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Dulcie September
Photograph via Wikimedia Commons
Diplomacy & Public Service Peerless

Dulcie September

1935 – 1988

Shot dead in Paris while investigating arms deals with the apartheid state

Peerless is level 1 of 4 in the South Africa Hall of Fame: changed the field itself. Tell the country's story without them and the story breaks. See how the levels work.

Why they are here

The ANC's representative in France, Luxembourg and Switzerland. She was looking into an illicit weapons trade between France and Pretoria. On 29 March 1988 someone shot her five times in the head outside her office. Nobody has ever been charged.

Dulcie Evonne September was a South African teacher and activist who served five years in prison for conspiracy to commit sabotage, enduring physical and mental abuse in custody, before leaving the country under a banning order.

In exile she became the African National Congress's chief representative in France, Luxembourg and Switzerland. She was investigating what she believed to be an illicit arms trade — possibly including nuclear material — between France and the apartheid government.

On the morning of 29 March 1988 she was shot five times in the head with a silenced .22 rifle as she opened the ANC office in Paris. More than thirty-five years on, the murder remains unsolved and no one has been prosecuted.
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