Special Hearings — Legal Hearings — 1997-10-27

LIZA KEYS: ( sworn states)
 Mr Chairman, Commissioners, thank you for inviting me to this hearing. My name is Liza Keys and I am a South African Film Producer. You have asked me to appear before you in connection with the case of Dimitri Stefendas, the parliamentary messenger who assassinated the Prime Minister of South Africa in 1966. 
 Stefendas is still alive but his doctors at Sterkfontein hospital where he is a patient, have judged him not well enough to attend these proceedings. 
 I me Stefendas 18 months ago while doing research for a documentary on him for the SABC. I spent many hours with Stefendas and feel that there are aspects of his story which should be brought to the attention of the Commission. 
 As you are no doubt aware the Supreme Court found Stefendas mentally unfit to stand trial in 1966 and committed him as the State President's patient. The Government of the day took advantage of the provisions of the Mental Disorder's Act of 1916 to lodge him in prison, despite the fact he had not been convicted of any crime.
 It was only in 1994 that he was finally admitted to Sterkfontein hospital. The decision to imprison Stefendas rather than place him in a mental asylum as would have been appropriate, is extremely unusual where a State President's patient is concerned.
In view of the fact that he was not convicted of a crime, this represents a Human Rights abuse. 
 It was compounded by the fact that he was placed not in an ordinary prison but what was effectively death row and held there for nearly a quarter of a century. By the accounts of other prisoners he was treated viciously there. He was not only subjected to the sounds of the weekly proceedings in the gallows, but suffered personal abuse at the hands of warders who are alleged to have urinated in his food and beaten him up while he was trussed in a straight-jacket.
 His treatment was no secret, reports by former prisoners were widely published but no action was taken by the relevant authorities, including the Judiciary which had consigned him to this fate. 
 There is another matter which ought to be brought to your attention and it if not further investigated at least to be placed on record. A submission was made recently to your Commission in defence of the Judiciary by the former Chief Justice, Mr Justice Corbett, in which reference is made to Stefendas. Answering criticism of the bench by Mr Krish Govender, over the treatment of Stefendas, Judge Corbett makes the statement and I quote -
"That dominating his mind was a strong perception that his life was ruled by a tapeworm, a figment of his imagination."
The former Chief Justice goes on to say that -
"The description of Stefendas as a victim of apartheid is bizarre."
 These comments by Judge Corbett echo observation made by the judge president of the Cape, Mr Justice Beyers, when he found Stefendas unfit to stand trial by reason of insanity in 1966, in fact Judge Beyers went further. In a statement as dismissive of a man's humanity as it is possible to imagine, he said -
"I can as little try a man who is not at least the makings of a rational mind, as I could try a dog or an inert implement - he is a meaningless creature."
 Mr Chairman, it is as I understand it, part of the process of your Commission in broad terms to bring to the public an understanding of the effects of apartheid on inhabitants of this country, in that respect the statements by Judges Corbett and Beyers may have been misleading. I would like to put the record straight for offering you some details on the life of Dimitri Stefendas which may be relevant to the death of Dr. Verwoerd.
 I was brought up believing along with many other South African's including apparently the former Chief Justice, that Stefendas was a madman, he was ordered to kill the Prime Minister by a non-existent tapeworm which he believed inhabited his stomach. It seems Stefendas did have a tapeworm as a young man, he suffered a delusion at a later stage that it inhabited him. I have discovered no evidence, Mr Stefendas believed such a tapeworm ordered him to kill Dr Verwoerd, despite attempts by his interrogators to elicit that response from him.
 I am not in a position to challenge the findings of the courts, but at the time of the assassination Stefendas was insane, suffering an extreme form of schizophrenia, but the characterisation of him as a meaningless creature is self-evidently nonsense. It is obviously not possible to say what course South Africa would have followed if Verwoerd had not been assassinated but it can be argued that by killing the architect of apartheid Stefendas changed the course of South African history. 
 The Judge President of the Cape was equally in error when he compared Stefendas to an inert implement. Stefendas is not only a creature of flesh and blood but whatever his state of mind in 1966, was as deserving as any other member of our society, of understanding and compassion.
 It is not generally appreciated that Stefendas was a coloured man, he was born in Mozambique in January 1918, the son of a Greek engineer and a mother who was of mixed race. He first came to South Africa at the age of 10 when he was sent to a boarding school in Middelburg in the former Transvaal. There he seems to have fallen victim to an early dose of racial prejudice, he was teased about the colour of his skin and nicknamed "Blackie". When he was fourteen his father went bankrupt and Stefendas went back to Mozambique. It was during this time he discovered he was an illegitimate child of a coloured woman.
 He returned to South Africa in 1936 where he worked for a while at a munitions factory. In 1941 he joined the Merchant Navy and began his life as a wanderer. 
