Who remembers Dulcie September? Representative in Paris of Nelson Mandela’s party, the South African activist was mysteriously shot dead on March 29, 1988 in front of the door of her office in the French capital. At the time, the crime committed in broad daylight caused a lot of noise. Thirty-five years later, it is still not elucidated. A story full of gray areas that is meticulously explored in the graphic novel Dulcie, from Cape Town to Paris, investigating the assassination of an anti-apartheid activist, by French journalist Benoît Collombat.
Because Dulcie September’s friends, supporters and family refuse to draw the curtain. Since his death, South Africa has abolished apartheid (1991) and elected Nelson Mandela (1994), then three other black presidents after him, all members of the ANC. In France, streets, squares and colleges in Arcueil, Nantes, Le Mans and Trignac are named after Dulcie September. But the case, considered a common law crime by French justice, is completely bogged down. In 1992, an order was issued to dismiss the case.
However, this is indeed an affair, and even an affair of state, which reveals the troubled relations of several countries – in particular France – with the racist regime then in power in South Africa. This is what Benoît Collombat’s thirteen years of investigation, illustrated by Grégory Mardon, highlight. Their book reveals in detail the hidden side of the problem: the crime was political. And the question is less who killed Dulcie September than why she was killed, in other words who had an interest in the activist disappearing.
The journalist sets out to meet all the players in the case: witnesses from the building, secretaries of the victim, biographers and friends, but also lawyers, former political leaders, former henchmen, businessmen, police officers, private investigators… In this 360-degree tour, he shows us what political and commercial interests may have played a role: “It was individuals who killed Dulcie September, but it was an entire system that pulled the trigger and continues to facilitate concealment and silence. A system of profit and power. »
During apartheid, business continued…
The murder of the activist questions an entire era: not only the period preceding the re-election of François Mitterrand in 1988 but, more broadly, the decades during which, whatever the rulers, France found the way to have “relations cordial” with South Africa, despite the policy of apartheid and the sanctions decided in 1977 by the UN.
These relations go back a long way since, explains a character: “In 1963, de Gaulle signed an agreement with the South African Republic under which France would receive “for ten years significant quantities of uranium” exploited by the United States and Great Britain, “without a peaceful use clause and on very favorable financial conditions”. In exchange, Paris undertook to transfer to Pretoria the technologies necessary for the development of its atomic bomb and to train South African physicists in France. »
We come across names and faces that observers of France-Africa relations will recognize, from Jacques Foccart to Bob Denard. Above all, we understand that the interests at stake weighed heavily: purchases of weapons, helicopters, nuclear cooperation. During apartheid, in short, business continued… and went beyond the frail shoulders of an activist, even one as strong and determined as Dulcie September.
This, undoubtedly aware of a certain number of compromises, ended up becoming embarrassing. His assassination says a lot about the difference between facade declarations and realpolitik, that which persists, whatever the inequity of the regimes, whatever the individuals who hold power. By contrast, it is quite moving to remember who Dulcie September was: a woman born near Cape Town in 1935, classified as “colored” by the South African administration, trained as a schoolteacher and became a spokesperson for a cause to which she devoted herself with ardor from her earliest years.
She pays the price for her convictions with five years in prison, followed by house arrest. When she left South Africa in 1973 to settle in Europe, it was with a permanent exit visa meaning exile for life. Today, underlines Me Laurin, the lawyer for the September family, in the comic strip: “The French authorities do not want to reopen the question of relations between France and apartheid South Africa. Despite everything, we have reached an important milestone: this file has come out, no one is abandoning it. Dulcie September’s face reappears, her personality is still there. She is still investigating. We are continuing his investigation. »
Systematic, rich, dense, complex, the work of Benoît Collombat takes readers through the years and countries, from France to the Comoros, via South Africa, Switzerland and Israel. It also contributes to the refusal of the denial of justice by making the silence on the September affair resounding.