DEATH IN PARLIAMENT 1966

24grammata.com /απόδημος ελληνισμός / αφιέρωμα: Τσαφέντας / Tsafentas (κλικ εδώ)

FAMOUS SOUTH AFRICAN CRIMES
Author: Rob Marsh
http://www.africacrime-mystery.co.za/books/fsac/fsac.pdf
σελ 62
DEATH IN PARLIAMENT
1966
Hendrik Fredresch Verwoerd, psychologist, sociologist, journalist, statesman and the architect of apartheid, was born in Amsterdam on 8 September 1901. He was, as he bluntly admitted in 1947, ‘an extreme Afrikaner’.
In 1925, he obtained a doctorate at Stellenbosch University and then went to America and Europe, where he did post-graduate studies at a number of universities, including Hamburg and Berlin. In 1928, he returned to South Africa and was appointed Professor of Applied Psychology and Sociology at Stellenbosch University.
In 1936, he joined a deputation of six professors in protesting against the admission to South Africa of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. From that year on, Dr Verwoerd was destined to be surrounded by controversy.
In 1937, he became the first editor of Die Transvaler, the National Party newspaper in Johannesburg. Under his editorship, Die Transvaler became an extremist organ, strenuously voicing its opposition to the Hertzog-Smuts alliance and to South Africa’s involvement in World War II. A Supreme Court judgment against Verwoerd would later hold that Die Transvaler made a tool of the Nazis in South Africa; and he knew it.
In 1948, the National Party swept to power in the general election. Dr Verwoerd’s contribution to the party’s success was clearly recognized and he was elected to the Senate, where he became the leader of the ruling party. Two years later, he entered the
Cabinet and was appointed Minister of Native Affairs. It was shortly after this appointment that Dr Verwoerd declared that the National Party had developed a policy ‘… which grants to others what it claims for itself and which is calculated to provide the same opportunities
to everyone within his own race group. That is the policy of apartheid.’
On 2 September 1958, after the death of J.G. Striidom, Dr Verwoerd become Prime Minister. The year 1960 was a dramatic one for South African politics and for Verwoerd personally. In January, he announced that a referendum would be called to determine the
Republican Issue; the object would be a republic within the British Commonwealth. Two weeks later, Harold Macmillan, the then British Prime Minister, visited South Africa. In an address to both Houses of Parliament he made his famous ‘winds of change’ speech and