Tsafendas was not mad when he killed Verwoerd
High Court Judge Jody Kollapen was the keynote speaker at the launch of the book The Man Who Killed Apartheid: The Life of Dimitri Tsafendas by Harris Dousemetzis. It was hosted by the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, Jacana Media and the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg last week. The book provides insight into Tsefandas and his possible motives for killing prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd. Kollapen stumbled upon Verwoerd’s funeral as a child and later met Tsafendas
SOUTH Africa’s transition from its painful and shameful past, characterised by a system of organised oppression and deprivation, to a constitutional state has been described as breathtaking in its attempt to heal a divided society and lay the foundations for a new order based on equality for all, the commitment to social justice and the recognition of the fundamental rights and freedoms for so long absent in its legal, social and economic order.
That transition, however, has also been described as flawed to the extent that in dealing with the past it provided for a system of granting amnesty to perpetrators of serious political crimes of the past in return for the telling of the truth. The truth we were entitled to as a nation in many ways became the trade-off for the justice that so many had hoped would ensue in dealing with the pain of the past.
This compromise was eloquently described by Judge Ismail Mohamed in the case of the Azanian People’s Organisation and others versus the President of SA and others in a 1996 judgment of the Constitutional Court in the following terms: “Secrecy and authoritarianism have concealed the truth in little crevices of obscurity in our history. Records are not easily accessible, witnesses are often unknown, dead, unwilling or unavailable.
“All that often effectively remains is the truth of wounded memories of loved ones sharing instinctive suspicions, deep and traumatising to the survivors but otherwise incapable of translating themselves into objective and corroborative evidence, which could survive the rigours of the law.”
It is the search for the truth, often elusive and concealed, that acts as a catalyst in motivating human action in provoking our curiosity and in charting one on the path that Harris Dousemetzis has travelled these past nine years.
My connection to this story goes back to September 1966, when I was a little boy about 9 years old, living in Cowie Street, Marabastad, Pretoria.
The cemetery known as Heroes Acre was located in the same street. It was for whites only and was the site where Paul Kruger and others were laid to rest.
On that day, sometime in September 1966, my friends and I were intrigued by the amazing military display that played itself out on the street where we lived and our curiosity saw us make our way towards the cemetery where, I suppose because of our age, little attention was paid to us and we enjoyed a vantage point for what appeared to be a funeral.
We had no idea who was being buried but assumed it was an important person, given all the pomp and ceremony and the large crowds that had gathered.
I would later learn that the funeral was that of Dr Verwoerd, known in many circles as the architect of apartheid and who infamously expressed the following view on the education of the majority: “There is no place for the Bantu in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour… What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? That is quite absurd. Education must train people in accordance with their opportunities in life, according to the sphere in which they live.”
Verwoerd was stabbed to death on September 6, 1966, in the House of Assembly by one Dimitri Tsafendas, who was employed as a parliamentary messenger at the time, changing forever the course of history in our country.
At his trial, Tsafendas was found to be insane and incapable of understanding and participating in the proceedings against him and was declared a state president’s patient and was then meant to be detained in a mental institution.
He was, however, held on death row for many years and with the advent of a new government was transferred to an ordinary prison and thereafter to the Sterkfontein Hospital, where he died in 1999.
In total, he was incarcerated for 33 years. For many of those years, he was subjected to the most cruel and inhumane treatment, almost as if the system was adamant he be punished even though he had not been convicted of any crime.
I got to know him in the early 1990s and visited him from time to time, both in prison and at the Sterkfontein Hospital, and in him I found a remarkably intelligent man with a genial disposition and a lovely sense of humour and I enjoyed the times I spent with him. I hope that it was equally pleasant for him.
The book by Dousemetzis, which took some nine years in the making, is the product of painstaking and extensive research, which concludes that far from being a “madman”, Tsafendas was acutely aware of what he did and planned and executed the assassination of the person who was described as the architect of apartheid.
He consulted with some 137 people, combed the records in the archives of different countries and his conclusions are supported by some of the most eminent jurists in South Africa. It is hoped that the result of his work will ensure that history correctly reflects the circumstances and the reasons for the assassination of Verwoerd.
As South Africans, we are entitled to that truth and to have it so recorded. Equally the dignity and the efforts of Tsafendas in changing the course of our history should be properly acknowledged.
To this end Minister of Justice Michael Masutha, has been provided with the research undertaken by Douzemetsis and on which the book is based with a request that the necessary legal records be amended to correctly reflect what occurred .
In all of this, there remains an important lesson for all of us even as we continue to grapple with our past and that lies in how we record the rich and illuminating history of our people.
Often we rely on the oral tradition of passing down stories from generation to generation and pay little attention to proper research and the proper recording of what actually occurred.
The danger then is that history is told from the perspective of the powerful and the dominant with all its distortions and untruths, and the voices and experiences of those that matter get lost or are undermined.
It must remain a matter of some discomfort that Douzemetsis, who has no connection to South Africa, had the will, the resilience and the passion to undertake and complete this painstaking task, while as South Africans we largely remained supine.
We have a duty to the generations who came before us, as well as to those that will follow, to take seriously our history, to properly understand it and record it.
It is not a task for academics and researchers alone but as ordinary citizens we may want to consider our role in it and whether at the level of the family or the community we are able to contribute to this process.
In doing so, we surely will contribute to both a better understanding of our past and provide a context for our future struggles.