Dimitri Tsafendas

Dimitri Tsafendas (; 14 January 1918 – 7 October 1999) was a Greek–Mozambican political militant and the assassin of Prime Minister of South Africa Hendrik Verwoerd. On 6 September 1966, while working as a parliamentary messenger, Tsafendas stabbed Verwoerd – commonly regarded as the architect of apartheid – to death during a sitting of the House of Assembly in Cape Town.

Early life

Tsafendas was born in Lourenço Marques in Portuguese Mozambique. His parents were Michalis Tsafandakis (, also spelled Miguel Tsafandakis), a Greek marine engineer with anarchist leanings from Kitharida, a small village near Heraklion, Crete, and Amelia Williams, a Mozambican woman of mixed race. He was sent to Egypt when he was three to live with his grandmother and his aunt. He returned to Mozambique four years later; then, at the age of ten, moved to Transvaal, where he attended Middelburg Primary School from 1928 to 1930. He then returned to Mozambique and attended a church school for the next two years. At the age of 16, Tsafendas began to work at various jobs, He became a seaman in the US merchant marine in 1941 and served aboard American ships during World War II. While in the United States, Tsafendas became a member of a religious sect known as the Two by Twos.

In 1947, the US immigration authorities deported Tsafendas to Greece, then in the throes of the Greek Civil War. Tsafendas joined the Democratic Army, the military wing of the Greek Communist Party, and fought with them against the royalists. Shortly before the war ended in defeat for the Communists, Tsafendas made his way to Portugal. Upon his arrival, he was arrested and interrogated by the police about his political activities in Mozambique in 1938. He was imprisoned for nine months in the two most notorious Portuguese prisons for political offenders, the Barca d'Alva and the Aljube Prison. In October 1951, Tsafendas travelled by sea to Lourenço Marques, but was refused entry because of his past political activities and for being a known Communist, and was deported back to Portugal. Banned from entering South Africa, where his family had gone to live in the late 1930s, and Mozambique, Tsafendas spent the next 12 years of his life in exile. During these years, he applied at least once a year for permission to enter Mozambique or South Africa, but all his applications were refused because of his Communist status and his political activities in Mozambique in the 1930s. Constantly harassed in Portugal by PIDE and the Portuguese police, Tsafendas roamed across Europe and the Middle East, working and visiting places that interested him. During his wanderings, he picked up eight languages.

On 6 September, Prime Minister Verwoerd entered the debating chamber of Parliament and made his way to his seat. Tsafendas approached him, drew a concealed sheath knife from his belt, and stabbed Verwoerd about four times in the torso before he was pulled away by other members of parliament.

Reaction and police investigation

After the assassination, some leaders in the anti-apartheid movement distanced themselves from any association with Tsafendas. Also in Algiers, Joshua Nkomo, the representative of the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), said that "the attack ... proved the vulnerability of this fascist empire" and Uazuvara Ewald Katjivena, representative of the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO), declared that "the fascist Dr. Verwoerd got what he deserved". Kenya's Minister of Defence, Njoroge Mungai, said when he first heard about the stabbing, "I hope it is successful. It would be a good thing", and the ruling Kenya African National Union declared that force would be the ultimate method of overthrowing apartheid and characterised the assassination as "a symbolic and heartening act, from which millions suffering from apartheid would draw hope". People in Nigeria and Uganda danced in the streets with joy when they heard the news of the assassination.

The majority of the African press applauded the assassination. For example, the Algerian-French magazine Revolution Africaine applauded the assassination of "the apostle of hatred", and said, "The most hated man of Africa is no more", in Ethiopia, a banner headline in the New Times of Addis Ababa said, "The Sharpeville butcher stabbed to death", while Cairo's Al Akhbar newspaper said Egypt had "no tears to shed" for Verwoerd.

In contrast, fearing reprisals, Tsafendas' family and the Greek community in South Africa turned their backs on him.

Trial

At his trial, Judge Andrew Beyers declared Tsafendas not guilty of murder by reason of insanity. He had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and it was claimed by police and his defence that he had said that he had a giant tapeworm inside him, which affected his life. The court ordered for him to be detained "at the pleasure of the State President", which meant that only the State President (later President) had the authority to order his release. He was never discharged.

However, the diagnosis of mental illness has since been dismissed by several forensic psychiatrists. Those who examined Tsafendas during the trial based their diagnoses entirely on what Tsafendas told them and had no access to any other information about him: his medical and criminal records and statements by people who knew him. Thus, they formed their opinions after they had each spent four-and-a-half hours with only Tsafendas, took for granted what he told them and had no way of double-checking it.

During the trial, no mention was made of Tsafendas's political activism, real political ideas or his motive for killing Verwoerd, though they had clearly been expressed by him to the police. The fact that he had given lucid political reasons for killing Verwoerd in his two statements to the police, with no reference to the tapeworm, was concealed at the trial. The Attorney General lied, withheld and manipulated evidence to portray Tsafendas as an apolitical person with schizophrenia who had killed Verwoerd for no political reason. A subsequent Commission of Enquiry into the assassination also withheld and manipulated evidence, which was clearly to portray Tsafendas as he had been presented in court.

Imprisonment

thumb|200px|alt=Aerial view of a walled prison facility|Zonderwater Prison

Tsafendas was initially held on Robben Island, then after four months was transferred to Pretoria Central Prison. There he occupied a cell on death row that was specially built for him next to the execution chamber where men were hanged. Tsafendas was subjected to some form of inhuman and cruel torture for most of his imprisonment. In 1989, he was transferred to Zonderwater Prison near Cullinan. In 1994, after the collapse of apartheid, Tsafendas was visited in prison by two Greek Orthodox priests he knew. Tsafendas told them that he killed Verwoerd for being "a dictator and a tyrant who oppressed his people." Tsafendas said: "Every day, you see a man you know committing a very serious crime for which millions of people suffer. You cannot take him to court or report him to the police, because he is the law in the country. Would you remain silent and let him continue with his crime, or would you do something to stop him?"

In 1994, he was transferred again, this time to Sterkfontein psychiatric hospital outside Krugersdorp. In 1999, South African filmmaker Liza Key was allowed to conduct two televised interviews with him, for a documentary called A Question of Madness in which she raised the suggestion that Tsafendas's act was not mindless but politically motivated.

Death

Tsafendas died of pneumonia in October 1999, aged 81, 33 years after the assassination. At the time of his death, he was not regarded as a hero in anti-apartheid circles, which sent no members to attend his funeral. The funeral was held according to Greek Orthodox rites, and he was buried in an unmarked grave outside Sterkfontein Hospital. Fewer than ten people attended the service.

Tsafendas's life story and his assassination of Hendrik Verwoerd are briefly mentioned in the book The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden by Jonas Jonasson, published in 2012.

In November 2018, The Man Who Killed Apartheid: The Life of Dimitri Tsafendas by Harris Dousemetzis and Gerry Loughran was published in South Africa. Justice and Correctional Services Minister Michael Masutha described the book's launch as "a moment to celebrate the truth" about Tsafendas.

References

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