Dmitri Tsafendas alikuwa karani wa bunge la Afrika Kusini wakati wa utawala wa makaburu waliokuwa wanaendeleza ubaguzi wa rangi, chini ya waziri mkuu wa wakati huo Dr Verwoerd. Huyu Dr Verwoerd ndiye aliyeanzisha na kusimamia kwa nguvu zote sera ya apartheid iliyowanyanyasa sana waafrika, ikiwemo kuagiza mauaji ya Sharpeville na mengine mengi ya namna hiyo. Lakini mwisho wa Dr Verwoerd uliwadia kupitia mikono ya karani Dmitri Tsafendas siku moja katika kikao cha bunge, ambapo Tsafendas alimchoma kisu kifuani mara nne waziri mkuu akiwa kwenye kiti chake, na kumsababishia kifo. Alishitakiwa kwa kosa hilo, lakini jaji alimwona hana akili timamu akamhukumu kuwekwa katika hospitali ya vichaa "hadi rais wa jamhuri atakapoona vinginevyo". Lakini dola iliamua kufanya kinyume, na kumpeleka gerezani wanakoishi wale waliohukumiwa kifo, ambako aliishi kama mfungwa.
Mshangao wangu ni kwamba huyu mtu hakuwahi kupata bahati ya kuachiwa huru, hata baada ya Mandela kuwa rais, hakumkumbuka kabisa! Ameishi gerezani huyu kuanzia mwaka 1966 hadi 1999 alipofariki. Mimi namwona huyu kama mwanaharakati dhidi ya ubaguzi wa rangi. Ni kwanini Mandela, alipokuwa rais, hakumwachia huru?
Dimitri Tsafendas
Long-jailed assassin of South African premier
Dimitri Tsafendas arguably changed the course of post-war South African history more than any other individual when, in a brief moment of frenzy, he stabbed to death the "architect of apartheid", prime minister Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, in the Cape Town parliament in 1966. He was found unfit to stand trial for the murder by reason of insanity, the judge president of the Cape, Mr Justice Beyers, observing at the time: "I can as little try a man who has not at least the makings of a rational mind as I could try a dog or an inert implement. He is a meaningless creature!"
Tsafendas was committed as a "state president's patient". This normally means detention in a secure mental institution. But the government of the day, judging that Tsafendas had not paid enough for his actions, chose instead to exploit a loophole in the law making it possible to hold him on death row. There he spent nearly a quarter of a century, subjected to the terrible sounds and sights of weekly state executions and apparently used as a human punch-bag by sadistic warders. He was finally moved out of prison to Sterkfontein mental asylum after the arrival of black majority rule in 1994.
He was befriended at Sterkfontein by a South African film producer, Liza Key. A schoolgirl at the time of Verwoerd's death, Ms Key held popular assumptions about the assassination - believing, along with most South Africans, that the prime minister had been killed by a white parliamentary messenger of Greek nationality who had no political motivation, but believed that he was acting on the orders of a giant tapeworm infesting his stomach.
Researching his life for a documentary, Key was startled to find a very different story. She was not much helped in this by Tsafendas himself, who - whatever his state of mind at the time of the assassination - had seemingly had his sanity seriously disturbed by his experiences on death row.
But, digging into state records and interviewing family, officials and others involved in the events surrounding the assassination, she found that Tsafendas had been both politically sophisticated - at one time having been a paid-up member of the Communist party - and a classic victim of the racial prejudices that Verwoerd exploited to try to entrench white rule on the subcontinent.
It transpired that he was in fact born in Mozambique, the illegitimate son of a Greek father and a black mother. Victimised at school for his mixed blood (he was given the nickname "blackie"), he left Mozambique to wander the world as a merchant seaman. Accounts of his travels, pulled together by state investigators in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, provide a tantalisingly incomplete picture. At times he seems to have been little more than an international tramp, bouncing not so much from city to city as from asylum to asylum, only to pop up on occasion as a man of some substance but with a mysterious background.
