Lowest of the Low
ARMOUR, RICHARD
South Africa's Verwoerd The Union's new Prime Minister, a supporter of Nazism during the war, represents the extreme segregationists By John Hughes CAPE TOWN HENDRIK FRENSCH VERWOERD...
...With this confident approach to a complex racial problem, Verwoerd has pressed toward his goal of separating the races...
...Verwoerd's election to succeed the late Johannes G. Strijdom was considered a victory for extremist elements within the governing Nationalist party...
...They claim he is uncompromising and too often fails to heed the advice of others...
...He is devoted to his wife and seven children...
...This criticism is borne out by a comment Verwoerd once reportedly made to an interviewer...
...In fact, Verwoerd has spent more on such items as non-white housing, and brought more material benefits to the Africans, than previous responsible cabinet ministers...
...It remains to be seen whether the responsibility of office will exert a moderating influence upon him, or whether the restless energy and zeal which have characterized his dealings with South Africa's non-whites to date will provide even further stimulus to the Government's policies...
...In the privacy of his stately official residence, Groote Schuur, in Cape Town, Verwoerd is a most amiable host...
...For eight years he was Native Affairs Minister in the Strijdom cabinet...
...Another of Verwoerd's goals is to sever South Africa's link with the British Crown and turn the country into a republic...
...He occupied the post throughout World War II and the paper adopted a strongly pro-Nazi policy...
...In a court case during these years, a Supreme Court judge ruled that Verwoerd had made his newspaper "a tool of the Nazis in South Africa, and he knew it...
...But he works over a briefcase full of papers while being driven to and from Parliament, and often works till the small hours of the morning...
...Though he runs a Friesland farm near Johannesburg, he has few hobbies and has never had much interest in sports...
...But while he feels paternalistic toward many of the tribal Africans still living primitively in their villages, he seems to have little sympathy for the educated Africans who have poured into the white man's cities...
...From political journalism, Verwoerd graduated to politics and eventually became a cabinet minister...
...In the late '30s he came into political prominence by protesting the admission to South Africa of Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany...
...Some of his critics claim that his dedication to it borders on fanaticism...
...They have no quarrel with his ultimate objective, but question his methods...
...He sees himself as a man with a mission...
...South Africa's Verwoerd The Union's new Prime Minister, a supporter of Nazism during the war, represents the extreme segregationists By John Hughes CAPE TOWN HENDRIK FRENSCH VERWOERD (pronounced "fair-voort"), the new Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, is probably one of the world's most fiercely dedicated partisans of race separation on the grounds of color...
...Whether he intends to pull South Africa out of the Commonwealth is not yet clear...
...When asked whether his heavy duties did not ever leave him tired or taxed, he bluntly stated: "No, I do not have the nagging doubt of ever wondering whether, perhaps, I am wrong...
...It would have the nation's Africans, who outnumber the whites three to one, neatly settled in the less than 20 per cent of the country reserved for them...
...Born in Holland, Henrik Verwoerd was brought to South Africa at the age of 2. After a brilliant academic career here, he studied at the universities of Leipzig, Hamburg and Berlin, took a brief swing through the United States, then returned to South Africa to become, at the age of 26, professor of applied psychology at Stellenbosch University...
...He sees his task as saving South Africa's 3 million whites from being overrun by the nation's more than 9 million Africans-"only racial segregation can avoid a blood-bath...
...After the war, the newspaper boycotted the visit to South Africa of the British royal family...
...In accordance with God's will, it was determined who should assume the leadership of the Government," he says...
...This, of course, sets him at loggerheads with Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah and the other African leaders of black nationalism, and makes him a key figure in the daily unfolding drama of this continent...
...After this, the Nationalist party (which was not yet in power) invited him to become editor of a new party newspaper, Die Transvaler, in Johannesburg...
...His administration of the country's Africans has been subject to considerable criticism, not only from his opponents but from a section of his own supporters...
Vol. 41 • November 1958 • No. 40
