South Africa: Activist Matthews Mabelane 'Probably Thrown Off Roof' of John Vorster Square, Inquest Told

Matthews 'Mojo' Mabelane died in police custody 49 years ago, and a reopened inquest into his death reveals that the Security Branch's version of events on the day doesn't add up.

Nearly five decades after 22-year-old student activist Matthews "Mojo" Mabelane died in police custody on 15 February 1977, the reopened inquest at the Gauteng Division of the High Court in Johannesburg has challenged the official apartheid-era account of his death.

The original 1977 inquest into Matthews Mabelane's death accepted the official police narrative: that he fell from a 10th-floor window at John Vorster Square police headquarters in Johannesburg while trying to escape.

Detained without charge under the Terrorism Act, Mabelane's family was barred from asking questions or presenting independent evidence. Now, Judge Sandiswa Mfenyana is re-examining his death in apartheid police custody.

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This reopened inquest contextualises Mabelane's death within a broader pattern of systemic abuse by the apartheid Security Branch, whose officers routinely subjected political activists to indefinite detention, brutal torture and murder.

During the original inquest, Warrant Officer Leana Viljoen -- the sole surviving Security Branch officer involved in the case -- claimed she was in Room 1008 when Mabelane attempted to escape. According to her testimony, Mabelane stepped out of the window and walked along a narrow exterior ledge before vanishing from her sight; colleagues later informed her that he had fallen to his death....