David Webster

Not to be confused with the anthropologist David Webster of Penn State University, or the social historian David Webster of the University of TorontoDr David Webster (12 December 1944 – 1 May 1989) was an academic and anti-apartheid activist. He worked as an anthropologist at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he was a senior lecturer at the time of his assassination. Webster was a founding member of the Detainees' Parents' Support Committee (DPSC) in 1981, a founder member of the Five Freedoms Forum, and a committed comrade in the United Democratic Front. Webster was also an active member of the Orlando Pirates supporters' club and he assisted in the mobilisation and organisation of South African musicians during the Struggle in the 1980s. He was a long-term ethnographic researcher and his work near Kosi Bay on the Mozambican border resulted in a number of peer-reviewed academic publications. Webster was assassinated by apartheid security forces outside his home on 1 May 1989.