Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt

Why do we have recourse to the story of the Greek-Mozambican ’tyrannicide’ Dimitri Tsafendas, in an attempt to explain the disastrous result of Mandela’s party in the recent South African elections? The reason is simple: the heroic and tragic story of Tsafendas, who in 1966 killed the “architect of apartheid” and Prime Minister of what was then “white” South Africa, Hendrik Verwoerd, lies at the heart of the country’s critical situation and highlights the inability of the African National Congress (ANC), once powerful but now corrupt and in deep crisis, to improve the daily lives of its African inhabitants, 30 years after the end of apartheid. Indeed, the reasons behind the scandalous treatment meted out by South Africa’s leaders to the hero Tsafendas are essentially the same as those behind the deep frustration and anger aroused by the record of their policies among the vast majority of their fellow Africans.

So this is what it’s all about. When Tsafendas, with his rich past as an anti-colonialist, communist and revolutionary militant in Africa, Europe and America [1], stabbed and killed the declared pronazi and bloodthirsty Verwoerd, the apartheid regime was quick to portray Tsafendas as “unbalanced” and “apolitical”, while the president of the court that tried him persisted in describing him as... “a meaningless creature”. And there were several reasons for this: firstly, to avoid turning him into a popular hero who would find imitators among the victims of apartheid, since his trial would be purely political and would attract international attention at a time when the crimes of apartheid were barely touched by the international press. And also to avoid revealing to all the oppressed the fragility of the supposedly all-powerful South African police state. Of course, this staging did not prevent his tormentors from torturing Tsafendas more than anyone else for years on end (!), nor from imprisoning him (in solitary confinement and in a cell specially built for him next to the room where the executions took place!) until the end of the apartheid regime, i.e. for 28 years!

But the unheard-of scandal is that the ANC, which took over the reins of the country in 1994, not only continued to describe the martyred Dimitri Tsafendas as “unbalanced”, but allowed him to languish in prison, contenting itself with transferring him to a psychiatric clinic/prison until the end of his life in 1999! And as if this were not enough, the ANC continues to this day to stubbornly refuse to honour Tsafendas, despite the growing number of voices emanating even from former ANC leaders, personalities from all over the world, and even from the governments of other African countries, calling not only for this unprecedented scandal to stop, but also for Dimitri Tsafendas to be officially recognised as a national hero of South Africa and as a protagonist and martyr of the anti-colonial struggles of the peoples of Africa! [2]

So why this despicable and, at first sight, incomprehensible attitude on the part of the ANC towards the revolutionary activist Dimitri Tsafendas? Apparently so that the former leaders and supporters of apartheid and their epigones would not be upset and irritated by the official recognition of the “murderer” of their historic leader Verwoerd as a “hero” and “martyr” of South Africa finally liberated. Indeed, the main concern of the ANC leadership was, and unfortunately continues to be, to apply the so-called “peace and unity” policy, i.e. “national reconciliation”, the cornerstone of which is that, with the exception of racial discrimination, which is abolished, everything else remains virtually unchanged: the few rich businessmen and landowners, who “coincidentally” are all white, retain their privileges and fortunes, which translates into the fact that they continue to control the economy and most of the land that their ancestors stole from the natives, while the multitude of urban and rural poor, who “coincidentally” are all African, continue to live in poverty and insecurity, cloistered in their infamous miserable townships.

This is what makes South Africa the world champion of social inequality. And that’s why its society is undermined by terrible unemployment of 33% (and more than 50% among young people) and just as terrible crime, while it looks more and more like a volcano about to erupt because corruption is so endemic, preventing the ANC’s clientelist state from meeting the most basic needs of the majority of the population, such as the supply of electricity and drinking water! And of course, this is why more and more non-white South Africans (blacks, coloureds, Indians, etc.), who once enthusiastically supported the ANC or even fought for their freedom within its ranks, are now abandoning it en masse and turning against it in the elections.

The recognition of Dimitri Tsafendas’ decisive contribution to the struggles to overthrow the apartheid regime in South Africa, to liberate Mozambique from the Portuguese colonial yoke and even Portugal itself from the Salazar dictatorship (his dreadful secret police, PIDE, arrested and tortured him on several occasions), is not just an act of elementary justice and does not just concern the authorities and societies of these three countries. It is and must be a matter for all progressives, and of course for his country of origin, Greece, where he arrived expelled from the United States in 1947, to fight, with arms in hand, the monarchist and collabo reaction in the ranks of the Democratic Army. When will the Greek left finally pay tribute to the hero and martyr of the liberation of peoples, Dimitri Tsafendas, who remains virtually unknown in the homeland of his Cretan father and staunch anarchist?

More than yesterday and the day before, it is above all today that humanity feels the greatest need for fighters like Dimitri Tsafendas, who, from his cell, “explained” his actions with simple truths like this: “Every day, you see a man you know committing a very serious crime for which millions of people suffer. You cannot take him to court or report him to the police, because he is the law in the country. Would you remain silent and let him continue with his crime, or would you do something to stop him?” And to leave no doubt about the meaning of his words, Tsafendas appealed to Nazim Hikmet, recalling his exhortation “if I don’t burn, if you don’t burn, if we don’t burn, how will light overcome darkness?” And in truth, today, darkness abounds...