THE MURDER OF AHMED TIMOL, my search for the truth, foreword by Nkosinathi Biko

257pp., b/w & colour illus., paperback, Johannesburg, 2020.

Ahmed Timol  (1941 – 1971) was an anti-apartheid activist, political leader and activist in the underground South African Communist Party, He died five days after being arrested at a roadblock in Johannesburg, following torture and beatings. Police claimed he leaped out of window on an upper floor of the John Vorster Square police building, and were exonerated in a 1972 inquest. The claim was widely disbelieved at the time, and a 2017 judicial review of the case declared that he had, instead, been murdered. Judge Billy Mothle ruled that witness Joao Rodrigues was an accomplice after the fact to murder and that the former police man, now 78, committed perjury at the 1972 and 2017 inquests when he testified that Timol leaped from a window.  Ahmed Timol’s nephew Imtjaz Ahmed Cajee has investigated his uncle’s murder for the past twenty years.

"Imtiaz Ahmed Cajee has relentlessly struggled to see that his dear Uncle Ahmed Timol's personal sacrifices to attain a just and equitable society were not in vain. He continued to tirelessly collect information and stories that helped to shape Timol's fascinating life story ...He places before the reader a set of information that offers one a clear insight into, among others, the apartheid SB's dirty tricks. He also provides the readers with his close readings of the second inquest, and his interpretation and understanding should cause readers to rethink what 'transitional justice' truly means during this post-apartheid period." Imam Haron Foundation