He returned to South Africa in 1964, fluent in eight languages, and somehow - despite his mixed parentage, status as an illegal immigrant and history of mental instability - secured a post in the whites-only parliament as a messenger, exploiting his privileged position to stab the prime minister to death. Shortly before the assassination he applied for reclassification from white to "coloured". Although there were attempts by police, during interrogation, to suggest to him that he believed a tapeworm had "ordered" him to carry out the killing, he never seems to have made the claim himself.
Dimitri Tsafendas, parliamentary messenger, born 1918; died October 7 1999
Mshangao wangu ni kwamba huyu mtu hakuwahi kupata bahati ya kuachiwa huru, hata baada ya Mandela kuwa rais, hakumkumbuka kabisa! Ameishi gerezani huyu kuanzia mwaka 1966 hadi 1999 alipofariki. Mimi namwona huyu kama mwanaharakati dhidi ya ubaguzi wa rangi. Ni kwanini Mandela, alipokuwa rais, hakumwachia huru?
Dimitri Tsafendas
Long-jailed assassin of South African premier
- <LI class=byline>David Beresford <LI class=publication>The Guardian,
- Monday October 11 1999
- Article history
Dimitri Tsafendas arguably changed the course of post-war South African history more than any other individual when, in a brief moment of frenzy, he stabbed to death the "architect of apartheid", prime minister Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, in the Cape Town parliament in 1966. He was found unfit to stand trial for the murder by reason of insanity, the judge president of the Cape, Mr Justice Beyers, observing at the time: "I can as little try a man who has not at least the makings of a rational mind as I could try a dog or an inert implement. He is a meaningless creature!"
Tsafendas was committed as a "state president's patient". This normally means detention in a secure mental institution. But the government of the day, judging that Tsafendas had not paid enough for his actions, chose instead to exploit a loophole in the law making it possible to hold him on death row. There he spent nearly a quarter of a century, subjected to the terrible sounds and sights of weekly state executions and apparently used as a human punch-bag by sadistic warders. He was finally moved out of prison to Sterkfontein mental asylum after the arrival of black majority rule in 1994.
He was befriended at Sterkfontein by a South African film producer, Liza Key. A schoolgirl at the time of Verwoerd's death, Ms Key held popular assumptions about the assassination - believing, along with most South Africans, that the prime minister had been killed by a white parliamentary messenger of Greek nationality who had no political motivation, but believed that he was acting on the orders of a giant tapeworm infesting his stomach.
Researching his life for a documentary, Key was startled to find a very different story. She was not much helped in this by Tsafendas himself, who - whatever his state of mind at the time of the assassination - had seemingly had his sanity seriously disturbed by his experiences on death row.
But, digging into state records and interviewing family, officials and others involved in the events surrounding the assassination, she found that Tsafendas had been both politically sophisticated - at one time having been a paid-up member of the Communist party - and a classic victim of the racial prejudices that Verwoerd exploited to try to entrench white rule on the subcontinent.
It transpired that he was in fact born in Mozambique, the illegitimate son of a Greek father and a black mother. Victimised at school for his mixed blood (he was given the nickname "blackie"), he left Mozambique to wander the world as a merchant seaman. Accounts of his travels, pulled together by state investigators in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, provide a tantalisingly incomplete picture. At times he seems to have been little more than an international tramp, bouncing not so much from city to city as from asylum to asylum, only to pop up on occasion as a man of some substance but with a mysterious background.
He returned to South Africa in 1964, fluent in eight languages, and somehow - despite his mixed parentage, status as an illegal immigrant and history of mental instability - secured a post in the whites-only parliament as a messenger, exploiting his privileged position to stab the prime minister to death. Shortly before the assassination he applied for reclassification from white to "coloured". Although there were attempts by police, during interrogation, to suggest to him that he believed a tapeworm had "ordered" him to carry out the killing, he never seems to have made the claim himself.
Dimitri Tsafendas, parliamentary messenger, born 1918; died October 7 1999
