Verwoerd

On 6 September 1966, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd was assassinated in Parliament by a deranged parliamentary messenger. The architect of apartheid was dead, sending shockwaves throughout South Africa and the world.

Today, half a century later, the effects of Verwoerd’s grand ambition linger on, and it is vitally important to reappraise the lasting impact – both physical and psychological – of the institutionalised racial inequality that he so industriously inculcated.

In Verwoerd: Architect of Apartheid, Henry Kenney interprets Verwoerd in the context of his times, explaining the man and assessing his role in shaping South Africa’s history. Originally published in 1980, Kenney’s incisive study examines the rationale behind the policy of apartheid and probes the ideas of its chief architect and ideologue. Writing more than a decade after Verwoerd’s assassination, Kenney skilfully distances himself from his subject and offers a dispassionate insight into the peculiar workings of the apartheid system. This is a fascinating study of a man who identified obsessively with the Afrikaner people, while aware that his foreign birth set him apart.

This new edition contains an introduction by David Welsh, Professor Extraordinaire at the University of Stellenbosch, providing valuable political background and updating the book for a contemporary generation. This republication will satisfy an enduring interest in, and fascination with, the man responsible for, among other things, the policy of Bantu education, the creation of a Republic and the mad calculus of “separate development”.