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The changing narratives of the National Police Service (NPS) – within a matter of hours – concerning the death in police custody of father, husband and teacher Albert Omondi Ojwang took me back to matters I reported on while I was living and working in South Africa.
When at 5 p.m. on Sunday 8 June, I read the first NPS statement claiming to “clarify” what happened to Ojwang, I immediately thought of the apartheid police and their fables about South African Muslim anti-apartheid activist and cleric, Imam Abdullah Haron’s “stair fall”, which turned out to be a lie.
I also thought about anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Essop Timol, who a couple of years later, was tortured and murdered while in police custody but was said by the apartheid police to have ‘jumped’ to his death from a police station window.
Of course there was also their explanation of Steve Biko’s 1977 death by ‘hunger strike’ when in fact it would later emerge that he had been beaten to death by state security officers.
Let me take you back in time to the stories of the South African activists mentioned above and how, over time, the narratives have significantly changed.
Between 2019 and 2023, I reported on the efforts to have a new inquest into the 1969 death in custody of Imam Haron. When Haron died at the Maitland Police Station in Cape Town, the apartheid police carried out a perfunctory inquest which concluded that he died after falling down a flight of stairs at the Caledon Square Police Station, now Cape Town Central Police Station, where he had been held before being moved to Maitland.
In 2022, after years of campaigning by Haron’s family, other activists and lawyers, the South African government agreed to the re-opening of the inquest into the death.
The reopening of the inquest followed the family’s refusal to accept the police version of their loved one’s death in police detention on 27 September 1969, following his interrogation and torture by the notorious apartheid security police.
Haron, a political activist and Imam at Cape Town’s Stegman Road Mosque in Cape Town’s southern suburb of Claremont, died after 123 days in police custody following his arrest on 28 May 1969 by the Security Branch of the apartheid South African Police. Haron had been held in solitary confinement at a couple of police stations and subjected to near-daily interrogations.
Haron was arrested after he had become increasingly critical of the apartheid government’s policies, which he opposed. His opposition drove him to become involved in clandestine anti-apartheid activities with the then banned Pan African Congress, which led to the police becoming interested in him. While in detention, Haron was kept in his cell and only “authorised” people had access to him.
Meanwhile on the outside, Catherine Taylor, an opposition MP in South Africa’s apartheid parliament, raised the matter of Haron’s continued detention in the House. However, the then Police Minister, Lourens Muller, responded that it was ‘not in the public interest’ to know why Haron had been detained.
Haron’s death in detention caused an outpouring of grief; over 40,000 people came to pay their final respects on 29 September 1969.
Fifty years later, in 2019, based on new evidence and other grounds, the Haron family made representations to South Africa’s National Director of Public Prosecutions requesting the re-opening of the inquest.
In June 2022, then Justice and Correctional Services Minister Ronald Lamola formally requested the head of the Western Cape Province’s courts to designate a judge to reopen the inquest.
The reopened inquest ruled in October 2023 that Haron was tortured to death by the police and proved his injuries were sustained through torture, contradicting the initial findings of the apartheid police.
During this second inquest, which I reported on for the Cape Argus newspaper in Cape Town, the court heard detailed evidence about the probabilities of whether the injuries listed in the post-mortem report were caused by his alleged fall down the stairs of the Caledon Square Police Station, now Cape Town Central Police Station.
Consultant forensic pathologist Dr Itumeleng Molefe raised concerns about the thoroughness of the post-mortem report written by pioneering pathologist Professor Theodor Schwär following Haron’s death in police custody.
Dr Molefe noted that although Schwär, who died in 2019, is considered a trailblazer in forensic pathology who had authored a book setting high standards for examining deaths in custody, his report on Haron’s death fell short of those very standards.
“By his own criteria, Schwär’s post-mortem of Imam Haron was inadequate,” Dr Molefe testified during the inquest.
Later in the proceedings, specialist forensic pathologist Professor Steve Naidoo supported these concerns. Called by the Haron family’s legal team, Naidoo gave an independent forensic analysis, using cardboard cut-outs to illustrate the injuries Haron sustained while in detention.
Naidoo said the extent and pattern of injuries suggested repeated blunt force trauma, likely from sustained assaults. “The Imam’s torturers must have kicked and stomped him while he lay on the floor,” he said, adding, “A deliberate assault is the most probable cause of these injuries – whether inflicted during a single episode or across several incidents close in time.”
Naidoo firmly dismissed the official explanation that Haron’s injuries resulted from a fall down a flight of stairs. Based on his 39 years of experience in trauma and injury analysis, he concluded that the location and nature of the wounds pointed to intentional violence rather than accidental harm. He testified that the abuse caused severe physiological trauma, triggering the systemic complications that ultimately led to Haron’s death. “If not for the relentless abuse he endured in detention, Imam Haron would not have died when he did,” Naidoo said.
