In search of truth. The Imam Abdullah Haron Inquest will get underway in the Cape High Court this morning.

Testimonies will be heard from members of the Haron family, former political detainees, pathologists and a trajectory and aeronautical engineer. An inspection will also be conducted at the Maitland and Caledon Square police stations.

The ten-day inquest is an attempt to piece together the events that led to the 45-year-old anti-apartheid activist’s death while incarcerated by the notorious apartheid forces. The apartheid regime claimed that the Imam fell from a flight of stairs at the Caledon Square police station on September 19, 1969 and died days later. But a pathologist, Dr Percy Helman, testified that a fall could not account for all the bruises and a broken rib reported in the apartheid regime’s official post-mortem report.

The progressive Muslim scholar had been regarded a threat to the white-supremacist regime as he challenged its racism and oppression.

Judge Daniel Thulare will preside over this historic inquest.

In recent years families of those who lost loved ones during apartheid have been putting pressure on government to investigate their deaths as part of a quest to hold the killers to account and find truth and closure.

The first inquest was that of anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Timol. It dispelled the apartheid regime’s version that Timol had jumped from a window and died. Apartheid-era cop Joao Rodrigues, was charged with Timol’s murder. But Rodrigues who was in his 80’s died before he could be prosecuted raising questions about why the ANC–led government has been slow and reluctant to pursue these cases.