THE MAN WHO KILLED APARTHEID, the life of Dimitri Tsafendas

504pp., b/w & colour illus., paperback, Updated Edition, Stellenbosch, (2018) 2023

Winner of the 2020 Face and Oliver Prize.

Dimitri Tsafendas assassinated Verwoerd on 6 September 1966. He was found unfit to stand trial on the grounds that he suffered from schizophrenia, declared a State President's patient and detained, first in prison and then in a mental institution, until his death in 1999. Although the Court found he had no political motive for killing Verwoerd, Dousemetzis demonstrates that Tsafendas was a communist, the son of an anarchist and committed to an independent Mozambique, the country of his birth.

"One of the most important books that have ever been written about apartheid. Not only does it reveal the truth about Tsafendas by exposing apartheid's lies, but it also gives a detailed and accurate description of what apartheid was and how its security forces operated." Advocate George Bizos SC

"This research confirms that there was a cover-up. It shows convincingly that Tsafendas was a political revolutionary, whose assassination of Dr Verwoerd was motivated by a hatred of Dr Verwoerd and all he stood for. He was not an insane killer but a political assassin determined to rid South Africa of the architect of apartheid." John Dugard, Professor of Law, Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria

Harris Dousemetzis is a tutor at the School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University, UK. he is the author of the Report to the Minister of Justice on the Matter of Dr Verwoerd's Assassination.

Author and journalist Gerry Loughran set up and ran Compass News Features. He currently writes a weekly column in the Sunday Nation.