David Joseph Webster was born in 1945 in what was then Northern Rhodesia, where his father worked as a miner in the copper belt. He studied at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, 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 was invited to teach for two years at the University of Manchester in the UK. Webster was active in the political anti-Apartheid movement, especially in the 1980s for the Detainees' Parents' Support Committee (DPSC) in South Africa which tried to support the many thousands of people detained without trial by the government. Shortly before his assassination, Webster had done fieldwork in the Kosi Bay area in KwaZulu-Natal, which was also used as a covert training area for official and unofficial armed forces linked to the South African government. Webster was shot dead outside his house by a hit squad of the Civil Cooperation Bureau, a covert government agency. The hit squad was paid R40,000 (at the time, equivalent to about US$8,000) for his murder. Ferdi Barnard, the man who pulled the trigger on the shotgun used, was later tried and found guilty in 1998; he was sentenced to two life terms plus 63 years for a number of crimes, including the murder of Webster.
"He displayed leadership of a high order. He personally led an attack on the road-block protecting the Pungwe Bridge, and then proceeded to lay explosive charges whilst under fire from the enemy"