1971 — The Death Apartheid Couldn't Hide

On October 28, 1971, South Africa's apartheid police confirmed the death of Ahmed Timol, a 29-year-old teacher and anti-apartheid activist who had died in their custody at Johannesburg's John Vorster Square, days after his arrest. The officers said he had jumped from the tenth floor. His family and his comrades never believed it, hearing in that official story a death the regime was explaining away rather than explaining.

Nearly half a century later, the record caught up with that disbelief. A 2017 inquest ruled that Timol had been murdered by the security police, who had staged the fall to cover it up. It took 46 years for the law to say plainly how he died, and at whose hands.