Murdered for fighting apartheid
David Webster Street Formerly Leopold Street
As part of a series on the heroes honoured in eThekwini’s new street and building names, Cerina Rabilall profiles David Webster
DAVID Webster was born in 1945, and grew up in the copper belt of Northern Rhodesia where his father was a miner. His family later immigrated to South Africa, where Webster chose to pursue a career in anthropology.
He became involved in the struggle and his first antiapartheid act was a protest at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, in 1965. In 1970, Webster joined the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) as a lecturer in anthropology. Webster’s doctoral thesis focused on the traditional anthropological topic of kinship. His fieldwork had taken him to southern Mozambique where his anthropological research methods of living with the people he studied exposed him to the exploitation of black workers by government and business. This led him to integrate his academic critique of government policies with anti-apartheid political activism.
After lecturing at the University of Manchester, Britain, for two years, he returned to Wits in 1978, where he continued to be involved in the anti-apartheid struggle. Webster worked with the Detainees’ Parents’ Support Committee (DPSC), a support group for relatives of political detainees and banished people. He would bring the families of detainees together to share information, obtain news about and track down political detainees held secretly in prisons by the state security apparatus. He was also involved in the End Conscription Campaign, the Five Freedoms Forum, and the Detainees’ Education and Welfare Organisation.
Webster and Bruce Fordyce, the famous Comrades Marathon runner, became involved with the Five Freedoms Forum. Together they arranged for sporting apparel such as tracksuits and running shoes to be delivered to political detainees.
On 1 May, 1989, South Africa’s first official Workers’ Day, Webster was shot dead outside his home in Troyeville, Johannesburg, which he shared with his partner. His assassin, Ferdi Barnard, was tried and found guilty in 1998. In 1992, the University of the Witwatersrand named a new Hall of Residence for students in Webster’s honour. The David Webster Hall of Residence is now home to 217 Wits students. Webster is also remembered by the City of Johannesburg in the renaming of Bloemenhof Park in Troyeville in his honour on the 20th anniversary of his death. A plaque at the David Webster Park reads: “David Webster 1945-1989 Assassinated in Troyeville for his fight against apartheid lived for justice, peace and friendship”.
rabilallc@durban.gov.za
Source: South African History Online