1. Neil Aggett was a Kenyan and South African doctor and trade union organiser who was killed, while in detention, by the Security Branch of the Apartheid South African Police Service after being held for 70 days without trial.
11 Facts About Neil Aggett
1. 2.
Neil Aggett worked as a physician in Black hospitals in Umtata, Tembisa and later at Baragwanath hospital in Soweto, working in Casualty and learning to speak in basic Zulu.
3.
Neil Aggett was appointed an unpaid organiser of the Transvaal Food and Canning Workers' Union, and helped to organise the workers at Fatti's and Moni's in Isando, at a critical time when the company faced a growing boycott campaign for having unfairly dismissed workers at its factory in Bellville, Western Cape.
4.
Neil Aggett worked as a doctor on Wednesday nights and Friday nights so he could continue with his union work.
5.
Neil Aggett was unjustly detained with his partner Dr Elizabeth Floyd by the Apartheid security police on 27 November 1981.
6.
Neil Aggett was the first white person to die in detention since 1963.
7.
Neil Aggett made an affidavit 14 hours before his death that he had been assaulted, blindfolded and given electric shocks.
8.
Jill Burger, Neil Aggett's sister, told the High Court during the Johannesburg inquest that her brother was killed when the torture went too far.
9.
The inquest on 4 March 2022 found that Dr Neil Aggett didn't die of hanging but due to Crush Syndrome caused by beatings and forcible exercise at the John Vorster Prison, Johannesburg.
10.
Donald McRae reveals how Aggett's death in detention deeply affected himself and his family in his memoir Under Our Skin 'Death of an Idealist: In Search of Neil Aggett' is a full referenced biography by Beverley Naidoo, with a Foreword by George Bizos SC.
11.
The lecture focuses on memories of Neil Aggett and looks at the concept of injustice and what injustice is, and how we, as a society, face more injustices than ever before.