List of South African assassinations refers to a list of alleged and confirmed assassinations, reported to have been conducted by the Apartheid regime.
Dimitri Tsafendas was a Greek-Mozambican lifelong political militant and the assassin of Prime Minister of South Africa Hendrik Verwoerd. On 6 September 1966, while working as a parliamentary messenger, Tsafendas stabbed Verwoerd — commonly regarded as the architect of apartheid — to death during a sitting of the House of Assembly in Cape Town.
Chris Hani, born Martin Thembisile Hani, was the leader of the South African Communist Party and chief of staff of uMkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). He was a fierce opponent of the apartheid government, and was assassinated by Janusz Waluś, a Polish immigrant and sympathiser of the Conservative opposition on 10 April 1993, during the unrest preceding the transition to democracy.
Victoria Nonyamezelo Mxenge was a South African anti-apartheid activist; she was trained as a nurse and midwife, and later began practising law.
Bulelani T. Ngcuka is a South African attorney, prosecutor and activist, who served as the first Director of Public Prosecutions in South Africa, and is the husband of former Deputy President of South Africa Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.
Necklacing is a method of extrajudicial summary execution and torture carried out by forcing a rubber tire drenched with petrol around a victim's chest and arms, and setting it on fire. The term "necklace" originated in the 1980s in black townships of apartheid South Africa where suspected apartheid collaborators were publicly executed in this fashion.
The following lists events that happened during 1985 in South Africa.
Umlazi is a township in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, located south-west of Durban. Organisationally and administratively it forms part of the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality and its South Municipal Planning Region.
Qonce, formerly known as King William's Town, is a town in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa along the banks of the Buffalo River. The town is about 60 kilometres (37 mi) northwest of the Indian Ocean port of East London. It has a population of around 35,000 inhabitants and forms part of the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality.
The United Democratic Front (UDF) was a South African popular front that existed from 1983 to 1991. The UDF comprised more than 400 public organizations including trade unions, students' unions, women's and parachurch organizations. The UDF's goal was to establish a "non-racial, united South Africa in which segregation is abolished and in which society is freed from institutional and systematic racism." Its slogan was "UDF Unites, Apartheid Divides." The Front was established in 1983 to oppose the introduction of the Tricameral Parliament by the white-dominated National Party government, and dissolved in 1991 during the early stages of the transition to democracy.
Vlakplaas is a farm 20 km west of Pretoria that served as the headquarters of counterinsurgency unit C1 of the Security Branch of the apartheid-era South African Police. Though officially called Section C1, the unit itself also became known as Vlakplaas. Established in 1979, by 1990 it had grown from a small unit of five policemen and about fifteen askaris to a unit of nine squads.
Dirk Coetzee was co-founder and commander of the covert South African Security Police unit based at Vlakplaas. He and his colleagues were involved in a number of extrajudicial killings including that of Griffiths Mxenge. Coetzee publicly revealed the existence of the Vlakplaas death squads in 1989, making himself a target of a failed assassination attempt.
Griffiths Mlungisi Mxenge was born in KwaRayi, a rural settlement outside of King Williams Town, Eastern Cape. He was a civil rights lawyer, a member of the African National Congress (ANC) and a South African anti-apartheid activist.
The International Defence and Aid Fund or IDAF was a fund created by John Collins during the 1956 Treason Trial in South Africa. After learning of those accused of treason for protesting against apartheid, including Nelson Mandela, Collins created the fund in order to pay all legal expenses and look after the families of those on trial. The group was non-partisan.
Butana Almond Nofomela is a former South African security policeman. On 19 October 1989, hours before he was scheduled to be executed for an unrelated non-political murder, Nofomela confessed to his involvement in a police assassination squad that killed and terrorized opponents of apartheid. Nofomela was granted a stay of execution so he could give more information. His death sentence for the unrelated murder was commuted to life imprisonment and he was released on parole in 2009.
The Natal Organisation of Women (NOW) was a regional women's organization in South Africa in the Natal area. NOW was founded in 1983 and affiliated with the United Democratic Front (UDF). NOW included women from all ages, class and races. NOW's values were in opposition of those expressed by the Inkatha's women's groups.
"Asimbonanga", also known as "Asimbonanga (Mandela)", is an anti-apartheid song by the South African racially integrated band Savuka. It was first released as a 12" single in 1986, and then included in their 1987 album Third World Child. It alluded to Nelson Mandela, imprisoned on Robben Island at the time of song's release, and other anti-apartheid activists. "Asimbonanga" is a Zulu phrase that may be translated as "We have not seen him". It was well received, becoming popular within the movement against apartheid, and was covered by several artists including Joan Baez and the Soweto Gospel Choir.
Robben Island Prison is an inactive prison on Robben Island in Table Bay, 6.9 kilometers (4.3 mi) west of the coast of Bloubergstrand, Cape Town, South Africa. Nobel Laureate and former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela was imprisoned there for 18 of the 27 years he served behind bars before the fall of apartheid. Since then, three former inmates of the prison have gone on to become President of South Africa.
Chris Hani, General-Secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP), was assassinated by right-wing extremist Janusz Waluś on 10 April 1993. The assassination, later tied to members within the Conservative Party, occurred outside Hani's home in Dawn Park during a peak period of progressive anti-apartheid momentum in South Africa. After the assassination, racially fuelled riots drew international attention to the instability of the political division within South Africa, leading to an inclusive national democratic election in April 1994, won by the African National Congress (ANC). Waluś and his accomplice Clive Derby-Lewis were both sentenced to death after their arrests in 1993; the sentences were later commuted to life imprisonment.
The Security Branch of the South African Police, established in 1947 as the Special Branch, was the security police apparatus of the apartheid state in South Africa. From the 1960s to the 1980s, it was one of the three main state entities responsible for intelligence gathering, the others being the Bureau for State Security and the Military Intelligence division of the South African Defence Force. In 1987, at its peak, the Security Branch accounted for only thirteen percent of police personnel, but it wielded great influence as the "elite" service of the police.
