Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd

Hendrik VERWOERD's ancestry is Dutch, not Afrikaner. He arrived in South Africa at the age of 3 months or two years depending on the sources. At age 57 he became Prime Minister of South Africa and was responsible for fulfilling the Afrikaner dream of an independent republic of South Africa.

Elizabeth SCHOOMBEE has mixed ancestry which, besides her European ancestry, also includes ancestors from India (see Helena VAN MALABAR in 2 lines, and Catharina VAN MALABAR); Indonesia (see Iba Antonique VAN TIMOR in 3 lines); as well as Ansela VAN DIE KAAP, which usually denotes a mixed race parentage.

She married Hendrik VERWOERD on 7 JAN 1927 in Germany. Her husband, the Prime Minister of South Africa between 1858 and 1966, was of Dutch descent, and was born in the Netherlands. He was responsible for implementing the apartheid laws which separated whites, coloureds (mixed European and African/Asian ancestry), Asians, and Africans (Blacks).

It is therefor necessary to point out that Hendrik VERWOERD was not an Afrikaner, and his wife, an Afrikaner of mixed race ancestry who should have been classified as coloured under the Apartheid laws, became the architects of Apartheid.

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Kerklidmaatskap Kaapprovinsie 16 sep 1923

Source - Wikipedia

Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd (8 September 1901 - 6 September 1966) was Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until his assassination in 1966. Verwoerd was born in the Netherlands and emigrated at age two with his parents to South Africa.

Verwoerd was an authoritarian, socially conservative leader and an Afrikaner nationalist. He was a member of the Afrikaner Broederbond (Afrikaans: Brotherhood), a secret white and Calvinist organization dedicated to advancing the Afrikaner "volk" interests, and protested against South Africa's declaration of war on Nazi Germany during World War II. Following the Nationalist electoral victory in 1948, Verwoerd assumed high positions in the government and wielded strong influence over South African society.

He served as Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until he was stabbed to death by an assassin in 1966. He was Prime Minister during the establishment of the Republic of South Africa in 1960, thereby fulfilling the Afrikaner dream of an independent republic for South Africans. During his tenure as Prime Minister, anti-Apartheid movements such as the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan Africanist Congress were banned, and the Rivonia Trial, which prosecuted the struggle leaders, was held.

Numerous major roads, places and facilities in towns and cities in South Africa were named after Verwoerd, like the H. F. Verwoerd Airport in Port Elizabeth, the Verwoerd Dam in the Free State and the town of Verwoerdburg. In post-apartheid South Africa, most of them have been renamed.

The Gariep Dam, at its commission in 1971, was originally named the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam after Hendrik Verwoerd, the Prime Minister before and after 31 May 1961, when the country changed from the Union of South Africa to the Republic of South Africa. However, after the end of apartheid, the Verwoerd name was considered unsuitable. The name was officially changed to Gariep Dam on 4 October 1996. Gariep is Khoekhoe for "river", the original name of the Orange River (the longest river in the South Africa)

Article from the Encyclopaedia Brittanica online:

Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, (b. Sept. 8, 1901, Amsterdam, Neth.—d. Sept. 6, 1966, Cape Town, S.Af.), South African professor, editor, and statesman who as prime minister (1958–66) rigorously developed and applied the policy of apartheid, or separation of the races.

When Verwoerd was three months old, his family migrated to South Africa. A brilliant scholar at the University of Stellenbosch, he was appointed professor of applied psychology there in 1927. In 1933 he changed to the chair of sociology and social work.

Verwoerd became prominent in politics in 1937, when he was appointed editor of the new Nationalist daily, Die Transvaler, in Johannesburg. He held that post until the National Party won the 1948 election, when he was appointed a senator. Becoming minister of native affairs in 1950, he was responsible for much of the apartheid legislation. In the election of 1958 he won a seat in the House of Assembly, and, after the death of Prime Minister Johannes Gerhardus Strijdom, the parliamentary caucus of the National Party selected Verwoerd as his successor in September 1958.

Once he was in office, Verwoerd’s program for apartheid was applied in full, with an intricate system of laws separating whites, Coloureds (people of mixed European and African or Asian ancestry), Asians, and Africans (blacks). He pushed through the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act in 1959; it provided for the resettlement of blacks in eight separate reservations, or Bantu Homelands (later called Bantustans or black states). These racial policies provoked demonstrations that in March 1960 led to the massacre of Africans protesting the Pass Laws at Sharpeville. On Oct. 5, 1960, white voters by a small majority approved his recommendation that South Africa leave the Commonwealth, and Verwoerd’s dream of a republic came true on May 31, 1961.

On April 9, 1960, a deranged white farmer shot Verwoerd in an assassination attempt that failed. Six years later Verwoerd was stabbed to death in the parliamentary chamber by a temporary parliamentary messenger, Demetrio (also known as Dimitri) Tsafendas, a Mozambique immigrant of mixed descent. He initially blamed his actions on instructions he had received from a giant tapeworm in his stomach, was found to be insane, and was confined to prison or a mental asylum for the rest of his life. Later interviews with Tsafendas revealed that the assassination was motivated by the great resentment he felt toward the arbitrary racial classifications and policies of apartheid, which had adversely affected his life.

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