Fifty-seven years after Imam Abdullah Haron died in apartheid detention, Cape Town has honoured his life and resistance. A court has ruled that he was tortured to death, but no one has been prosecuted for his killing.
Hundreds gathered across the city this past weekend to remember the Claremont imam, who became the first cleric of any faith to die in apartheid detention. Arrested by the regime’s Security Branch on 28 May 1969, he spent 123 days in detention before his death on 27 September 1969.
At the Claremont Main Road Masjid, Imam Dr Rashid Omar told congregants that the truth was finally on record, but justice remained elusive.
“This September marked 57 years since the martyrdom of Imam Abdullah Haron,” he said. “For 14 years, from 1955 until the day he was killed, Imam Haron preached justice from the minbar of the Stegman Road Mosque in Claremont, and he lived it beyond its walls.”
Dr Omar recalled how the apartheid state claimed Imam Haron had fallen down stairs. His family, supported by human rights lawyers working pro bono, refused to accept that account. An inquest reopened in 2022 examined evidence from the original post-mortem, which recorded 27 bruises of different colours, indicating injuries sustained on different days, as well as a broken rib.
In October 2023, Western Cape High Court Judge Daniel Thulare rejected the apartheid-era account and ruled that Imam Haron had been tortured to death by the Security Branch.
“Truth did not emerge because the state went looking for it, it emerged because ordinary people refused to stop asking,” Dr Omar said. “And yet not a single person has ever been prosecuted for the killing of Imam Haron.”
The main commemoration, hosted by the Qibla Movement at Alexander Sinton High School on Sunday, drew a large crowd. Those present included Prof Muhammed Haron, Fatima Haron-Masoet, Imam Haron’s great-granddaughter Aishah Shamis from the UK, Judge Siraj Desai, attorney Ebrahim Daniels, Sheikh Abdullah Sa’dullaah Khan and Sheikh Abdullah Shafiek Aries.
In a tribute themed “killing with no age restriction”, rows of empty chairs each bore a photograph of a child killed in Gaza and a small backpack. Coordinator Dr Wagheda Cassiem, daughter of Qibla founder Imam Achmat Cassiem, said the display honoured the young martyrs and drew on Surah Al-Baqarah 2:154.
Fatima Haron-Masoet delivered an emotional address. “He was not a number, he was not a file, he was not a security threat, he was my father and they took him from me,” she said. She drew parallels between the detention of children under apartheid and the detention of Palestinian children today.
At Imam Haron’s former mosque, Al-Jaamia Masjid on Stegman Road, chairperson Nazeem Jamie remembered the 31-year-old imam appointed in 1955: articulate, impeccably dressed in modern suits and devoted to the young people of his community. Imam Haron founded the Claremont Muslim Youth Association, handed out sweets to children and declared apartheid a heresy against Islam.
The anniversary was also marked in Gauteng with a symposium at Al-Mustafa International University.
The record of how Imam Haron died has been corrected. His family is still waiting for justice.
