A Dry White Season (16 page)

Adv De Villiers: “I put it to you that the only ‘subversive activities’ the deceased had ever been involved in were his efforts to establish what had happened to his son Jonathan Ngubene, allegedly shot in a riot in July last year, although several witnesses have been traced who are prepared to testify that in fact Jonathan died in detention in September, three months later.”

The advocate for the police, Mr Louw, objected against the allegation on the grounds that it could not be proved and that it was irrelevant to the present inquest.

Adv De Villiers: “Your Worship, the present witness has gone out of his way to implicate the deceased through wild accusations of ‘subversive activities'. It is my good right to put the other side of the case, especially if it can support my argument that we are dealing with an innocent man who died in the hands of the Security Police under what can only be termed highly questionable circumstances. If the Security Police are interested in clearing their reputation then surely they will not object to the real facts being presented to the court?”

At this stage magistrate Klopper adjourned the court to the next day. Upon resumption he announced that this was an ordinary inquest into the death of a specific person, not a full-scale judicial enquiry; consequently he could not allow Adv De Villiers to present evidence or to make allegations about the death of Jonathan Ngubene.

Adv De Villiers: “Your Worship, in that case I have no further questions to put to Capt Stolz.”

In the course of the second day of the hearing several other witnesses for the Security Police were called to corroborate the evidence given by Capt Stolz. However, under cross-examination there was some difference of opinion on the removal of the bars in front of the window and the reasons for it, as well as on the exact nature of the scuffle on 24 February. In addition, Lieut Venter also conceded under cross-examination that there had been a previous scuffle in the same office on 3 February, the day before the district surgeon had been called in to attend to Mr Ngubene. Asked whether anyone else had visited the deceased before his death, Lieut Venter said a magistrate had paid him a routine visit on 12
February, accompanied by Capt Stolz and himself, but that the deceased had not complained of anything.

Adv De Villiers: “Does it surprise you that he had no complaint?”

Lieut Venter: “Your Worship, I don’t understand that question.”

Mr Klopper: “Mr De Villiers, I have asked you before to refrain from insinuations of this kind.”

Adv De Villiers: “As it pleases your Worship. Lieutenant, can you tell me whether Capt Stolz was also present while the district surgeon examined the deceased on fourth February?”

Lieut Venter: “I wasn’t there, but I presume the Captain was present.”

Next, Sergeant Krog and two constables who had discovered the body on the morning of 25 February, were called to testify. One of the blankets in the cell of the deceased had allegedly been cut into strips with a razor blade (before the court) to form a rope, one end of which had been tied round the bars of the cell window and the other round Mr Ngubene’s neck. The witnesses differed on the way in which the blanket had been tied round the bar and also about the position of the hanging body when they found it. (Sergeant Krog: “I’d say his feet were about six inches from the floor” Const Welman: “He was hanging quite high, his head almost touching the bars, so his feet must have been a foot or more from the ground” Const Lamprecht: “As I remember his toes just touched the floor”.) They agreed that no one had seen the deceased alive after he had been locked inside the cell at about half-past five the previous afternoon. According to Sergeant Krog all cells were supposed to be visited at hourly intervals through the night to make sure everything was in order, but unfortunately this had been omitted on the night in question. “We were very busy and I suppose there was some misunderstanding about whose duty it was to do the rounds.”

Adv De Villiers: “Suppose I put it to you that Capt Stolz or some other officer from the Special Branch had instructed you to stay away from the cell that night?”

Sergeant Krog: “I strongly deny that, your Worship.”

