Special Report Transcript Episode 3, Section 2, Time 02:39

Detention without trial became a permanent feature of South African law in 1963. The General Law’s Amendments Act allowed detention for 90 days, then for 180 days. By 1990, 78 000 had been in custody of whom 73 died and when they died cause of death was investigated and established by the courts. In 33 instances inquests proclaimed these deaths suicides. ”Sometimes fairies are found falling from a window, sometimes fairies are found falling down the stairs,” is how poet Essop Patel describes it. // Suliman Saloojee, the law said, did just that: fell to his death from a seventh floor window. He was 32, an attorney’s clerk, who had been detained in July 1964. By September 9 of that year he became a statistic, the fourth to die in detention. // Rokaya Saloojee, his widow, learnt about fairies and falling the hard way.

Notes: Inside cell; Photograph of Suliman Saloojee; Saloojee’s funeral