APRIL 2021 NEWSLETTER MURDER IN PARIS is a political crim e thriller that traces the motives for the assassination of anti-Apartheid activist, Dulcie September. The story travels from the heart of Paris in March 1988 to the pursuit of justice in 2021. Say her name: Dulcie September! Dulcie September’s life exemplified moral courage. It guided and informed her actions, giving meaning and significance to her work as a liberation heroine. Let’s all shout: Justice for Dulcie!... Say her name! Thank you for being part of this journey. Enver Samuel - Director, Murder in Paris REMEMBER DULCIE SEPTEMBER: Viewers' Thoughts on the Film Thank you to all those who took the time to respond to the SABC broadcasts of Murder in Paris. Here are a few of the comments we received: Dulcie did not deserve to die in the manner in which it had happened and your documentary succeeds in bringing out this point. Many think that being overseas in the struggle was part of a holiday but it was not so! Your documentary has been well researched and I hope it gets an even wider circulation besides only South Africa. There are many South African stories that still need to be told and is left to you and the younger generation to continue with this work. Harold Beautifully done, cinematically and in terms of the research you put in it. A wonderful portrayal, so sensitively done. Some surprising revelations. Professor Pumla Gobodo- Madikizela Thank you for the film. Seeing the life and what led up to the assassination of Anti-apartheid activist Dulcie September was fascinating and enlightening. Stories like these need to be told. Thula Sindi Just wanted to say how important the film is to deal with our history critically. We need more of it. Keep on at it. Our children will look for answers when the ash-heap shows no flicker to re-ignite. Keep up the work you do, it is important. Horst Kleinschmidt M U R D E R I N P A R I S N E W S L E T T E R A P R I L 2 0 2 1 Congratulations for your excellent documentary on Comrade Dulcie. I hope it will be shown again on SABC 3. Sheila Sisulu This is the first programme I have watched on any SABC TV channel in probably the last 5 years. Well worth watching and I hope that similar quality programmes will be forthcoming on SABC. Peter Devey Watching Murder in Paris brought back memories … even though we all heard of all the dirty dancing the French did behind closed doors related to all the arms dealings with South Africa during and after Apartheid. Jody-Layne Surtie I was fascinated by what the documentary revealed, especially the link between the arms deal and the French arms dealers. Elmarie Williams I suppose the underlying attitudes that drive executions on foreign soil are about power. Jamal Khashoggi being a more recent victim of the same megalomaniacal trait. toni_gon If it wasn't for this insightful & important doccie, I wouldn't have known about this legendary struggle Icon of SA history, thank you. Shabier Jacobs Thank you for telling her amazing story. So sad, so moving. So many unanswered questions. She was murdered - and failed- by many. Thank you for shining the spotlight on her life. Jermaine Craig If you are able to travel, the Dulcie September traveling exhibition which is on display at Freedom Park in Pretoria until the end of Freedom Month and will then move to the Nelson Mandela Foundation in Houghton, Johannesburg. The exhibition commemorates September’s life through her family’s personal archives, police records, records from her Paris office and newspaper clippings. M U R D E R I N P A R I S N E W S L E T T E R A P R I L 2 0 2 1 The Teacher Who did her Homework For more than three decades, ZAM's Investigations Editor Evelyn Groenink researched the murder of Paris ANC representative Dulcie September in 1988. The complex backgrounds of this gruesome act presented in Groenink's book Incorruptible were long ignored. Until now. Before she left for exile in 1973, Dulcie September was a school teacher. A serious one. She cared about her kids, cared so much that one of the reasons she left was that she had been banned from ever teaching in South Africa again. One of her reasons to join the struggle against apartheid had been what Bantu education was doing to her country’s children. Dulcie September never stopped being a school teacher. In exile, her syllabus became the Freedom Charter, and she would consistently remind everyone, inside and outside the ANC, what that syllabus prescribed.