David Webster (anthropologist)

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David Webster (1945 – May 1, 1989) was a social anthropologist in South Africa who was murdered by covert forces of the Apartheid state.

[edit] Life

David Webster was born in 1945 in what was then Northern Rhodesia, where his father worked as a miner in the copper belt. He studied at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, where he was involved in student politics.

In 1970, David Webster started teaching anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand. His doctorate had been written on a traditional topic of anthropology (kinship), but it was focussed on a politically explosive field, namely migrant workers from Mozambique. In 1976, he was invited to teach for two years at the University of Manchester in the UK.

David Webster was active in the political anti-Apartheid movement, especially in the 1980's, especially for the Detainees' Parents' Support Committee (DPSC) in South Africa which tried to support the many thousands of people detained without trial by the apartheid regime.

Shortly before his assassination, Webster had done fieldwork in the Kosi Bay area in KwaZulu-Natal, which was also used as a covert training area for official and unofficial armed forces linked to the Apartheid government.

Webster was shot dead outside his house by a hit squad of the Civil Cooperation Bureau, a covert Apartheid government agency. The hit squad was paid R40.000 (at the time, equivalent to about US$8.000) for his murder. Ferdi Barnard, the man who pulled the trigger on the shotgun used, was later tried and found guilty in 1998; he was sentenced to two life terms plus 63 years for a number of crimes, including the murder of Webster.

Thousands of people attended his funeral in Johannesburg, first at St. Mary's Cathedral (Anglican) in the centre of town, and then at the burial place (see Grassroots article, 1989).

In 1992, the University of the Wiwatersrand named a new Hall of Residence for students after David Webster.

[edit] External links

• Short Biography on South African history website
• Archival 'news' item with photograph of David Webster as used on posters used at his funeral
• Article in Grassroots vol. 10, no.2, May 1989, "Why did they kill David Webster", including photos of David Webster, of mourners at the funeral, and outside St Mary's Cathedral in Johannesburg.
• Tribute by Lloyd Vogelman
• Tribute by Edward (Eddie) Webster, a colleague at 'Wits', published in Transformation, volume 9
• Details about the Wouter Basson trials
• Newspaper page with pictures of the scene of the assassination, as well as a photo of David Webster writing field notes

[edit] Literature

• Webster, D & Hammond-Took, W D (eds) 1975. Agnates and affines: studies in African marriage, manners and land allocation. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. (=African Studies 34 (4))
• Webster, D 1984. The reproduction of labour power and the struggle for survival in Soweto. (Carnegie Conference paper no.20) Rondebosch: Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit. ISBN 0-7992-0694-6.
• Webster, D & Friedman, M 1989. Repression and the State of Emergency, June 1987-March 1989. Johannesburg: Ravan Press. (Published posthumously)
• Webster, D 1991. Abafazi Bathonga Bafihlakala: Ethnicity and Gender in a KwaZulu Border Community. African Studies 50 (1-2) 243-271. (Published posthumously)
• Frederikse, J 1998. David Webster. Cape Town : Maskew Miller Longman. ISBN 0-636-02255-2.
• Stiff, P 2001. Warfare by Other Means: South Africa in the 1980s and 1990s. Alberton (South Africa): Galago. ISBN 1-919854-01-0.