August 2, 2004
By Ndaba Dlamini
SINCE changing its name from John Vorster Square in September 1997 the Johannesburg Central Police Station has also revised its internal structure to banish memories of what was once one of the most feared and hated symbols of apartheid.
As Jessie Duarte, the then Gauteng MEC for safety and security, said in an interview at the time: "This begins to bury the past and that is where it should be. John Vorster Square was indeed a true embodiment of the violence of the apartheid system, but now that belongs to the past."
The view was endorsed by Vusi Mavuso, chairperson of the Gauteng petitions and public participations committee that steered the renaming process, who added: "If you give a dog a bad name, it will live by it."
Though the non-descript blue and concrete 12-storey building beneath the M2 fly-over on Commissioner Street on the southern periphery of the CBD still looks much like it did during the tumultuous 1970s and 1980s, inside, much has changed.
The non-descript 12-storey building beneath the M2 fly-over
The 10th floor, the old quarters of the dreaded Security Branch where many anti-apartheid activists were interrogated, now houses the more bureaucratic South African Police Services finance and logistics departments.
Named after South Africa Prime Minister Balthazar Johannes Vorster, who served from 1966 to 1978 and implemented the grand apartheid design of HF Verwoerd, John Vorster Square was officially opened in August 1974. It became notorious for activities of the Security Branch on the seventh, ninth and 10th floors.
Describing the fear evoked by the mention of the 10th floor, in particular, the Mail & Guardian's Ferial Haffajee, who visited Johannesburg Central Police Station in 1999, wrote: "Walking up the stairs to the infamous 10th floor of the Johannesburg Central Police Station, one realises it will take much more than a change of name to cleanse the tortured space that was once John Vorster Square. It was a place you didn't want to get to. The stomping ground of the blue-eyed boys of the security branch."
Renowned for its interrogation rooms, the 10th floor was the torture chamber of the Security Branch. Stories are legion of how many anti-apartheid activists "committed suicide", "fell" out of a window, or died "slipping on a bar of soap in the showers" and many were reported to have been dangled out of 10th floor windows by their ankles to elicit confessions.
In his biography on Ahmed Timol, Imtiaz Cajee suggests that the 1970s activist may have fallen from the 10th floor to his death on 27 October 1971 in just such manner while being interrogated. His fingernails had been pulled out, his right eye gouged out and his testicles crushed.
In 1997, The Star journalist Craig Urquhart noted: "Disused cells on the third floor expose John Vorster Square for what it really was. Every cell and every corridor, from floor to ceiling, is covered in graffiti. Everyone, it seems, 'was here' at some time or another."
To mark the end of the John Vorster era, the two-metre bronze bust of Vorster, bearing a brass plaque emblazoned with "Eendrag maak mag/Unity is strength", was, on 23 September 1997, moved from the police station entrance to the Police Museum in Pretoria.
In addition to the removal of symbols of the Security Branch's reign of terror, interior renovations to the stark building enhance its more service-orientated image.
On the seventh floor - home to the communications department - the office walls have been painted an attractive pink and the hum of computers fills the corridors. Social chatter and laughter reverberate down the passages and a client service centre, on the ground floor, now greets a queue of people, most clutching affidavits, educational qualifications and identity documents that need to be certified.
Sergeant Wendy Botha of the communication services at Johannesburg Central Police Station says the concept of policing has also changed.
"Compared to the erstwhile John Vorster Square, Joburg Central is community-based. We now operate as a community service as opposed to being a police force. We cherish the partnership forged with the community which we think is crucial in our operations," says Botha.
"We no longer exercise a strict disciplined manner of policing. In the past, the police concentrated on the operations of freedom movements - on politics. We now concentrate on individual crime problems, on the concept of sector policing where a police station's service area is divided into smaller, manageable geographical sectors to improve communication between the police and the community," explains Botha.
As to working in a building with such a powerful symbolic history of apartheid, Botha says the physical changes have gone a long way to creating a more comfortable aura.
"I have been working in the building since 1994. Although generally the building has a bad connotation to it, as an individual I am not intimidated by the past. I think the connotation of John Vorster Square exists in the minds and hearts of victims who were detained here during the apartheid era, its no longer centred on the building itself," Botha says.
"To most people working in the building today, John Vorster Square no longer exists, it is just a workplace."
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