Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd

Encyclopedia : H : HE : HEN : Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd

Silver medal commemorating Verwoerd's death.

Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd (8 September 1901 – 6 September 1966) was Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until his assassination in 1966. Unlike his predecessors, Verwoerd was not born in South Africa, but immigrated at age two with his parents from the Netherlands. A polarizing figure, he is widely considered the architect of apartheid, and was Prime Minister during the Sharpeville massacre, the banning of the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress, and the treason trial of Nelson Mandela and others. He also presided over the establishment of a republic through a whites-only referendum. However, in a controversial 2004 poll by the South African Broadcasting Corporation, asking South Africans to name the top 100 South Africans of all time, he was voted 19th.

Numerous major roads in towns and cities in South Africa are named after Verwoerd, although some have now been renamed. The Gariep Dam in the Free State, and Port Elizabeth Airport in the eastern Cape were formerly named H. F. Verwoerd, as was the town of Verwoerdburg (now Centurion) and H.F. Verwoerd Hospital (now Pretoria Academic Hospital).

Contents

1 Youth
2 Architect of apartheid
3 A republic
4 Assassination
5 See also
6 External links

Youth

Verwoerd went to high school at Wynberg. In 1913 the family moved to Bulawayo, part of then-Rhodesia, where he attended the Milton High School. In 1917 the family moved again, this time to Brandfort in the Orange Free State. Due to a flu epidemic, Verwoerd only sat for his matriculation exams in February 1919.

Directly afterwards he took up his studies at the University of Stellenbosch. He excelled as student, completing his studies with honours. Verwoerd completed his Master's degree in 1922, and his doctorate in 1924.

Verwoerd is often accused of having been a student of Dr Eugen Fischer, who conceived of the theories on racial hygiene in Germany. However, Verwoerd's thesis was not on anthropology or social-Darwinism: Verwoerd was a psychologist and only much later branched out into sociology. His doctoral thesis was on the psychological effect of emotional dreariness on a person (in Afrikaans: "Afstomping van Gemoedsaandoeninge"). In the bibliography, Verwoerd cited a fair number of German works, inter alia those of Freud, but none of Fischer.

Verwoerd left for Germany after the completion of his doctoral studies in 1925, and stayed there during 1926 while visiting the Universities of Hamburg, Berlin and Leipzig. His later critics have at times suggested that this coincided with the rise of National Socialism in the 1930s, however this visit predated it by a number of years. During this visit he might have met with Fischer, but even at this stage social-Darwinism was not the focus of Verwoerd's research. He published a number of works dating back to that time, which are all still available at the library of the University of Stellenbosch:

A method for the experimental production of emotions (1926)
"'n Bydrae tot die metodiek en probleemstelling vir die psigologiese ondersoek van koerante-advert" (1928) ("A contribution on the psychological methodology of newspaper advertisement")
The distribution of "attention" and its testing (1928)
Effects of fatigue on the distribution of attention (1928)
A contribution to the experimental investigation of testimony (1929?)
"Oor die opstel van objektiewe persoonlikheidsbepalingskemas" (1930?) ("Objective criteria to dermine personality types")
"Oor die persoonlikheid van die mens en die beskrywing daarvan" (1930?) ("On the human personality and the description thereof")

His fiancee, Betsie Schoombie, joined him in Germany and they were subsequently married on 7 January 1927. Later that year he continued his studies in the United Kingdom and then in the United States. Millar, who did an in-depth study on the early career of Verwoerd, concluded that there is no evidence that Verwoerd had been infected by the racial ideology of the National Socialists in Germany. He was in fact more impressed by some strands in American Sociology. His lecture notes and memoranda at Stellenbosch stressed that there were no biological differences between the big racial groups, and concluded that "this was not really a factor in the development of a higher social civilization by the Caucausians." Verwoerd's admiration of the American doctrine of "separate but equal" cannot be equated with the racial ideology of the National Socialists.

Architect of apartheid

Verwoerd, formerly Minister for Native Affairs, firmly believed in apartheid. His aim was to create a South African state where whites would be the demographic majority, in order to ensure that white South Africans were not politically and culturally swamped by a black African majority. In order to achieve this ten black homelands or Bantustans, were created. Blacks were given the vote in these homelands instead of in 'white' South Africa. Verwoerd argued that these were the original areas of descent for the black South African population. The homeland policy effectively made blacks the citizens of different countries. Mass population transfers occurred when blacks were forcibly moved into these homeland areas. However, the size of the homeland areas were not in proportion to the size of the black population and the majority of the land in the country was still reserved for white ownership. Apartheid also stripped the mixed-race Coloureds of their voting rights by amending an entrenched clause in the Union's Constitution; since his party did not have the required two-thirds majority in both Houses of Parliament which would have allowed him to do this, he enlarged the Senate with his own appointees. Once the legislation was passed, the Senate's membership was changed back to its original size.

