Amhed Timol’s story to be aired this weekend
'Indians can't fly' will be re-broadcast on SABC 3 on Sunday, 7 October.
An intriguing rebroadcast about the inquest into the death of the 29-year-old Roodepoort school teacher and member of the then banned South African Communist Party, Ahmed Timol will be screened in memory of his life.
The commemoration of the 47th anniversary of Timol’s death will be re-broadcast on SABC 3 on Sunday, 7 October at 7.30pm in a striking documentary titled Indians can’t fly, which was released in 2015.
The title challenges the unsolved death of Timol, whom apartheid police claimed had committed suicide by jumping from the 10th floor of John Vorster Square Police Station during an interrogation on 27 October 1971.
Timol and Saleem Essop, a medical student, were both detained at a routine police roadblock on the evening of 22 October 1971. They were both taken to the Newlands Police Station and then to John Vorster Square Police Station (now known as Johannesburg Central Police Station). Essop was beaten almost to death and landed in hospital. A 1972 inquest found that Timol committed suicide and that nobody was to blame for his death.
The repeat broadcast of Indians can’t fly traces Timol’s upbringing in Breyten, Mpumalanga, and then Roodepoort. Interviews are conducted with his comrades, former teachers and students, Security Branch policemen and advocate George Bizos, who represented the Timol family at the inquest in 1972.
The documentary narrated by Timol’s nephew, Imtiaz Ahmed Cajee, author of Timol: Quest for Justice, and directed by Enver Samuel, has won two South African Film and Television Awards (SAFTAs) and has featured at local and international film festivals.
The re-broadcast, according to Samuel, is meant to celebrate the life of Timol and other unsung heroes and heroines who were killed during apartheid. It will also pave the way for part two of the documentary called Someone to Blame, which follows the inquest into Timol’s death in 2017 when the verdict of suicide was turned around to murder. Part two will air the following weekend, on Sunday, 14 October at 7.30pm.
Read about Samuel’s film journey and research into Timol’s life in next week’s edition of the Roodepoort Northsider.
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