Dimitri Tsafendas (Greek: Δημήτρης Τσαφέντας; 14 January 1918 – 7 October 1999) was a Greek-Mozambican lifelong political militant and the assassin of Prime Minister of South Africa Hendrik Verwoerd.

[1] On 6 September 1966, while working as a parliamentary messenger, Tsafendas stabbed Verwoerd – commonly regarded as the architect of apartheid[1][2] – to death during a sitting of the House of Assembly in Cape Town.

In October 1951, Tsafendas travelled by sea to Lourenço Marques, but was refused entry because of his past political activities and for being a known Communist, and was deported back to Portugal.

Banned from entering South Africa, where his family had gone to live in the late 1930s, and Mozambique, Tsafendas spent the next 12 years of his life in exile.

Constantly harassed in Portugal by PIDE and the Portuguese police, Tsafendas roamed across Europe and the Middle East, working and visiting places that interested him.

[6] In 1962, during a visit to Crete to see his father's and ancestors' birthplace, he met some former World War II Greek partisans who had participated in the kidnapping of German general Heinrich Kreipe.

[4]: 131 In 1963, Tsafendas was granted amnesty by Portugal after he convinced them that he was a reformed man and no longer a Communist, and he was eventually allowed to return to Mozambique.

[9][8] In July 1966, at the age of 48, Tsafendas obtained a temporary position as a parliamentary messenger in the House of Assembly in Cape Town.

"[4]: 1 Tsafendas's initial plan was to shoot Verwoerd, escape in the confusion, hide in the Eleni, a Greek tanker that was docked in Cape Town, and then sail away with it to freedom.

However, he had difficulty getting hold of a gun and with time running out and his temporary employment about to expire, he decided to use a knife to kill Verwoerd.

Tsafendas approached him, drew a concealed sheath knife from his belt, and stabbed Verwoerd about four times in the torso before he was pulled away by other members of parliament.

[6] However, others like Johnny Makhatini leader of the ANC in Algiers, hailed the assassination as "the beginning of the end for apartheid" and said it would "help the morale of guerrilla fighters in South Africa (and) increase confusion among whites".

For example, the Algerian-French magazine Revolution Africaine applauded the assassination of "the apostle of hatred", and said, "The most hated man of Africa is no more",[23] in Ethiopia, a banner headline in the New Times of Addis Ababa said, "The Sharpeville butcher stabbed to death",[24] while Cairo's Al Akhbar newspaper said Egypt had "no tears to shed" for Dr.

[3][4]: 237 Throughout his time in custody Tsafendas was subjected to severe torture from beatings, electric shocks, mock hangings and pretended defenestrations.

[4]: 211, 218, 222, 226  During his interrogation, Tsafendas gave incontestable political reasons for killing Verwoerd: "I did believe that with the disappearance of the South African prime minister a change of policy would take place.

Two days after the assassination, the Chief Inspector of PIDE in Lisbon instructed his counterparts in Mozambique not to give the South African authorities "any information indicating Tsafendas as a partisan for the independence of your province [country]".

[7] Despite PIDE's efforts, the South African police investigation, led by the notorious General Hendrik van den Bergh, revealed that Tsafendas was a highly intelligent man, well versed in politics, well read, with deep political convictions and a lifelong history of activism who considered Verwoerd to be a dictator and a tyrant.

[4]: 27  Evidence was also submitted to the Commission of Enquiry into Verwoerd's death that in London, Tsafendas had attempted to "recruit people to take part in an uprising in South Africa.

The fact that he had given lucid political reasons for killing Verwoerd in his two statements to the police, with no reference to the tapeworm, was concealed at the trial.

The Attorney General lied, withheld and manipulated evidence to portray Tsafendas as an apolitical person with schizophrenia who had killed Verwoerd for no political reason.

In 1999, South African filmmaker Liza Key was allowed to conduct two televised interviews with him, for a documentary called A Question of Madness in which she raised the suggestion that Tsafendas's act was not mindless but politically motivated.

The report was written by Harris Dousemetzis, a tutor at Durham University, England, and consisted of three hardback volumes totalling 2,192 pages and 861,803 words.

In fact, the study compellingly demonstrates that he was a man with a deep social conscience who was bitterly opposed to apartheid and viewed Verwoerd as the prime architect of this policy.

[4]: 374 The five jurists concluded in their letter that: At present, South African history records Tsafendas as the insane killer of Dr Verwoerd who had no political motive for his act.

Again this area falls squarely within the discretion of the government as advised by the Minister but may we suggest a few options for consideration and they would include: a. a public acknowledgement of the acceptance of the study and its findings; and

Advocate Bizos described the evidence gathered and presented by the report, proving that Tsafendas was not insane but politically motivated in killing Dr. Verwoerd, as "overwhelming and unquestionable".

An award-winning play entitled Living in Strange Lands by Anton Krueger was presented to South African audiences in 2002.

[35] Tsafendas's life story and his assassination of Hendrik Verwoerd are briefly mentioned in the book The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden by Jonas Jonasson, published in 2012.

In November 2018, The Man Who Killed Apartheid: The Life of Dimitri Tsafendas by Harris Dousemetzis and Gerry Loughran was published in South Africa.

Justice and Correctional Services Minister Michael Masutha described the book's launch as "a moment to celebrate the truth" about Tsafendas.