Cape Town - There was was not a dry eye in Court 20 of the Western Cape High Court on Thursday afternoon as Fatiema Haron-Masoet testified about the trauma of growing up in the knowledge that her father had been killed by the apartheid state.
She was testifying as the final witness at the reopened inquest into Imam Abdullah Haron’s death, before Judge Daniel Thulare adjourned proceedings sine die.
The judge said the matter would resume in January on a date to be agreed upon by the lawyers for the State and the family, once they were ready with their closing arguments.
Haron-Masoet, the youngest daughter of the anti-apartheid Struggle activist, was six when her father was dragged out of the family home by the infamous Security Branch.
Choking with emotion and occasionally taking a moment to wipe away her tears, she testified about the bewilderment and pain of losing her father at age six, the impact on her life of growing up without her older siblings in the house and her mother’s suffering on hearing her husband had died after 123 days in detention.
Haron-Masoet, who marked her seventh birthday on September 30, the day after his burial, paid glowing tribute to her mother Galiema, who she said she toiled day in and day out to provide for her children.
She said Galiema Haron, who died exactly 50 years after her husband’s funeral, remained visibly pained by her husband’s detention and death until her dying day.
Reading out the family’s recommendations for the judge, Haron-Masoet said that among other things, the family want “each of the SB members who were involved in the imam’s death to be posthumously found guilty of intentional torture and calculated murder”.
The family also want all the members of the judiciary and the medical team involved to be posthumously stripped of their qualifications for having compromised their oaths of honesty.
On its last day of testimonies the inquest also heard from anti-apartheid activist Shirley Gunn.
While a student, Gunn joined the ANC and later Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC. As a result of these anti-apartheid activities, she was arrested in 1985, detained without trial, and held in solitary confinement for 113 days.
She testified that in 1990, she was again arrested after being falsely accused of bombing the headquarters of the SA Council of Churches. She was jailed with her infant son Haroon, named for Imam Haron.
At the time Gunn was married to fellow activist, now Independent Media’s editorial and content director, Aneez Salie.
Veteran anti-apartheid activist Yousuf Gabru, who was detained and tortured by the Security Branch’s notorious Johannes “Spyker” van Wyk, also gave a moving testimony.
Also testifying to torture and abuse by Van Wyk was member of the African Resistance Movement, ANC and SACP, Stephanie Kemp.
Kemp apologised to the Haron family and said: “In many ways I feel as a white Afrikaner that we were collectively responsible for what happened.”
