Hendrik Verwoerd’s Life & Death: The Architect of Apartheid

Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd was an important figure in South African history. He did not create apartheid nor first implement it, but he expanded it to such a degree that he will always be remembered as the man who intensified the regime so much that it turned South Africa into a pariah state.

During his rule as prime minister, millions were disenfranchised while tens of thousands were imprisoned. He ruthlessly cracked down on all opposition and turned South Africa into a virtual police state.

Predictably, he attracted many enemies. One of them in particular had a critical impact, from which Verwoerd would never recover.

Hendrik was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on September 8, 1901. His father, Wilhelmus Johannes Verwoerd, was a shopkeeper and an extremely religious man who sympathized with the Boer cause in the wake of the Second Anglo-Boer War. For this reason, he decided to move with his family to South Africa in 1903.

Hendrik was the second of three children born to Wilhelmus and his wife, Anje Hendriks Strik. Hendrik had an older brother, Leendert, and a younger sister, Hendrika Johanna Lucretia. He began his schooling in Cape Town, and in 1912, his family moved to Rhodesia, where he excelled in his studies and was awarded a scholarship. His father joined the Dutch Reformed Church, where he became an assistant evangelist.

In 1917, Verwoerd moved with his family back to South Africa, where they took up residence in Brandfort (renamed Winnie Mandela in 2021) in the Orange Free State. Hendrik took his final exams there and finished first in the province and fifth in the country. He went on to become a brilliant student at Stellenbosch University in Stellenbosch, near Cape Town. In 1925, he completed a Doctorate in Psychology. Thereafter, he went to study in Germany, where he had been offered a scholarship.

It is debated whether this is where he was influenced by racial policies. Nevertheless, living in Germany at the time would certainly have led him to be in contact with many people who viewed such ideologies as the acceptable norm.

However, it is salient that in his notes, he mentioned that there were no biological differences between racial groups. It is thus assumed that his ideas for racial segregation were informed and influenced by the dynamic in the United States, although this cannot be confirmed concretely. German historian Christoph Marx contends that Verwoerd’s ideas were not influenced by the ideas of eugenics and social Darwinism on which the Nazis based their racial ideologies.

He was later joined in Germany by his fiancée, Betsy Schoombie, and the two were married on January 7, 1927 in Hamburg.

He further studied in the UK and the United States before returning to South Africa.

Verwoerd garnered impressive academic credentials. Upon his return to South Africa in 1928, he was appointed chair of Applied Psychology and Psycho Technique at Stellenbosch University. Six years later, he was a Professor of Sociology and Social Work.

This position served him well, and he won great support for his social work during the Great Depression, although it must be noted that his efforts to provide welfare only extended to South Africa’s white population.

He became a friend of future National Party (NP) leader J.G. Strijdom and gained significant influence in the movement to further segregate Black and white people. The United Party, which would be Verwoerd’s main political rival, opposed these views.

His efforts in this field would also lead him into politics. He became editor of a newspaper called Die Transvaler, a publication designed to promote Afrikaner Nationalism. Through this, he was also tasked with strengthening the NP in the Transvaal.

Under the editorship of Verwoerd, Die Transvaler took an anti-British stance that was also accused of being pro-Nazi. Verwoerd took the accuser to court for libel but lost the case.

Verwoerd Joins the National Party

In 1948, the National Party, under the leadership of D.F. Malan, came to power and officially implemented apartheid policy. Verwoerd left his post as editor of Die Transvaler to represent the NP in government. He was hugely successful in this move, and by 1950, he was the Minister of Native Affairs. In this position, he started work on implementing harsher apartheid laws. He transformed land that had been set aside as reservations for various Black communities and turned them into autonomous states known as Bantustans.

In charge of Black education, Verwoerd also put limitations on the curriculum to be taught to Black people, intending to reduce the level of education to basic literacy and numeracy. Verwoerd believed staunchly that Black people were only good for manual labor and simple tasks.

By doing so, he prohibited Black people from accessing higher education and made sure that only white people would have the education to achieve high-status positions within South African society.

He also cleared various areas in South Africa of Black residents and was responsible for the displacement of tens of thousands of people from the towns of Newclare, Martindale, and Sophiatown. The residents of these areas were relocated to the township of Soweto, southwest of Johannesburg. Today, Soweto is still one of the poorest neighborhoods in South Africa.

