Yes, Again

Another suspicious suicide

"Oh no,"cried an editorial in the Rand Daily Mail last week, "not again!" The South African newspaper had good reason for its dismay. In the same Port Elizabeth police building where Political Activist Stephen Biko was held for four days last September before his highly suspicious death from a supposedly self-inflicted bump on the head (TIME, Sept. 26 et seq.), another black prisoner died under curious circumstances. According to police, the prisoner leaped without warning to his death through an open fifth-floor window during a security police interrogation. When announcing the incident, Minister of Justice James T. Kruger declared: "The fact is that it's very difficult to stop someone from committing suicide if he puts his mind to it."

The latest black prisoner to die in security police custody--and at least the 22nd during the past two years--was Lungile Tabalaza, 20, an unemployed high school dropout from the black township of New Brighton. Tabalaza and a younger companion had been arrested by uniformed police on July 3 as suspects in a series of gasoline-bomb attacks on delivery vans and the robbery of the drivers. Because Tabalaza had earlier been involved in illegal youth meetings in New Brighton, he was handed over to security police for "further investigation."

As a result of the Biko case, prisoners were supposed to be closely supervised to prevent suicide attempts. Kruger had ordered that interrogations must take place either in a room with barred windows or in a first-floor room, "for their sakes as well as for the credibility of the police." But the security police had only recently taken over the fifth floor of their Port Elizabeth building from a private tenant and, against orders, Tabalaza was questioned there.

The Rand Daily Mail was not alone in decrying the death. Member of Parliament Helen Suzman, a critic of both Kruger and the administration, called for the police minister's resignation. Kruger brushed this aside. He scheduled a formal inquest into Tabalaza's death, at which Tabalaza's family can be present. In addition, said Kruger, "as far as I can ascertain, the police are putting bars on those windows right now."

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