Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd

Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd (8 September 1901 - 6 September 1966) was Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 to 1966, when he was assassinated. Unlike his predecessors, Verwoerd was not born in South Africa, but came with his parents from the Netherlands.

Nicknamed 'the architect of apartheid', he presided over the Sharpeville Massacre and the banning of the African National Congress and Pan-Africanist Congress, as well as the sentencing of Nelson Mandela to life imprisonment. During his term in office, South Africa became a republic in 1961, thereby achieving on of his National Party's cherished goals, and left the Commmonwealth in the face of increased hostility to his apartheid policies.

Verwoerd, formerly Minister for 'Native Affairs', believed in 'separate development'. He believed that the black majority had no political role to play in the Republic of South Africa, as they were citizens of different countries, or 'homelands'. His government created several supposedly independent Bantustans, which he argued, were the original areas of descent for the black South African population. Mass population transfers occured when blacks were forcibly moved out of the cities and into these areas, and many died.

In 1996, 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.