Ex-Police Officer Held in Slayings in S. Africa : Apartheid: He is a suspect in the deaths of two prominent white activists. Authorities look for a possible rightist assassination squad.

By SCOTT KRAFT

Dec. 1, 1989 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa--A former police sergeant has been arrested in the assassinations earlier this year of two prominent white anti-apartheid activists, South Africa’s Ministry of Law and Order announced Thursday, while state-run television reported that more arrests in the cases “are imminent.”

Police said the 31-year-old white suspect, who was not identified, has been held “for some time” in the shooting deaths of anthropology professor David Webster, who was slain by three men outside his Johannesburg home May 1, and lawyer Anton Lubowski, a member of the South-West Africa People’s Organization, who was killed outside his home in Windhoek, Namibia, on Sept. 12.

“It is believed the police are looking at the possible existence of a private assassination squad with strong right-wing links,” the government’s evening news program reported.

The announcement, the first break in the Webster slaying investigation, came as the national police force reeled from allegations by three former officers that an assassination squad aimed at anti-apartheid activists has been operating within its ranks for nearly 10 years. An investigation by the attorney general of those allegations was completed this week, and President Frederik W. de Klerk has promised swift action.

Human rights organizations have severely criticized the authorities’ inability to solve dozens of killings of activists over the last decade. Eleven people have been assassinated so far this year and 45 since 1984, according to the Human Rights Commission. The sophistication of those murders, the commission added, “is a clear indication of the widespread existence and activity of well-organized units or hit squads.”

Police headquarters said the suspect had not been charged and was being held for questioning under security laws allowing for indefinite detention. His incarceration, revealed by South African newspapers, had not previously been announced by the authorities “because this would have jeopardized an investigation which still has to be launched,” a police statement said.

Police said the man was discharged from the force in 1984 after he was sentenced to prison for murder and theft. He was convicted of killing a suspect during one of his narcotics investigations west of Johannesburg and was released on bail in 1986.

Webster, 43, was a human rights activists and researcher who had been studying repression in South Africa.

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Scott Kraft

Scott Kraft is editor at large for enterprise journalism and special projects at the Los Angeles Times, where he oversees the Investigations department, standards and practices, polling and survey research projects, and newsroom-wide reporting initiatives. He works closely with departments across the newsroom to elevate series and is leading an initiative to actively develop books that are an outgrowth of Times’ expertise and original reporting, in partnership with commercial book publishers. During nearly four decades at The Times, Kraft has been managing editor, deputy managing editor/news and national editor, as well as a foreign and national correspondent. As an editor, he has directed work that won nine Pulitzer Prizes. As a reporter, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing while a New York-based national correspondent for the Associated Press before joining The Times in its Chicago bureau. He spent a decade abroad as The Times’ bureau chief in Nairobi, Johannesburg and Paris. He covered the release of Nelson Mandela and the end of apartheid as well as the ill-fated U.S. military mission in Somalia, among other major stories. His story for the Los Angeles Times magazine on the AIDS epidemic in Africa won the SPJ Distinguished Service Award for Foreign Correspondence. He has served as both a juror and chair of the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting. He also was a Pulitzer Prize juror in international reporting in 2014 and subsequently chaired five Pulitzer juries – Public Service in 2015, International Reporting in 2020, Explanatory Reporting in 2021, Illustrated Reporting and Commentary in 2022 and Editorial Writing in 2023. He is currently president of the Overseas Press Club of America. Kraft was born in Kansas City, Mo., and has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Kansas State University.

Ex-Police Officer Held in Slayings in S. Africa : Apartheid: He is a suspect in the deaths of two prominent white activists. Authorities look for a possible rightist assassination squad.

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