*TW: This episode contains descriptions of state torture and murder that some listeners may find disturbing*
On 27th September 1969, a healthy man supposedly falls down a set of stairs in police custody, and dies a few days later. But these aren’t just any stairs, and this isn’t just any man. Imam Abdullah Haron was an anti-apartheid activist, arrested by South Africa’s notorious security services for campaigning against apartheid. It took over 50 years to reopen the inquest into Imam Haron’s death, and for his family to hear a judge admit he was murdered. In this episode, Robyn Gill-Leslie investigates the cover-up of Imam Haron’s death. Speaking to Zaid Kimmmie, Steve Naidoo, Enver Samuel and Gina Snyman, she uncovers the infrastructures that shielded apartheid systems of torture and abuse – and those inflicting it - from justice. But along the way, she learns that justice doesn’t live in stuffy courtrooms, and discovers uncomfortable truths about how apartheid endures in the absence of criminal accountability in the decades since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission closed its doors.
*The title of this episode is an excerpt from Chris Van Wyk’s poem “In Detention” (1979).
Useful Links
The Imam Haron Foundation: https://www.imamharon.com/
Enver Samuel’s documentaries: www.thetruthbetold.co.za
The Imam’s Re-opened Inquest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2orld22Mhw&pp=ygUSaW1hbSBoYXJvbiBpbnF1ZXN0
The Foundation for Human Rights: https://unfinishedtrc.co.za/
Further Reading
Barney Desai and Gardiff Marney. The Killing of the Imam: South African Tyranny Defied by Courage and Faith (Quartet Books: 1978).
Robyn Gill-Leslie. ‘A Substantial Part of the Trauma was Caused by an Accidental Fall’: Liminal Spaces and Post-Apartheid Accountability in South Africa,” The International Journal of Human Rights 30:1 (2026), pp.84-101.
Adam Sitze. The Impossible Machine: A Genealogy of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation (University of Michigan: 2013).
This episode was supported by the Independent Social Research Fund, Leverhulme Trust, the Norwegian Research Council’s Bodies of Evidence project and the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo.
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