When the enquiry resumed on 4 May, Adv Louw, for the
police, submitted four affidavits by detainees, testifying that they had all seen Gordon Ngubene between 18 January and 24 February, that he had been in good health on every occasion, and that they themselves had been treated very well by the same officers responsible for interrogating Mr Ngubene. However, under cross-examination the first of these detainees, Archibald Tsabalala, denied that he had ever met Mr Ngubene in detention, and stated that he had been forced to sign the affidavit before the court. “Capt Stolz hit me many times with a length of rubber hosepipe and said they would kill me unless I signed.” Thereupon he pulled up his shirt and showed his bruised back to the court. When Capt Stolz was recalled to the witness box he testified that Tsabalala had slipped and fallen down a staircase a few days before. He insisted that Mr Tsabalala’s original statement had been made voluntarily. After some further cross-examination Capt Stolz was allowed to take Mr Tsabalala back to John Vorster Square.

Following this testimony, Adv Louw, for the police, announced that the other three detainees whose affidavits had been submitted, could not be called for cross-examination as it would prejudice the security of the state. In the face of strong opposition from Adv De Villiers the magistrate ruled that the court would nevertheless consider their affidavits as evidence.

Dr Bernard Herzog, a Johannesburg district surgeon, testified that on the morning of 4 February he had been called by Capt Stolz to examine a detainee, identified to him as Gordon Ngubene. He could find nothing wrong with the man. Mr Ngubene had complained of toothache and as three molars had showed signs of advanced decay he had extracted them and given Mr Ngubene some aspirin for the pain.

The next time he’d seen the deceased was early on the morning of 25 February when he had been summoned to John Vorster Square where he’d found Mr Ngubene dead, lying on the floor of his cell, dressed in grey trousers, a white shirt and a maroon jersey. Sergeant Krog had informed him that he had personally discovered the body about half an hour earlier, hanging from the bars of his window, and that he had taken it down. According to the sergeant the blanket had been tied so tightly round the neck that they’d had to cut it loose with a
razor blade discovered in the cell. Rigor mortis had already reached an advanced stage and he’d concluded that death must have occurred as long as twelve hours before.

Adv De Villiers embarked on his cross-examination in a decidedly aggressive manner, commenting extensively on the fact that Dr Herzog had not found it necessary to examine the deceased more thoroughly on 4 February (Dr Herzog: “Why should I? He only complained about his teeth”); and that he couldn’t remember whether Capt Stolz or anyone else had been present during the examination in question. Accused by Adv De Villiers of having been “intimidated” by the Security Police or even of deliberately co-operating with them “in playing their disgusting little games of hide and seek” Dr Herzog objected strongly and appealed to the court for protection. As far as the preliminary examination of the corpse was concerned he declined to offer a definite opinion about the estimated time of death, pointing out that rigor mortis could be influenced by any number of extraneous circumstances. He could offer no explanation for the fact that, when the state pathologist Dr Jansen had performed the post mortem on 26 February, the corpse had been naked. Following a request by Adv De Villiers, Capt Stolz was again recalled to the witness box, but he was unable to say what had become of the clothes the deceased had worn at the time of his death, or why they had not been forwarded to the State laboratories for examination. He did, however, offer on behalf of the Security. Police to compensate the family for the loss of the clothes.

The court was adjourned briefly so that the attendant at the police morgue could be called, but he was unable to recollect whether the body had been clothed or naked when delivered to him.

The last witness called by Adv Louw was a police graphologist who identified the handwriting on the note found with the corpse as Gordon Ngubene’s. This was strongly contested by a specialist called by Adv De Villiers, who listed a long series of discrepancies between the handwriting on the note and that found in several of Mr Ngubene’s other papers. Mrs Emily Ngubene, wife of the deceased, also denied that it was her husband’s handwriting. Continuing her evidence, she said that Mr
Ngubene had been “beaten and pushed around” on the occasion of his arrest on 18 January; that about ten days later a detainee released from John Vorster Square had brought her news of a serious assault on her husband; and that when she had delivered a change of clothing for her husband on 4 February she had discovered blood on the trousers returned to her, in addition to three broken teeth in the back pocket (before the court). She testified that in a conversation with the family doctor, Dr Suliman Hassiem, who had attended the autopsy, he had expressed serious doubt as to whether death had been caused by the strips of blanket as alleged earlier. Before she could pursue the matter, however, a strong objection against hearsay evidence was lodged by Adv Louw and sustained by the magistrate. Adv Louw also successfully opposed specialist evidence that the second signature on the State pathologist’s post mortem report could not have been that of Dr Hassiem. Evidence led by Adv De Villiers on allegations of torture or assault against Capt Stolz in several other cases, was rejected as unfounded and irrelevant.

