63 Facts About Hendrik Verwoerd

Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, known as H F Verwoerd was a South African politician, a scholar of applied psychology and sociology, and chief editor of Die Transvaler newspaper.

Hendrik Verwoerd is commonly regarded as the architect of Apartheid.

Furthermore, Hendrik Verwoerd played a vital role in helping the far-right National Party come to power in 1948, serving as their political strategist and propagandist, becoming party leader upon his premiership.

Hendrik Verwoerd was the Union of South Africa's last prime minister, from 1958 to 1961, when he proclaimed the founding of the Republic of South Africa, remaining its prime minister until his assassination in 1966.

Hendrik Verwoerd was an authoritarian, socially conservative leader and an Afrikaner nationalist.

Hendrik Verwoerd was a member of the Afrikaner Broederbond, a secret white and Calvinist organization dedicated to advancing the Afrikaner "volk" interests, and protested against South Africa's declaration of war on Germany during World War II.

Hendrik Verwoerd's desire to ensure white, and especially Afrikaner dominance in South Africa, to the exclusion of the nonwhite majority, was a major aspect of his support for a republic.

Hendrik Verwoerd stated that the white minority had to be protected from the nonwhite majority by pursuing a "policy of separate development" and keeping power in the hands of whites.

Hendrik Verwoerd ordered the detention and imprisonment of tens of thousands of people and the exile of further thousands, while at the same time greatly empowering, modernizing, and enlarging the white apartheid state's security forces.

Hendrik Verwoerd banned black organizations such as the African National Congress and the Pan Africanist Congress, and it was under him that future president Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for life for sabotage.

Hendrik Verwoerd's actions prompted the passing of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1761, condemning apartheid, and ultimately leading to South Africa's international isolation and economic sanctions.

On 6 September 1966, Hendrik Verwoerd was stabbed several times by parliamentary aide Dimitri Tsafendas.

Hendrik Verwoerd died shortly after, and Tsafendas was jailed until his death in 1999.

Hendrik Verwoerd was born in Amsterdam in the Netherlands in 1901.

Hendrik Verwoerd was the second child of Anje Strik and Wilhelmus Johannes Verwoerd.

Hendrik Verwoerd's father was a shopkeeper and a deeply religious man who decided to move his family to South Africa in 1903 because of his sympathy towards the Afrikaner nation in the wake of the Second Boer War.

Hendrik Verwoerd went to a Lutheran primary school in Wynberg, Cape Town.

Hendrik Verwoerd attended Milton High School where he was awarded the Beit Scholarship, established by diamond magnate and financier Alfred Beit.

Hendrik Verwoerd received the top marks for English literature in Rhodesia.

Hendrik Verwoerd's father took up a position in the church in Brandfort, Orange Free State.

Hendrik Verwoerd studied at Stellenbosch University, where he was regarded as a brilliant social science academic, and it was widely claimed that he possessed a photographic memory.

Hendrik Verwoerd then went on completing his Doctorate in Psychology in 1925 at Stellenbosch University.

Hendrik Verwoerd opted for the latter, as Verwoerd wanted to continue his research under a number of renowned German psychology and philosophy professors of the time, and possibly due to his own anti-British views at the time.

Hendrik Verwoerd left for Germany in 1926, and proceeded to research psychology and sociology at the University of Hamburg, Berlin, and Leipzig.

Claims that Hendrik Verwoerd studied eugenics during his German sojourn and later based his apartheid policy on Nazi ideology, are still being evaluated by scholars.

Christoph Marx asserts that Hendrik Verwoerd kept a conspicuous distance from eugenic theories and racist social technologies, emphasising environmental influences rather than hereditary abilities.

Hendrik Verwoerd returned with his wife to South Africa in 1928 and was appointed to the chair of Applied Psychology and Psycho Technique at the University of Stellenbosch where, six years later, he became Professor of Sociology and Social Work.

Hendrik Verwoerd devoted much attention to welfare work and was often consulted by welfare organizations, while he served on numerous committees.

Hendrik Verwoerd belonged to the anti-British faction in Afrikaans politics who wanted to keep as much distance as possible from Britain.

In 1936, Hendrik Verwoerd joined by a group of Stellenbosch University professors protested against the immigration of German Jews to South Africa, who were fleeing Nazi persecution.

Hendrik Verwoerd was elected to the Senate of South Africa later that year, and became the minister of native affairs under Prime Minister Malan in 1950, until his appointment as prime minister in 1958.