From 1910 to 1961, South Africa existed as the “Union of South Africa.” Although independent, it still held many ties to the United Kingdom and recognized the king or queen as the legitimate monarch of the state in much the same way as Canada, New Zealand, and Australia still do today.

Hendrik Verwoerd was absolutely opposed to this connection and sought to make South Africa a republic, completely free from the United Kingdom. Because of the apartheid policies, a rift was already growing between the two countries. Indeed, Afrikaners still held a deep-seated mistrust of the British as a result of what had happened during the Second Anglo-Boer War. Throughout the 1950s, the move to break from the United Kingdom gathered strength.

In 1954, D.F Malan resigned as prime minister and was succeeded by J.G. Strijdom. Apartheid policies continued to be solidified under Strijdom’s guidance while Verwoerd continued in his position as Minister of Native Affairs.

In 1958, shortly after a resounding election victory, Strijdom died, and Verwoerd was elected to succeed him as Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa. Verwoerd immediately set about preparing for South Africa to become a republic.

In 1960, the Sharpeville Massacre occurred, in which Black protestors were shot at by police. Sixty-nine people were killed, most as they were running away. This incident drew widespread international condemnation, and Verwoerd used it to argue further for the case of a republic. He argued that since most of the world condemned South Africa’s policies, it made sense for South Africa to take full control of its future.

On October 5, 1960, a referendum was held to determine whether South Africa should become a republic. The result was 52 percent in favor. Although a law existed that a two-thirds majority was needed in order to change the country’s constitution, Verwoerd and the rest of the NP ignored it and declared South Africa a republic on May 31, 1961.

The British Pound was dropped as the currency, and the Rand was introduced. All constitutional ties to Britain were cut.

The political fallout was severe. South Africa pursued apartheid with even more vigor and was kicked out of the Commonwealth as well as the Olympic Games. Bans and sanctions were implemented and would increase over the decades as the regime became more brutal. In 1974, South Africa was even kicked out of the United Nations.

In addition to his fight for a republic, Verwoerd passed several acts that further entrenched apartheid. The Promotion of Black Self-Government Act of 1958 solidified the existence of the Bantustans with the aim of them becoming fully independent states. In reality, however, they were puppet states of the South African government. The Bantu Investment Corporation Act of 1959 was designed to move Black capital to the Bantustans to generate the economies there. The Extension of University Education Act of 1959 was created to set up separate education facilities for Blacks, Coloreds*, and Indians.

*Note that the term “Colored” in South Africa is and was used to designate people of mixed-race heritage, which includes the descendants of Khoisan people and Malay slaves, among others. It is generally accepted as non-offensive.

Forced removals continued throughout Verwoerd’s term as Prime Minister. One of the most famous incidents was the removal of 60,000 people in the area of District Six in Cape Town in February 1966. Known for its cosmopolitan ethnic makeup, District Six was bulldozed, and its inhabitants relocated to other areas.

Two Assassination Attempts

On April 9, 1960, while giving an address to a crowd at Milner Park in Johannesburg, an English businessman named David Pratt pulled out a .22 pistol and shot at Verwoerd’s face at point-blank range. One bullet entered the prime minister’s right cheek and the other his right ear.

Verwoerd was rushed to hospital, and Pratt was arrested. The damage to Verwoerd was mostly superficial, and he spent a short time in hospital, returning to his job only two months after the attack. Pratt was arrested and charged but was found to be insane and was committed to a mental asylum.

Verwoerd’s next brush with an assassin would not prove to be so fortunate for the prime minister. On September 6, 1966, as he entered the House of Assembly in Cape Town, Verwoerd was set upon by Greek-Mozambican political activist Dimitri Tsafendas, who stabbed Verwoerd four times in the chest and neck.

Verwoerd was rushed to Groote Schuur Hospital, but he died in transit. Tsafendas was arrested and convicted and spent the rest of his life in prison, eventually dying in 1999 at the age of 81.

Although he did not create apartheid, Verwoerd’s policies entrenched it to the point where it was defended with violent consequences. Under his leadership, a new era of trauma was visited upon the non-white South African people like never before.

For this, Verwoerd will always be remembered as the man who made sure apartheid was there to stay. Although democracy returned to South Africa in 1994, the legacy of apartheid lives on, as South Africans still struggle to fix the societal problems created by the laws of inequality. In this way, Verwoerd’s legacy is still very much a factor in South African society today.