Slain Apartheid Foe Mourned in Protest March

A bespectacled anthropologist, David Webster, concluded a recent paper on repression in South Africa by singling out the “steady tempo” of anti-apartheid activists slain by right-wing death squads.

Webster said these clandestine groups control government opponents by assassination after official methods, such as detention, have failed. “It is a very rare event indeed when such assassinations are ever solved,” he added.

On Saturday, before that paper could even be published, about 5,000 white and black South Africans marched through Johannesburg’s white suburbs to bury Webster, himself a victim of an assassination squad.

The gentle-mannered, 43-year-old white professor was killed outside his home Monday by a single shotgun blast fired from a car carrying three white men. His funeral march was one of the largest anti-apartheid processions here since the government imposed a state of emergency three years ago.

Webster was the 61st anti-apartheid activist assassinated in South Africa since 1978, and the ninth in less than two years, according to human rights groups. The authorities have filed charges in only one such case in 11 years.

The hearse carrying Webster’s simple casket was escorted on a five-mile journey from St. Mary’s Anglican Cathedral downtown to a suburban cemetery Saturday by jogging throngs of mourners, carrying anti-apartheid banners and singing songs extolling the outlawed African National Congress.

During a three-hour funeral service, attended by the leading lights of the anti-apartheid movement, Webster was eulogized as “a gallant soldier whose determination to fight apartheid was more important than his life,” in the words of Mohammed Valli Moosa, a United Democratic Front official.

“It is people like David Webster who make black people realize that white South Africans are human beings,” said the Rev. Frank Chikane, a black church leader. “His death is a clear indication that he was a thorn in the side of the disciples and beneficiaries of apartheid.”

Well-planned attacks on political activists and bombings of anti-apartheid group offices have escalated in recent years, and political analysts blame shadowy, pro-apartheid vigilante groups, some reportedly made up of police officers or former police officers unhappy with government constraints on security force behavior.

“These are guys who believe they are the white knights of the white race, appointed by God to keep the black hordes and communism at bay,” Mark Swilling, an expert on black politics at the Center for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., said in an interview.

Swilling said it’s no coincidence that the increase in vigilante activity has coincided with a decline in the number of massacres, beatings and incidents of torture by police, who are under intense international pressure to shape up their image.

‘Muzzles Police’

The right-wingers “think the government has betrayed whites. And when the state muzzles the police, they figure the only natural and moral thing is to take it upon themselves to eliminate the revolutionaries,” Swilling said.

Max Coleman, a white activist and friend of Webster, said his colleague’s death “bears all the hallmarks of a professional, well-informed hit squad. And there is no more profitable place to start the investigation than within the ranks of the police themselves.”

The South African police have denied involvement in any of the bombings or assassinations since 1978, and they have launched a highly publicized search for Webster’s killers, issuing sketches of the wanted men and offering a 10,000-rand ($4,000) reward for information leading to their capture.

But the failure to solve these crimes in the past “feeds suspicion that agents of the state, on duty or off duty, are guilty, and that the state itself does not want the crimes solved,” the Business Day newspaper said in an editorial last week.

Unlikely Target

At first glance, Webster seemed an unlikely target for such a hit squad. Although he was one of the few white members of the UDF, a banned anti-apartheid coalition, the quiet, baldish professor was not a prominent political activist. He often referred to himself as “just a small fry,” friends said, and unlike thousands of other activists he had never been banned, detained or restricted by the authorities.

But Webster was well-known to the local police because of his work with the families of detainees. He helped organize many social gatherings for released detainees and their relatives, often booking the meeting halls in his name.

In recent months, he had frequently come face-to-face with police attempting to break up those “detainee tea parties” in black townships. Webster usually attempted to negotiate with the police, and he was warned several times that no more tea parties would be allowed.

Less than two weeks before his death, police surrounded a Johannesburg church during another tea party. Webster’s attempts to mediate that time were futile and police ordered the meeting to disperse.

“He was the kind of person every security policeman loved to hate,” said Swilling. “He had a moral courage that the police came into contact with regularly. And he was a white man whom the black comrades loved.”

In recent years, Webster had begun writing about government repression for human rights publications, and he became an expert in the field of “extra-legal repression”--political assassins, hit squads and vigilantes.

On Monday, Webster and Maggie Friedman, his girlfriend and co-researcher, had driven their small pickup to the bakery and returned home, parking on the street. When Webster walked to the back of the truck to let his dogs out, a car drove slowly past and a shotgun was fired at Webster’s chest. He collapsed and died almost instantly.

His funeral drew dozens of foreign diplomats and hundreds of anti-apartheid leaders, including white activists such as 84-year-old Helen Joseph, the Rev. Beyers Naude and Raymond Suttner. Suttner, a law professor and former detainee, served as a pallbearer, defying a government order that prohibits him from being with more than four people at a time.

Webster’s friend Johnny Clegg, South Africa’s most famous pop musician, flew in from Los Angeles, a stop on his current U.S. tour. Clegg and Webster, both anthropologists, shared a passion for black township life and music.

Unrestricted Funeral

Anti-government demonstrations of any kind are illegal in South Africa, and police have routinely limited the number of mourners and speakers at political funerals. But Webster’s funeral was not restricted, and several hundred police impassively monitored the funeral and parade route.

Webster’s murder reminded many of the death of Ric Turner, a white professor at Natal University, who was shot to death as he answered a knock on his front door in 1978. No one was arrested in that case, and since then a string of activists have been killed by “persons unknown,” in the words of the police.

Griffiths Mxenge, a Durban civil rights attorney, was stabbed to death on his way home from work in 1981. His wife, Victoria, began a campaign to identify his killers but, four years later, she was hacked to death in front of her children.

Godfrey Dhlomo, 19, made allegations of police brutality last year in a documentary aired by CBS and was later interviewed by police about those claims. Four days after he talked to police, he was found shot to death.

The only such killing to result in arrests was that of Eric Mtonga, 35, a regional director of the Institute for Democratic Alternatives for South Africa. Mtonga was beaten to death and then stabbed in the heart. Several senior police officers from the Ciskei homeland have been charged.

Over the past decade, more than 50 anti-apartheid activists have been killed by unknown assailants outside of South Africa. And unknown bombers and arsonists have destroyed several buildings occupied by anti-apartheid organizations.

SHARING VIEWS

Some key white South Africans are meeting African National Congress rebels, hearing the guerrillas’ side. Page 8