-Pat R Southowe, Ho nAfricaorable Mwasenti oton belong to all who lived in it, with learning, culture and comfort accessible to all. There were to be human rights and social justice for all. To achieve this was the task, the job, the homework, for all in the movement. Several ANC members in exile told me how they were in awe of Dulcie September’s seriousness in that regard. She should not catch you doing a shoddy job, neglect your homework, or knocking off at four PM to go jol somewhere in a pub in London or Toronto, not when there was still unfinished business on your desk. She would give you an earful. But, as any good teacher and educator, she was sweet, too. A young employee at her office floor in Paris told me that he saw her as a mamie confiture, which loosely translates as an aunt who bakes jam tarts for you. Conny Braam, the M U R D E R I N P A R I S N E W S L E T T E R A P R I L 2 0 2 1 chair of the AAM in Holland, told me that when she visited Lusaka, highly pregnant, and was part of a group travelling on the back of a truck, Dulcie held her tummy tight to protect it from all the bumping and shaking. Dulcie September cared for kids, for the young generations, for South Africa and for the struggle, and for doing your homework and delivering on the job you were tasked to do. That is probably why she would not, as another ANC diplomat once told me, close her eyes when she came across illicit military and nuclear collaboration between Paris and Pretoria, shortly before she was assassinated with five bullets in her face, in her own office in Paris, on 29 March 1988, with a lot of unfinished business on her desk. I was part of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Amsterdam at the time and I decided to do a story on her and the murder. I was – we all were – simply shocked. We were in Western democracies. Our governments were against apartheid. We had sanctions. How could this happen? In Paris, five hundred kilometres from Amsterdam? She was murdered in our back yard. This was our homework. I went to Paris. I did not expect that the article I then intended to write would to take me over thirty years to – almost – fully complete. But, slowly, Dulcie September’s unfinished business became mine. Read the rest of the article here. This article is based on Evelyn Groenink’s speech given at the Dulcie September -Pat Rowe, Honorable Mention Lecture at Freedom Park organised on 18 March 2020, in collaboration with the Nelson Mandela Foundation. M U R D E R I N P A R I S N E W S L E T T E R IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Remembering Dulcie If you missed the Dulcie September Annual Lecture held virtually on 18 March 2021 at Freedom Park in Pretoria in collaboration with EMS Productions and the Nelson Mandela Foundation, you can now watch it: ow.ly/1nFf50Ejt6a. Author and investigative journalist Evelyn Groenink gave the keynote address, Dulcie's nephew Michael Arendse and Murder in Paris director Enver Samuel as well Verne Harris from Nelson Mandela Foundation also spoke. A 20 minute version of the 1 hour programme was broadcast on SABC News Channel 404: http://ow.ly/Weoh50ElvZb The South African Embassy in France in collaboration with the Dullah Omar Institute at the University of the Western Cape held a Webinar commemorating the life of Dulcie September on 29 March 2021. If you missed it, please view it at: https://youtu.be/H5SJp39iEDY. The keynote was delivered by Dulcie's close friend, Ambassador Lindiwe Mabuza, Former Chief Representative of the African National Congress (ANC) to Sweden. On 30 March 2021, the South African Ambassador to France, Tebogo Seokolo paid tribute to Dulcie September at a wreath laying ceremony at "Place Dulcie September", a square named after her in Paris. Ambassador Seokolo is South Africa’s Ambassador to France and Monaco as well as Permanent Delegate to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). M U R D E R I N P A R I S N E W S L E T T E R Marcus Solomon with Betty van der Heyden BEHIND THE SCENES: Meet Marcus Solomon Marcus Solomon was born in Grahamstown and spent much of his childhood in Port Alfred in the Eastern Cape, becoming a street preacher by his teens and being very involved in playing rugby. After receiving his junior certificate Solomon began working onM U RtrainsD E R I Nand P A RinI S 1957N E W SheL E TwTentE R to Cape Town to continue his studies and soon switched his belief in God as a transformer of the world to the masses.