Hendrik Verwoerd wrote the Bantu Education Act, which was to have a deleterious effect on the ability of black South Africans to be educated.

Hendrik Verwoerd himself noted that the purpose of the Bantu Education Act was to ensure that blacks would have only just enough education to work as unskilled laborers.

Hendrik Verwoerd gradually gained popularity with the Afrikaner electorate and continued to expand his political support.

Hendrik Verwoerd got the most votes in the second round and thus succeeded Strijdom as Prime Minister.

Hendrik Verwoerd is often called the architect of apartheid for his role in shaping the implementation of apartheid policy when he was minister of native affairs and then prime minister.

Hendrik Verwoerd once described apartheid as a "policy of good neighbourliness".

Hendrik Verwoerd belonged to a third faction, that sympathised with the purists, but allowed for the use of black labour, while implementing the purist goal of vertical separation.

Hendrik Verwoerd felt that the political situation of South Africa had become stagnant over the past century and called for reform.

Under the Premiership of Hendrik Verwoerd, the following legislative acts relating to apartheid were introduced:.

In January 1960, Hendrik Verwoerd announced that a referendum would be called to determine the republican issue, the objective being a republic within the Commonwealth.

Hendrik Verwoerd seized upon this to booster his case for a republic, presenting Elizabeth II as the ruler of a hostile power.

Hendrik Verwoerd ensured that South African media gave generous coverage of the breakdown of society in the Congo in the summer of 1960 following independence from Belgium as an example of the sort of "horrors" that allegedly would ensue in South Africa if apartheid was ended.

Hendrik Verwoerd then linked the Congo situation to the criticism of apartheid in Britain, arguing the Congolese "horrors" were what the British government was intent upon inflicting on white South Africans, fanning the flames of Anglophobia.

In March 1961 at the 1961 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference in London, Hendrik Verwoerd abandoned an attempt for South Africa to become a republic within the Commonwealth, which was necessary given the intention to declare a republic following a resolution jointly sponsored by Jawaharlal Nehru of India and John Diefenbaker of Canada declaring that racism was incompatible with Commonwealth membership.

Hendrik Verwoerd abandoned the application to rejoin the Commonwealth after the Indo-Canadian resolution was accepted mostly by votes from non-white nations, and stormed out of the conference.

The Anglophobic Hendrik Verwoerd timed the declaration of a republic with the anniversary of the Treaty of Vereeniging as a form of revenge for the defeat of the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State in the Boer War.

On 9 April 1960, Hendrik Verwoerd opened the Union Exposition in Milner Park, Johannesburg, to mark the jubilee of the Union of South Africa.

Hendrik Verwoerd was taken to the Marshall Square police station and later transferred to the Forensic Medical Laboratory due to his peculiar behaviour.

The neurologists who treated Hendrik Verwoerd later stated that his escape had been 'absolutely miraculous'.

The National Party under Hendrik Verwoerd won the 1966 general election.

Three days before his death, Hendrik Verwoerd had held talks with the Prime Minister of Lesotho, Chief Leabua Jonathan, at the Union Buildings in Pretoria.

On 6 September 1966, Hendrik Verwoerd was assassinated in Cape Town, shortly after entering the House of Assembly at 14:15.

Four members of Parliament who were trained doctors rushed to the aid of Hendrik Verwoerd and started administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

Hendrik Verwoerd was rushed to Groote Schuur Hospital, but was pronounced dead upon arrival.

Hendrik Verwoerd was buried in the Heroes' Acre in Pretoria.

The still blood-stained carpet where Hendrik Verwoerd lay after his murder remained in Parliament until it was removed in 2004.

Hendrik Verwoerd's legacy in South Africa today is a controversial one as for black South Africans, Hendrik Verwoerd was and still is regarded as the epitome of evil, the white supremacist who become a symbol of apartheid itself.

However, in 2004 Hendrik Verwoerd was elected by popular poll as one of the top 20 South Africans of all time in the TV show Great South Africans.

Melanie Hendrik Verwoerd, who was married to Hendrik Verwoerd's grandson Willem, joined the African National Congress.

Hendrik Verwoerd recalled that bearing the surname Verwoerd always produced awkward stares in ANC circles when she introduced herself and she had to explain that she was indeed the granddaughter-in-law of the Verwoerd who was the prime minister.

Hendrik Verwoerd was visited by the first democratically elected president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, at her home in 1995.

Gross concluded that blaming everything on Hendrik Verwoerd was in effect excusing the actions of everyone else who supported apartheid.