The Man Who Killed Apartheid
Publish date: 12 November 2018
Issue Number: 799
Diary: IBA Legalbrief Africa
Category: Book Reviews
The Man Who Killed Apartheid
By Harris Dousemetzis
Jacana. R224
In the South African House of Assembly, on 6 September 1966, Dimitri Tsafendas stabbed to death Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd. Afterwards, Tsafendas was declared to be a schizophrenic who believed a tapeworm lived inside him which controlled his actions, and that he had no political motive for assassinating Verwoerd. Pronounced unfit to stand trial, Tsafendas went down in history as a deranged parliamentary messenger. For 50 years, this story prevailed. However, this book now reveals the truth about Tsafendas; that he was deeply political from an early age. After the assassination, Tsafendas volunteered a series of incontestable political reasons for killing Verwoerd, but these, along with details of his political past, were never allowed to see the light of day. This book reveals the extent of the cover-up by SA's authorities and the desperate lengths they went to conceal the existence of Tsafendas's opposition to apartheid. The book exposes one of the great lies in South African history; that Verwoerd was murdered by a mad man. It also offers for the first time a complete biography of this extraordinary man.
