David Webster (anthropologist)

David Joseph Webster
Mosaic, David Webster Park
Born	1 Dec 1944 Northern Rhodesia
Died	May 1, 1989 (1989-06) (aged 44) Troyeville, Johannesburg Murder (assassination)
Resting place	West Park cemetery, Johannesburg
Nationality	South African
Fields	Social anthropologist
Institutions	Rhodes University University of the Witwatersrand
Alma mater	University of the Witwatersrand

Dr 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 founder 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.

David Joseph Webster was born in 1945 in Northern Rhodesia, where his father worked as a miner in the Copperbelt. He studied at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, where he was involved in student politics.

In 1970, Webster started teaching anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand. His doctorate had been written on a traditional topic of anthropology (kinship), but it was focused on a politically explosive field, namely migrant workers from Mozambique. In 1976, he taught for two years with Peter Worsley at the University of Manchester.

Webster was active in the political anti-apartheid movement, especially in the 1980s for the Detainees' Parents' Support Committee, an organisation advocating the release of political detainees held without trial in South Africa.