It is almost 38 years since the body of 28-year-old doctor and trade union activist Neil Hudson Aggett was found hanging from the bars of cell 209 in the then John Vorster Square police station in downtown Johannesburg on February 5 1982.
On Monday, Aggett's ghost will no doubt haunt the corridors of the South Gauteng High Court when the reopened inquest into his death begins to be heard by judge MA Makume.
Aggett had spent 70 days in detention and was the 51st person (and the first white person) to die in detention since 1963, when the 90-day detention-without-trial law was introduced by the then minister of justice, BJ Vorster, to curb political opposition to apartheid.
Aggett's death sparked national and international outrage at the draconian treatment of political detainees under apartheid and would lead to greater protection of detainees - although it also led to the regime adopting a more nefarious strategy of dealing with opponents through hit squads and extrajudicial killings away from the public eye.
Thousands of workers across the country downed tools in protest against his death and 15,000 people attended his funeral.
It was, as then Bishop Desmond Tutu told readers of The Star: "An incredible demonstration of affection and regard for a young white man by thousands of blacks . Neil Aggett got the kind of salute and tribute that the black townships provide only for really special people, and he was white."
His funeral may have provided a hopeful moment for racial integration among those who opposed apartheid but the question of justice for his death and the bringing to book of those responsible has haunted SA and the Aggett family for over three decades.
At the much-publicised official inquest held into his death over the following months of 1982, the Aggett family's legal team, led by George Bizos, accepted the ruling of his death as a suicide in order that they be able to present in court testimony of torture and mistreatment of detainees who were held during the same time as Aggett.
If Aggett had indeed taken his own life, then, Bizos argued, this had been the result of the treatment that he, like so many of his fellow detainees, had received at the hands of his interrogators.
Aggett's parents, who did not accept the official cause of his death, allowed Bizos to proceed with his strategy. It was a strategy that succeeded in shining a light on what had been happening in the shadows on the notorious ninth and 10th floors of John Vorster Square almost since its opening in 1968, but it was unsuccessful in convincing magistrate Petrus J Kotze that Aggett was the victim of an induced suicide.
Rather, as had been the case in other public inquests into the deaths of activists such as Ahmed Timol and Steve Biko, the state found that "no one was to blame" for the young doctor's death.
In death, Aggett became a powerful symbol for the victims of atrocities committed by the apartheid regime - his face emblazoned on struggle posters and T-shirts and his name invoked in protest songs throughout the turbulent 1980s - but for his family, friends and trade union colleagues, Aggett was a soft-spoken, intelligent and deeply committed young man who had fought against injustice and paid for it with his life.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) made a finding in 1998 that his chief interrogators - the then head of the security police at John Vorster Square, Maj Arthur Benoni Cronwright, and Lt Stephan Whitehead - had subjected Aggett to intense interrogation and that "the treatment he received while in detention for more than seventy days [was] directly responsible for the mental and physical condition of Dr Aggett which led him to take his own life".
Cronwright was removed from his post at John Vorster Square following the death of Aggett's fellow detainee, Ernest Dipale, in August 1982 - a huge embarrassment for the regime and one which, coming so soon after the public outrage over Aggett's death, led to the demand for significant changes to the policies around the detention of political prisoners.
In death, Aggett became a powerful symbol for the victims of atrocities committed by the apartheid regime
The ghosts of Aggett's interrogators will likely also be present at the reopened inquest - Cronwright died before the TRC hearings into Aggett's death and Whitehead went on to have a lucrative career in the security industry, including contracts for his services from the post-apartheid National Intelligence Agency, before his death from cancer in April last year.
Neither of the men nor any other members of the security branch involved in Aggett's interrogation applied for amnesty. While the family fought tirelessly for many years to have the inquest reopened and for Whitehead to face prosecution, political interference in the prosecution of post-TRC cases and a lack of will within the National Prosecuting Authority to pursue justice against former members of the security forces meant that Whitehead managed, if not to cheat death to at least cheat the Aggett family out of finding out what he knew about what happened to Neil at John Vorster Square.
Aggett's name continues to serve as a symbol - not only of the righteous mission of ending a brutal, inhumane system but unfortunately also as a reminder of the failure of the democracy he lost his life to bring about to honour those who made it possible. That should never have been the case and hopefully, after this inquest concludes, it never will be again, and finally, as happened in the Timol inquest, someone will be found to blame for his death.
• Smith is a freelance writer and researcher and winner of the 2019 Thomas Pringle Award
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