37 Facts About Dimitri Tsafendas

Dimitri Tsafendas was a Greek-Mozambican lifelong political militant and the assassin of Prime Minister of South Africa Hendrik Verwoerd.

Dimitri Tsafendas was born in Lourenco Marques in Mozambique, then a colony of Portugal.

Dimitri Tsafendas's parents were Michalis Tsafandakis, a Greek marine engineer with anarchist leanings from Kitharida, a small village near Heraklion, Crete, and Amelia Williams, a Mozambican woman of mixed race.

Dimitri Tsafendas was sent to Egypt when he was three to live with his grandmother and his aunt.

Dimitri Tsafendas returned to Mozambique four years later; then, at the age of ten, moved to Transvaal, where he attended Middelburg Primary School from 1928 to 1930.

Dimitri Tsafendas then returned to Mozambique and attended a church school for the next two years.

In 1939, Dimitri Tsafendas entered South Africa illegally and joined the South African Communist Party.

Dimitri Tsafendas became a seaman in the US merchant marine in 1941 and served aboard American ships during World War II.

Dimitri Tsafendas joined the Democratic Army, the military wing of the Greek Communist Party, and fought with them against the royalists.

Shortly before the war ended in defeat for the Communists, Dimitri Tsafendas made his way to Portugal.

Dimitri Tsafendas was imprisoned for nine months in the two most notorious Portuguese prisons for political offenders, the Barca d'Alva and the Aljube Prison.

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

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

In 1963, Dimitri 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.

Dimitri Tsafendas told the police he was not advocating independence but preaching Christianity.

The Portuguese were not convinced that Dimitri Tsafendas was telling the truth, and he was imprisoned.

Dimitri Tsafendas was taken to a hospital, where he convinced the Portuguese doctors that he really believed he was Christ's foremost apostle and was therefore considered to be insane.

Dimitri Tsafendas was released from prison custody and soon afterwards released from the hospital.

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

When he first decided to take action against Verwoerd, Dimitri Tsafendas planned to kidnap the prime minister.

Dimitri Tsafendas believed that since he had the opportunity to act he was morally obliged to do so, believing as he did that Verwoerd was "the brains behind apartheid" and that without him a change of policy would sooner or later take place.

Dimitri 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.

Dimitri Tsafendas had made no plan for escape and was easily apprehended.

Dimitri Tsafendas was taken into police custody, where he was severely beaten, and then moved to a hospital where he was treated for his injuries and interviewed by a psychiatrist.

Dimitri Tsafendas had characterised Dr Verwoerd as "Hitler's best student", as he believed the South African Prime Minister had copied some of Hitler's Nuremberg Laws and applied them to the blacks in his country.

Dimitri Tsafendas had been banned from entering South Africa due to his political activities and beliefs; the South African security police held four files on him.

Dimitri Tsafendas had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and it was claimed by police and his defence that he had said that he had a giant tapeworm inside him, which affected his life.

Dimitri Tsafendas was initially held on Robben Island, then after four months was transferred to Pretoria Central Prison.

In 1994, after the collapse of apartheid, Dimitri Tsafendas was visited in prison by two Greek Orthodox priests he knew.

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 Dimitri Tsafendas's act was not mindless but politically motivated.

Dimitri Tsafendas died of pneumonia in October 1999, aged 81,33 years after the assassination.

Shows convincingly that Mr Dimitri Tsafendas was not a schizophrenic who believed that his actions were determined by a tapeworm.

Dimitri Tsafendas told the police after the assassination that he killed Dr Verwoerd because he was 'disgusted with his racial policies' and hoped that 'a change of policy would take place'.

South African history, in proper recognition of the generations who preceded us as well as those to come, should record in its annals an accurate account of the killing of Dr Verwoerd which recognises that Dimitri Tsafendas was motivated to kill him by reason of his deep opposition to apartheid and was indeed a freedom fighter and a hero.

Dimitri Tsafendas expressed his belief that the report is "of major historical importance for South Africa and as to our understanding of Verwoerd's assassination".

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

Dimitri Tsafendas was not an insane killer but a political assassin determined to rid South Africa of the architect of apartheid.