A year to the day after Thomas Shindobo NIKANOR (41) was found dead in a cell at the Osire detention camp, a magistrate decided that the likely cause of death was suicide by hanging. On 27 January Gerrit van Pletzen, sitting in the Otjiwarongo Magistrates' Court, also ruled that no-one could be held liable. When the inquest resumed in January, lawyers for Nikanor's family had submitted that the court should enter a finding of negligent conduct on the part of the police who failed to take precautions to prevent Nikanor from killing himself.
The verdict came at the end of a court case which revealed a good deal about the methods of interrogation employed by the South African Police. Warrant Officer (now Lieutenant) Andre Leon van der Merwe, a member of the Security Branch of the South African Police, was placed in command of the detention camp in December 1984 but has since been transferred. Under cross-examination van der Merwe admitted that at Osire the 'likelihood of a suicide was strong'. He agreed that 'despondency' was a natural reaction not only to detention but to 'prolonged interrogation'. In earlier evidence it emerged that Nikanor was brought to Osire late on 25 January and questioned all the next day. He was locked in his cell late that afternoon and by 1 a.m. next morning was dead.
Van der Merwe claimed that the authorities at Osire did carry out precautions to prevent suicide. However, they had overlooked a bolt protruding some 3.5 cms from the wall in Nikanor's cell and clearly visible. Furthermore he was allowed to keep his socks with which he allegedly hanged himself from the bolt. Detainees were left with their socks because the Osire cells were so cold. The individual cells had corrugated zinc walls and roofs and cement floors. With no beds the captives would suffer from exceptional cold.
Simon Hangu who was brought from Oshakati to Osire with Nikanor and five other detainees also gave evidence. He knew Nikanor as they had worked together. On Saturday 26 January the two of them were taken from their separate cells to the police building for interrogation. When he met Nikanor later, after questioning, he greeted him but Nikanor gave no response and just walked on. Although less than nine metres separated the two men's cells Hangu said he only learned of Nikanor's death on 2 February. Even had Nikanor been attacked and murdered on the night of 26 January it was said his cries for help would have been drowned by the heavy rain falling that night. As it was, Hangu denied even hearing shouts of shock or surprise from the officers who discovered Nikanor's body.
Mattias Martin, who drove the Casspir vehicle which carried the detainees to Osire on the Friday night, described Nikanor as being in good physical condition – tall and powerfully built. Various police officers described their contacts with the detainee, who remained silent and unresponsive in spite of attempts to engage him in conversation. Nevertheless they denied that there was anything 'abnormal' in his behaviour.
The circumstances of Nikanor's death remained perplexing even after the conclusion of the inquest. His family's lawyer laid blame for his alleged suicide on the police who failed to detect and remove the bolt from the wall. A suggestion from a senior police officer that Nikanor prised the bolt out using a teaspoon was disproved by an in loco inspection. However, the bolt itself was set low in the wall and, as van der Merwe stated, 'Never in my experience as a police officer had I seen a man hanging himself from a fixture lower than his own height'. Nikanor, when found, was in a sitting-standing position – with a box of matches in his hand. Yet no spent matches were reportedly found in the cell. In the event the magistrate vindicated the authorities who had held Nikanor captive, instead bleming him for his own death.
