David Webster: a life cut short

Abstract

Academic and anti-apartheid activist David Webster spent his childhood, adolescence, student days and academic life in one or the other of "four different countries in southern Africa in different phases of decolonialisation". Prior to Webster's birth, his family had migrated from South Africa to settle in Luanshya, in the then Northern Rhodesia. He was educated at Falcon College boarding school in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) before the family returned to South Africa. He registered at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, first to study accountancy, and then anthropology. At Rhodes, he became actively involved in student politics, and participated in a student protest in 1965 against the decision of the Grahamstown City Council to ban black students from watching games of the Rhodes University rugby team. The students organised a sit-in at the steps of the university's library in protest. Webster completed his studies at Rhodes in 1967.