Cape Town - The emotional trauma wreaked on the family of anti-apartheid Struggle activist Imam Abdullah Haron over the more than half a century of being denied the truth about how he died, was laid bare on Thursday on the fourth day of the reopened inquest into his death.
Both Imam Haron’s eldest daughter, Shamela Haron Shamis, and his son, Muhammed Haron, broke down a number of times while giving evidence before Judge Daniel Thulare at the Western Cape High Court.
Questions in which they were forced to relive how they heard about his death and other painful memories such as the effect his death in detention at the hands of the apartheid security apparatus had on the family, including their late mother, triggered strong emotions.
After Haron’s death, Galiema had to move her family into a one-roomed house shared with her mother.
Muhammed was sent to live with relatives and Galiema worked tirelessly as a seamstress to support her family and eventually saved enough money to purchase her own home.
During his testimony Muhammed Haron, who was 12 years old when his father died, spoke of the family’s “endless trauma”.
He said: “The final weekend of September 1969 remains one of the most traumatic weekends in my early life. It may be said that this was for all of us, as a family, a difficult and emotionally charged weekend.”
He said while this was certainly the case for him, it was especially so for his mother Galiema who lost her close partner and for his youngest sister Fatima who was only six at the time and had to make sense of the situation.
Muhammed spoke of how as the only son he was involved in the cleansing of his father’s body before burial and that was when the bruises, lesions and gashes all over his father’s body were seen.
The family’s case is that Haron did not fall down a flight of stairs. As far as they are concerned, this was a story that the apartheid police concocted to mask their brutality.
They argue that the medical and circumstantial evidence points unequivocally to Haron being subjected to considerable trauma through torture and that this trauma led directly to the systemic complications that resulted in the narrowing of a coronary artery that ultimately caused his death.
Memories of their father in the time before his arrest and detention provoked happier emotions.
Shamis, the eldest daughter who was 18 when her father died, remembered Imam Haron as “a jovial man and a bit of a prankster”.
She said while he was very religious and had great faith, he was a progressive moderate who against the wishes of his more conservative parents-inlaw, sent her to school in London where she studied radiology.
Shamis also spoke of her father’s political connections with his great friend and vice-president of the South African Coloured People’s Congress, Barney Desai, as well as with the PAC Youth League.
The inquest continues.
