Rashid Omar
CAPE TOWN - Today, we commemorate 52 years since the death of Imam Abdullah Haron in an apartheid detention in Cape Town.
Imam Haron had been incarcerated in solitary confinement for 123 days at the then-notorious Caledon Square police station in the city centre.
An apartheid police report claimed Imam Haron had died from a fall from a flight of stairs at the Maitland police station.
The first public protest against the Imam’s death calling for an independent inquiry into the cause of his death was launched exactly 50 years ago by an Anglican priest, Reverend Bernard Wrankmore.
In August 1971, two years after Imam Haron’s death the Reverend Wrankmore, an Anglican priest at the Mission to Seamen in the Cape Town docks, held a 67-day long protest fast at the Signal Hill Kramat (shrine) in protest at Imam Haron’s death and demanded a full judicial inquiry into the circumstances leading to the Imam’s death in detention.
On the 40th day of his fast, Rev Wrankmore organised an interfaith prayer service to call for an end to the vicious system of apartheid.
Thousands of people climbed Signal Hill to attend the interfaith service. It was only at the insistence of his closest friends and after his health was failing that the Rev Wrankmore reluctantly ended his fast on the 67th day.
By this point, however, he had won the admiration of many Capetonians and his protest message had been heard loud and clear.
One year later, in 1972, an autopsy report revealed 28 bruises on Imam Haron’s body, mostly on the legs, his stomach was empty and the 7th rib was broken.
The autopsy evidence proved strongly that the Imam had been tortured and had died of these injuries. Imam Haron’s “crime” for which he was brutally tortured to death by the apartheid police on September 29, 1969, was that he opposed the apartheid state’s violence and the egregious ways in which Black people were discriminated against.
Rev Wrankmore had never met Imam Haron nor did he share the same religious denomination.
But through his courageous actions Rev Wrankmore planted the seeds of interfaith solidarity in the city of Cape Town.
Here was a priest of another faith tradition, prepared to make this sacrifice to bring to the attention of the international community to apartheid racial oppression, and the injustice perpetrated against Imam Haron and others who had been killed in apartheid prisons.
Rev Bernie Wrankmore will be remembered as an interreligious bridge builder of justice across religious and racial lines to forge a non-racial and democratic South Africa. Rev Wrankmore died peacefully in Cape Town on Friday June 10, 2011, at the age of 86.
In February 2019, the Haron family, led by his widow, Galiema Sadan-Haron, requested that the National Prosecution Authority reopen an inquest into the real cause of death of their father in an apartheid detention cell.
Sadly, his widow, Galiema Haron, passed away on September 27, 2019, exactly 50 years to the day Imam Haron was buried.
She died without having witnessed justice for her beloved husband. Some 27 years after the onset of democratic rule in South Africa, it is appalling that the Haron family still haven’t made headway in their plea for justice.
It is a huge travesty, not only for the Haron family, but for all the freedom-loving souls who were murdered while in apartheid detention, and whose families continue to cry out for justice.
In conclusion, Imam Abdullah Haron remains the only Muslim whose funeral was commemorated at an interfaith service paying tribute to his contributions to the anti-apartheid Struggle in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral in central London.
Imam Haron’s great interfaith legacy and the protest of Rev Bernard Wrankmore need to be cherished and built on by contemporary religious leaders and their adherents.
We need to find creative and innovative ways of celebrating the life of Imam Haron and Rev Wrankmore in ways that continue this wonderful legacy of interfaith solidarity in the city of Cape Town.
* Dr Omar is the Imam of the Claremont Main Road Masjid and a Research Scholar of Islamic Studies and Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame, US
Cape Times