Dulcie September: Viciously Murdered in Paris

Dulcie September: Viciously Murdered in Paris

“If ever there was a soft target, Dulcie September was one.” – Alfred Nzo, 30 March 1988 –

On 29 March 1988, Dulcie Evonne September, a prominent revolutionary cadre and Chief Representative of the African National Congress (ANC) in France, was assassinated in Paris. Dulcie, who was 52 years old at the time, and was killed around 09:45 in the morning, while she was opening the ANC office on Rue des Petites-Écuries in Paris, shortly after collecting the mail. She was shot five times at close range with a .22 calibre silenced rifle outside her office, likely executed due to her investigation into illegal arms dealings between France and South Africa. Her murder remains officially unsolved, with suspected involvement from apartheid South African hitmen and the French secret service.

It was widely believed that she was targeted because of her investigation into illegal arms trafficking and nuclear cooperation between the South African apartheid regime and France, particularly clandestine weapon shipments between South African arms company Armscor and several French arms entities, which violated international embargos. Suspicions remain that the apartheid regime’s hitmen were involved, potentially with the cooperation of the French secret service, due to the nature of the arms dealings.

Dulcie September was born on 30 August 1935 in Athlone, a small township of Cape Town, which was located on the outskirts of white suburbs. From a young age, Dulcie began to understand the inequality between her own so-called Coloured community and her white neighbours. This early exposure likely impacted the remainder of her life and activist work. Dulcie quickly became an accomplished young person, despite the political circumstances she was born into.

She attended primary school at Methodist Mission in Cape Town and then went to Athlone High BridSchool for her secondary schooling. By 1954, she had graduated high school and went on to pursue a teaching career at The Wesely Training school. Dulcie completed her education at Battswood Training college with a teacher’s diploma in 1955. She was just 20 years old when she graduated, and had proven to be intelligent and driven, qualities that followed her throughout her career and activism.

In 1956 she took up a new post at Bridgetown East Primary School in Athlone and joined the Teacher’s League of South Africa after seeing the way her students were treated under the apartheid education system. It was here that she became involved in the Cape Peninsula Students’ Union and began to follow a political path. Like many young people at this time, she tried the various political bodies that had sprung up in the preceding decade such as the Unity Movement of South Africa.

Together with a group of likeminded activists led by Neville Alexander, Dulcie became part of the formation of a militant study group named the Yu Chi Chan Club, which is Chinese for “guerrilla warfare club”, since they were inspired by the Chinese revolution. They disbanded the club after just over a year and then in 1963 formed the National Liberation Front (NLF).

They were possibly infiltrated by enemy agents because a sudden wave of repression and detentions hit the NLF while they were still trying to get it off the ground. Ten of the NLF cadres including Dulcie were detained in October that year, imprisoned in Roeland Street Prison without trial. They were taken to court on charges of conspiracy to commit sabotage and incite political violence under the Criminal Procedure Act and sentenced on 15 April 1964. Dulcie September was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.

In 1969 when Dulcie was released, she was immediately placed under a five-year banning order. This restricted her from political activities, from practising as a teacher and severely restricted her social and family life. After four years under banning orders Dulcie applied for an exit permit to leave South Africa for good. She sailed aboard an ocean liner and went into exile in the United Kingdom. There she took up a position at Madeley College of Education in Staffordshire.

While she was in the United Kingdom, she joined the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) and after a while resigned her post as a teacher to work for the International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF) for Southern Africa. In the United Kingdom she teamed up with Reg and Hettie September and with Alex and Blanche la Guma who gave her support and developed close bonds. Subsequently, in 1976 she made a decision to join the ANC and became active in the organisation’s Women’s Section.

Following the declaration of 1979 as the International Year of the Child (IYC), Dulcie got elected as chairperson of the IYC Committee of the ANC in London working with other activists like Ilva McKay and Eleanor Kasrils. During her course of deployment, she was drawn into championing children’s rights with conferences being held in France, Finland and Canada, as well as interacting with other international women’s bodies and the United Nations. It was during this time that she engaged with other women in the national liberation movement, such as Hettie September, Florence Mophosho, Lindiwe Mabuza and Mankekolo Mahlangu.