After further evidence of a more technical nature Adv De Villiers caused a commotion in court by calling as a witness a young girl, Grace Nkosi (18), to testify about her own detention at John Vorster Square. She had originally been arrested on 14 September last year, she said, and after being subjected to interrogation by several members of the Security Police (including Capt Stolz and Lieut Venter) over a considerable period, she had been taken back to Capt Stolz’s office on the morning of 3 March. Several accusations had been brought in against her and every time she’d denied them she had been beaten with a sjambok. After some time she had fallen on the floor, whereupon she had been kicked in the face and the stomach. When she spat blood she was ordered to lick it up from the floor. Then Capt Stolz threw a large white towel over her head and started twisting the ends round her neck in a manner she illustrated to the court. She tried to struggle, but lost consciousness. According to Miss Nkosi this was repeated several times. The last time she heard Capt Stolz saying: “Come on,
meid,
speak up. Or do you want to die like Gordon Ngubene?” Then she lost consciousness again. She came round in her cell and on 20 March
she was released without a charge.

In spite of lengthy attempts by Adv Louw to persuade her that she had either made it all up or had misheard the name “Gordon Ngubene” in a state of dizziness, Miss Nkosi insisted that she had told the truth.

After the two counsel had concluded their arguments the court was adjourned until the afternoon for the verdict. Mr Klopper gave his finding in less than five minutes. Although it was impossible to account for all the injuries on the body, he said, no conclusive evidence had been offered to prove beyond doubt that members of the Security Police had been guilty of assault or of any other irregularity. There were indications that the deceased had become aggressive on more than one occasion and had to be restrained with a measure of force. There was sufficient evidence to conclude that death had been caused by a trauma following pressure applied to the neck, consistent with hanging. Consequently he found that Gordon Ngubene had committed suicide by hanging himself on the morning of 25 February and that on the available evidence his death could not be attributed to any act or omission amounting to a criminal offence on the part of any person.

For the sake of formality the documents of the inquest were forwarded to the Attorney-General, but on 6 June he announced that no further steps would be instituted, for lack of a
prima facie
case against any person or persons.

5

She stood waiting for him on the steps outside the court building on the second or third afternoon of the inquest, after they had adjourned for the day: the petite dark-haired girl with the
large black eyes he had absently noticed among the journalists before. It had occurred to him, when he’d seen her in court, that she looked startlingly young for such responsible work; surrounded by so many older, tougher, more cynical reporters her youth had struck him as almost vulnerable, an openness, a frankness, a freshness. But now, suddenly finding her directly in front of him and looking down into her small oval face, he was surprised to discover how much older she was than he’d thought. Certainly much closer to thirty than to eighteen or twenty. Delicate lines beside the eyes; deep and more definite lines of determination or pain on either side of her mouth. Still young enough to be his daughter, but mature and without illusions or callowness; an affirmation, unnerving in its force, of unflinching womanness.

Ben was disgruntled, irritable, lost in thought when he came out. Not only because of what had happened in court but by something specific: he had become accustomed to the presence of a whole contingent of Security Police in the courtroom at every session, taking turns to stare at the spectators, singling them out one by one for scrutiny and forcing one to feel guilty even when there was no reason at all for it; but that afternoon, for the first time, Colonel Viljoen had also been there. And when the eyes of the greyish, benign, paternal officer had suddenly discovered Ben in the crowd, his expression had revealed something – surprise? disapproval? not even that: a mere suggestion of taking cognizance-that had disturbed Ben. So he hardly noticed the girl when he came outside and only became conscious of her when, standing right in his way, she said, in a deeper voice than one might have expected of her: