Hendrik F. Verwoerd

South African apartheid had many authors, but he may have been the most monstrously enthusiastic.

Hendrik F. Verwoerd
1901–1966, b. Amsterdam, Netherlands
Worked in Cape Town and Pretoria, South Africa

. . . your Government, after receiving a mandate from a section of the European population, decided to proclaim a Republic on 31 May . . . Your Government, which represents only a minority of the population in this country, is not entitled to take such a decision without first seeking the views and obtaining the express consent of the African people . . . Under this proposed Republic [it is feared] your Government, which is already notorious the world over for its obnoxious policies, would continue to make even more savage attacks on the rights and living conditions of the African people.
—Nelson Mandela to Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, April 20, 1961

• Verwoerd built a reputation in South Africa as the founder of a newspaper through which he promoted pro-Fascist, anti-Semitic, and racist ideas.
• Shortly after the 1948 election that brought the Afrikaner-dominated National Party to office, Verwoerd became minister of native affairs, through which he implemented much of the legal architecture of apartheid.
• After becoming prime minister in 1958, Verwoerd moved to consolidate the apartheid state. He oversaw the invention of Bantustans, reservations justified as homelands for the country’s African majority to which they were to be exiled and legally bound. Through these, he was able to fully disenfranchise Black South Africans.
• Growing in power throughout his premiership, Verwoerd narrowly won a referendum to turn South Africa into a republic in 1961. Ever more isolated on the international stage, Verwoerd’s government built a military police state and banned all Black political organizations.
• Assassinated on Sept. 6, 1966, Verwoerd was stabbed on the floor of the South African Parliament.