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3 comments about The Assassin: A Story of Race and Rage in the Land of Apartheid.

1. A really beautiful book that makes you feel sorry for the assassin and for the country of South Africa.

   Henk van Woerden describes the life of Demitrios Tsafendas who killed the South-Afrcan prime minister Verwoerd in 1966. Demitrios was born in Mozambique from a Greek father and a black mother, a fact that haunted him for the rest of his life: there was no place where people really accepted him en his existence was a series of deportations (Mocambique, South Afrika, USA, Greece, Portugal) and rejections (by his father, his stepmother, his stepbrothers and -sisters and a potential wife. No wonder that this would make a human crazy. In the end he destroys the roots of evil by killing the face of apartheid.

   In between all this we can read the writers own experiences during a number of visits (1989-1998) to South Africa, the country where he lived from age 9 to 21. There is no reason to celebrate: a torn country full of violence.




2. Demetrios Tsafendas' life was one of rejection, depression, yearning, and mental illness. Try as he might, he could not fit in. Nor could he get acceptance for his bi-racial heritage. The author, Henk Van Woerden, writes a succinct biography of the man who murdered Hendrik Verwoerd, the "architect of apartheid". He peppers his story with his own perceptions of the South African policies that destroyed communities in order to segregate the races. South Africa's policies, however, of separating the black and white races (among other races and ethnicities), left those of mixed heritage with nowhere to go - not accepted by either race. Tsafendas lived in this nowhere land.



3. The killing of Prime Minister Verwoerd of South Africa in 1966 was considered a blow against white supremacy. In fact, it was the work of a crazed assassin who was acting on his own notions.
   The assassin Tsafendas was a half breed of Greek/black descent who was torn apart between both races. His illegimacy was also a source of tension in his life. Both factors contributed to stress on his mind and the result was the killing of the Prime Minister of South Africa.
   This was a little known event in the rest of the world but traumatic in South Africa. Tsafendas by thrusting his knife into Verwoerd demonstrated his hatred of a system that hurt him.
   Tsafendas was a lunatic, but his action showed the resistance of some to white supremacy. The book is a short but good read about a little known event.

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