 Mr Chairman, I will not get bogged down with the chronologically account of Stefendas's life and his world travel, but briefly his travels were sign-posted by a litany of deportation orders and psychiatric reports from institutions he found himself in around the world. At one stage he walked across the frozen Simcoe river from Canada into the United States. 
 At another he presented himself at the Mandelbaum Gate, demanding entry to Israel from Jordan. 
 He was detained for 6 months on New York's Ellis Island; given shock treatment in Portugal; certified insane in England; baptised on a beach in Greece; given more shock treatment in a German asylum; passed through France as a refugee under the auspices of the Red Cross and finally in 1964 returned to South Africa.
 It is clear that he was mentally disturbed by the time he returned to South Africa. One psychiatric report for example from the North Grafton State Hospital in the United States speaks of him hearing voices from radiators, but the race issue does appear to have had something to do with his state of mind. The same reported quotes him as saying he had loved a girl in South Africa but would not marry her because he feared they would produce a black child.  The report also says that he left South Africa because the CID were pursuing him as a Communist. Before the was Stefendas was a paid up member of what was then the Communist Party of South Africa and he did have a pronounced social and political conscience.
 Among the records of investigation into his background conducted after the assassination is a copy of an internal memorandum of the Mozambican Security Police recording the following:
"Dimitri Stefendas of mixed blood, a coloured, was recently in the company of persons of the Negro race, blacks, in the bar of the hotel of Gondula, accompanied by other persons of a Negro race and was heard to say the following phrases of subversive character.
'This country is not called Portugal, it is called the United States of Mozambique, it's flag is of a blue colour with a rainbow, that rainbow represents all the colours. We already have money and any day now this will come to an end because what is necessary is not be fooled into saying that we are Portuguese, because we are Africans. Long live our Country, the United States of Mozambique.'"
 It would seem from that Mr Stefendas anticipated Archbishop Desmond Tutu by a good many years in articulating the dream of a Rainbow Nation. He declared his abhorrence of apartheid on a number of occasions including interrogation sessions which followed the assassination of Dr. Verwoerd. In a statement to the police six days after the assassination Stefendas said:
"I did not care about the consequence of what would happen to me afterwards, I was so disgusted with the racial policy that I went through with my plans to kill the Prime Minister."
 It is also interesting to note that before the assassination Stefendas, who had landed up with documents defining him as white, applied for reclassification as a coloured. Stefendas was a man of considerable intelligence, psychological tests put his I.Q. at 125, he spoke 8 languages fluently, despite his record of mental instability many who met him on his travels were impressed by him.
 A personnel officer at a German engineering firm recalled for example, 
"He drove up here in a big battered American car, dressed and well-mannered, he was extremely courteous, a very pleasant man, he looked like a satisfied successful businessman."
 Mr Chairman, that is the man Judge Beyers said did not have the making of a rational mind, a man who was no more than a dog or an inert implement. Chief Justice Corbett said it would be bizarre to describe Stefendas as a victim of apartheid. I would not go so far as to blame apartheid for the assassination of Dr. Verwoerd, but neither can I share the judge's confidence that apartheid was not a factor in his crime.
 Stefendas was like a cruise missile. One can only guess at the ....(indistinct) of experiences which effectively punched the fatal co-ordinates into the biological computer which is his mind. But it was with a sense of inevitability, almost a purpose, that he moved ever closer to the Mother City until ten past two on the afternoon of September 6th 1966, when a man was once mocked as 'Blackie' because of the colour of his skin strode across the floor of the National Assembly, brushed aside a cabinet minister and plunged his knife four times into the body of a man who was to be remembered as the Architect of Apartheid.
 We will never fully understand the mind of Dimitri Stefendas, to some he might seem a monster, a Frankenstein, but it is worth remembering that the power of Mary Shelley's famous story of Frankenstein lies in the intense sense of humanity which the monster shared with mankind. 
 I would like to conclude this account of Stefendas' life by quoting the following words from "Frankenstein's Monster". 
"Am I to be thought the only criminal when all human kind sinned against me."
 Mr Chairman, you may ask what can be done by your Commission in relation to Dimitri Stefendas. I would suggest that first of all steps should be taken to ensure that the mentally ill are never again treated like Stefendas. The power instilled there in Section 28 of the Mental Health Act enabling the Minister to commit a State President's patient to prison, this is surely wrong on two counts.
 No man should be imprisoned unless he is found guilty of a crime. A mental patient should be held in institutions designed to treat them. Stefendas appears to be well treated at Sterkfontein hospital. He is however, intensely lonely there and benefits enormously from outside contact. I would like to suggest that the Truth Commission should send a representative, perhaps together with a Social Worker to assess whether anything can be done for him in this regard.  Thank you.