Echoing Dr Molefe, Naidoo criticized Schwär’s original post-mortem report as “substandard and inadequate”.
As you can see, the apartheid police were arrogant and hubristic in the assumption that their system would reign forever, and believed there would never be a time when they would be found out.
Chronologically, after Imam Haron’s in 1969, there was the 1971 case of Ahmed Timol. He was an anti-apartheid activist who was tortured and murdered while in police detention on 27 October 1971.
A 1972 inquest concluded that he had taken his own life by jumping from a window at the John Vorster Square police headquarters in Johannesburg. However, a second inquest, reopened in 2017, found that Timol had been brutally tortured and was in no physical condition to have jumped from the window on his own.
Following the findings of the second inquest, former Security Branch police officer Joao Rodrigues was formally charged with Timol’s murder. Rodrigues contested the charge and applied for a permanent stay of prosecution.
This application was denied by a full bench of the High Court in June 2019. A subsequent bid for leave to appeal was also dismissed on 18 September 2019. At the time of writing, the matter is currently before South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal.
Probably the most internationally famous case of state-sanctioned brutality in apartheid times was that of Steve Biko, who died in police custody in 1977.
Initially, the apartheid government falsely claimed that Biko had died as a result of a hunger strike. However, it was later revealed that he had suffered a traumatic brain injury after being severely beaten by security police during interrogation.
An inquest exposed the true cause of death, confirming that Biko died from injuries inflicted while in detention.
During the second inquest over the death of Imam Haron, I had the opportunity to speak briefly with Biko’s son Nkosinathi. Our chat came during an in loco inspection by Judge Daniel Thulare, who presided over the inquest. It took in the Cape Town Central Police Station (formerly Caledon Square Police Station) and the Maitland Police Station.
Nkosinathi Biko, who is CEO of the Steve Biko Foundation and a friend of the Haron family, spoke of the emotional wrench the family was experiencing as they saw the cells where their father was held and the staircase down which he allegedly fell.
Remembering his own experience, Biko said the apartheid security police had three regular explanations for deaths that occurred in custody, and these were that the person died by suicide, fell down the stairs, or slipped on a bar of soap.
These are the stories that leapt to the top of my mind when I saw the National Police Service’s initial press statement on Albert Ojwang’s death in custody. The police version just sounded too untrue.
The first stories to emerge about Ojwang’s death in Nairobi’s Central Police station, following his arrest 350 km away in Homa Bay for “publishing false information” and “abusing a senior police officer”, claimed that the police said that he had “died from self-inflicted injuries after hitting his head on a wall in his cell”. In other words, that Ojwang had killed himself.
A few hours later, probably after noting that the Kenyan public on social media was not buying the story, the National Police Service (NPS) put out a “clarification”.
The clarification, signed by NPS spokesperson Muchiri Nyaga, read in part: “The National Police Service (NPS) has noted reports circulating on social media regarding the death of a suspect allegedly in custody at Central Police Station, Nairobi.
“NPS confirms that Albert Omondi Ojwang was lawfully arrested by DCI detectives for false publication and placed in custody. While in custody, the suspect sustained head injuries after hitting his head against the cell wall… Police officers on duty promptly noticed the injuries and rushed him to Mbagathi Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.”
The press release from the police went on to say that, in line with statutory requirements, the Independent Policing Oversight Authority, IPOA, had launched an investigation into the incident.
The updated NPS statement issued at 1 a.m. on Monday 9 June, appeared to have smartened up the narrative, but did not immediately undo the damage done by the earlier “clarification”.
The second statement from the NPS, styled as an update, said in part: “The National Police Service wishes to inform the public that following the tragic death of Mr Albert Ojwang while in police custody at Central Police Station Nairobi, and to ensure a thorough, impartial and expeditious investigation by the Independent Policing Oversight Authority, the Inspector General of the National Police Service, has ordered the interdiction of the following officers with immediate effect.”
It named the Officer Commanding Station (OCS) at the police station; the Duty Officer on duty during the night in question; the Cell Sentry on duty at the time; all officers who were on duty at the report office that night; and any other officer found to have been on duty or otherwise involved during the incident.
The NPS also said that further updates would be provided as the investigation continues.
In Kenya, police inquests are mandatory when a person dies while in police custody, in prison, or is missing and believed dead, according to Section 387(1) of the Criminal Procedure Code. A magistrate must hold an inquest in such cases, according to Kenya Law. Inquests are public judicial inquiries aimed at determining the cause and circumstances of a death.
At the time of writing, it is still too early to tell what the IPOA investigation will come up with, or even whether there will be a proper inquest. However, Ojwang’s family, and Kenyans in general, will be on tenterhooks as they wait to see what the final narrative will be and whether it will have the ring of truth.
