Ahmed Timol
Ahmed Timol was my first cousin.
He was the bestman at our wedding.
He died in police custody in 1971.
I saw him the night before his arrest and he was well.
Ahmed Nephew wrote a book on him
Quest for Justice - Imtiaz Cajee
Dilshad Jetham Affidavit
Farouk Dindar Affidavit
Kathrada Foundation -Portrait of Ahmed Timol
SABC DOCUMENTARY - Indians Cant Fly
Here is some selected text from the Truth and Reconciliation Hearing.
http://wn.apc.org/wmail/issues/960501/NEWS37.html
May 01, 1996
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For Hawa Timol it must have been very different.
The ailing old lady on crutches, flanked by caring and nurturing sons, explains in broken Gujerati how the security police broke her heart when they came to say her son, Ahmed Timol, had jumped from the 10th floor of John Vorster Square.
"I told the man he should go home and ask his wife what it means for a mother to rear a child and never see him," she says.
Later, after repeated raids and interrogations, they came again to say her other son, Mohammed, would only be released from detention if he agreed to work as an informer. "I told them that if my body had a zip they could open it and see how I was aching inside."
This time there is no laughter in the gallery, only tears and a lump in every throat.
Mohammed Timol, who survived his term in jail after the brothers were arrested in 1963, explains how his brother had worked in the underground of the South African Communist Party and the ANC.
For him and his mother, it is intensely gratifying that Ahmed is receiving the recognition he deserves. "He was one of the many South Africans, young and old, to bring about a democratic dispensation in South Africa." He asks that the school in Roodepoort where he taught be given the name Ahmed Timol.
They know why he died and, to use chairman Archbishop Desmond Tutu's words, their appearance at the commission is an exquisite example of how just being given the chance to tell it "brings Christ's ointment into their hearts and souls".
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