While in Africa, Dulcie got to work full-time at the ANC headquarters in Lusaka, serving in the Regional Political Committee. She was elected as chairperson of the preparatory committee of the ANC Women’s Section conference to be held at Kabwe, Zambia, and in Luanda, Angola. She was also chosen to join Mittah Seperepere in representing the ANC Women’s Section at the World Congress of Women for Equality, National Independence and Peace held in Prague, Czechoslovakia in October 1981.

This became the context in which Dulcie September was appointed as ANC Chief Representative in France, Switzerland and Luxembourg in 1983. It was necessary for Dulcie as a Chief Representative to undergo military training and was thus sent to complete a short course in the Soviet Union. As Chief Representative, one of her main duties was to rally support inside France, Switzerland and Luxembourg for disinvestment and to push for full economic sanctions against the South African government. At that time France provided a substantial proportion of South Africa’s military equipment, including air force and naval aircraft.

During her posting as ANC Chief Representative, Dulcie took on both the French and South African governments by helping to build one of the most formidable anti-Apartheid movements in Europe, based in the three countries that fell directly under her mission. This had a knock-on effect on the rest of Europe. She built a campaign around the arrest and incarceration of Pierre Andre Albertini for ANC-linked political activities.

At the time of his arrest by the apartheid authorities, Albertini was employed as a French lecturer at the University of Fort Hare, which was part of a French Government’s exchange programme. Dulcie’s campaign called for Albertini’s release. This became a hook for beefing up the sanctions campaign and quickly she emerged as being a threat to powerful forces in Europe’s arms dealing underworld.

Dulcie began to delve into an investigation of illegal arms trades in France. Her close friend and contact at the World Campaign against Military and Nuclear Collaboration with South Africa, Abdul Minty, began to involve her in some of these investigations. Both, Dulcie and Minty compiled extensive evidence of “sanctions busting, arms sales, oil sales and the companies and people involved.” Her research was not only limited to France, since she began to routinely visit Switzerland as well, where she discovered Swiss representatives were participating in nuclear meetings with apartheid South Africa. Astonishingly, she uncovered that Switzerland was routinely loaning money to South Africa. Swiss banks had unofficial transactions in gold with the racist regime in South Africa.

Following her assassination, the Obituary in the ANC official journal, Sechaba (May 1988), maintained that “the bitter irony about her murder is that, though Dulcie had received death threats over the past eight months, and had reported this fact to the French authorities, she had been given no protection and, as a result, there are no clues to the identity of the killer, no trace of the assassin. All we are told is that this was a ‘professional job’.

“This cold-blooded murder, though it might be embarrassing to some Western governments, is a result of their lukewarm reactions to Pretoria’s terror tactics. The Pretoria regime is not only encouraged to embark on state terrorism in South Africa; it is now undermining the sovereignty of those very Western states which veto any tough measures against apartheid.”

“Comrade Dulcie”, the Obituary concluded, “died at her post as honourably and with as great a dignity as any fighter who falls on the battlefield. That is the memory of her that we must always cherish. Long after the misanthropic scum who plotted her murder are forgotten, her name will live on as an inspiration to men and women the world over. The only real monument we shall erect to Comrade Dulcie and all other martyrs who have fallen is the future we will create in South Africa. Let us all bend our efforts to make it worthy of their sacrifice.”

Sources:
Wikipedia.
South African History Online (SAHO).
Cape Town Museum, “Dulcie September: Teacher, Struggle Ambassador & Human Rights Activist (1935 – 1988)”, https://www.capetownmuseum.org.za› dulcie-september
Obituary, “Dulcie September: Born 1935, Murdered 1988”, Sechaba, May 1988.
Evelyn Groenink, “Incorruptible: The Story of the Murders of Dulcie September, Anton Lubowski and Chris Hani”, Evelyn Groenink, 2018.
Claire Albin, “Biography of Dulcie September by Claire Albin”, South African History Online and Southern Methodist University, 3 February 2021.

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