A republic

During Verwoerd's term in office, South Africa ceased to be a Commonwealth realm under Queen Elizabeth II known as the Union of South Africa, instead becoming a republic in 1961, known as the Republic of South Africa. The creation of a republic was one of the National Party's long-term goals since originally coming to power in 1948; and Verwoerd's antipathy towards the British Crown was long standing; as editor of the newspaper Die Transvaler, he ignored the British Royal Family's tour of South Africa in 1947, with one news item only referring in passing to 'congestion caused by some visitors from overseas'.

The opposition United Party and many English-speaking whites of British descent were opposed to a republic, but once again, Verwoerd changed the law to his advantage: He lowered the voting age for whites to 18, and allowed whites in South West Africa to vote. On 5 October 1960 a referendum was held in which white voters were asked "Do you support a republic for the Union?" — 52 percent voted 'Yes'. Johannes Gerhardus Strijdom's government had brought in a rule requiring government's to seek 2/3 approval of the electorate before carrying out a constitutional change (unlike say New Zealand, where a simple act of parliament is all that is theoretically necessary for such a change), but this rule was ignored: - the referendum to dismantle apartheid on the 17th of March 1992 gained 68.6% of the vote, only just crossing the threshold. Verwoerd only managed to cross the 50% threshold by his questionable electoral practices and his manipulation skills - he persuaded many South Africans that given the first assassination attempt on him, Harold Macmillan's Winds of Change speech and international condemnation following the Sharpeville massacre, South Africa would have to go it alone by becoming a republic. Many South Africans of English origin voted for the change believing that South Africa would remain in the Commonwealth, suggesting that there may have been significant numbers of Afrikaners opposed to the change, given that they made up a much larger proportion of the voting population. Verwoerd also managed to persuade them by keeping the system of government almost exactly the same (except that the president would be chosen by both houses). The Republic of South Africa came into existence on 31 May 1961, chosen because it was the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging that had brought the Anglo-Boer War in 1902.

Following India's assumption of republic status, it was agreed by Commonwealth leaders that being republic was not incompatible with membership but that a Commonwealth Realm would have to reapply for Commonwealth membership if it became a republic.

At the meeting of Commonwealth Prime Ministers held in London Verwoerd argued that apartheid was just a matter of good labour policy. However, a number of Commonwealth Prime Ministers, particularly John Diefenbaker of Canada, denounced apartheid and argued that racial equality was a principle of Commonwealth membership. As a result of widespread opposition from the leaders of non-white New Commonwealth countries as well as Old Commonwealth member Canada and the threat that several countries would resign from the Commonwealth if South Africa's application was approved, Verwoerd withdrew South Africa's application to remain a member of the Commonwealth on 15 March 1961. South Africa's membership officially lapsed on 31 May when it officially became a republic.

South Africa's Commonwealth membership was restored in 1994, although it remains a republic.

Assassination

On 16 April 1960, Verwoerd was shot and injured by David Pratt while opening the Rand Easter Show at Milner Park, Johannesburg. Pratt was declared insane and sent to a mental institution in Bloemfontein, committing suicide a few months later.

In 1966, Verwoerd was stabbed to death in the House of Assembly by Dimitri Tsafendas, a parliamentary clerk, who escaped the death penalty on the grounds of insanity, saying that a large worm in his stomach told him to kill Verwoerd.

Tsafendas's motive for killing Verwoerd remains unclear. Tsafendas had a Mozambican mother and, although not racially classified as a "coloured", he had a dark skin. This may have played a role, since he had recently fallen in love with a coloured woman. He had applied for reclassification as a coloured, since sexual relations between people of different races were illegal under apartheid.

It is also unclear to what degree the murder was a political act. The trial of Tsafendas dealt mainly with the question of whether he was capable of fully understanding the consequences of his actions, and possible motives were never discussed. The attorney general alleged that Tsafendas was a "hired killer", but this was not accepted by Judge Beyers, who ordered Tsafendas to be imprisoned indefinitely at the "State President's pleasure."

External links

[Account of the trial of Demitrios Tsafendas], by Judge Wilfred Cooper who led his defence

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