on February 5, 1982, Neil Aggett wrote an affidavit stating he had been assaulted, deprived of sleep, tortured and beaten on various occasions since his arrest. The subsequent inquiry into Aggett's death is grim reading and the facts of his death still hang over the building like a shroud.
Today, 12 years into our fragile democracy, the building is called Johannesburg Central Police Station, home to 680 police and civilians who look after an estimated 100 000 people living in a 12.5-square-kilometre swathe of downtown. That number will grow as business - and residents - return to the city. "There are not a lot of empty buildings in town any more," says police spokesman Inspector Wendy Botha.
It is in memory of these men and the other thousands who suffered in detention that the police building has been chosen as a site for the Sunday Times's Heritage Project.
Johannesburg-based artist Kagiso Pat Mautloa has been selected to do the site installation and his concept-in-progress is a huge rock on a concrete plinth, bound by wire, symbolising resilience as expressed by the word simakade (forever standing), to be etched into the plinth in several South African languages.
The station's name change came in 1997, along with an internal refurbishment - painting and office shuffling and the like - in an attempt to banish the past.
Botha says the new-generation police have put the past behind them. Their task is to fight crime on Johannesburg's streets and try to persuade people to particpate in the community policing forums. It's an uphill struggle.
"The perception, still from the old days, is that the community cannot approach the police," she says. Yet the past is there in a dozen small instances. The first thing you see as you walk inside is the old South Africa motto, "Unity Is Strength", arching over the foyer. The building has that smell unique to government buildings of a certain era - of linoleum, disinfectant and cold concrete. Old lifts creak and bang between the floors.
The building has that smell unique to government buildings of a certain era - of linoleum, disinfectant and cold concrete
Botha shows us around. She is adamant that the old name created an impression, which - for some people, like me - has been difficult to shake off. "With the name change, everything else changed," she says. "Now it's just a building, made of bricks and cement. It's where we work."
Botha takes me up to the 10th floor, now occupied by the finance department. It is quiet and warm. Diffused sunlight shines through translucent glass in the office doors. A cleaner mops the floors, next to a board that says, in Afrikaans, "Danger - Slippery". Down in the holding cells, it is also quiet and clean. It is also freezing, and with something more than mere cold.
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