Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd (1901-1966) was the sixth prime minister of South Africa. He transformed apartheid into an effective instrument for the entrenchment of white domination.

Hendrik Verwoerd was born near Amsterdam, Holland, on Sept. 8, 1901. A few months later his parents emigrated to South Africa. He read psychology and sociology in Stellenbosch and from 1925 onward studied for a doctorate in psychology and sociology in Germany. He returned to occupy the chair of applied psychology and then of sociology and social work in Stellenbosch.

In 1934 Verwoerd was asked to organize a conference on poor whites. An assertive idealist, he viewed the poor-white question as a specifically Afrikaans problem which had to be solved by political initiatives developed in an Afrikaans framework.

A Racist View

This framework had already been defined by Die Broederbond (The League of the Brothers), an anti-African, anti-British, and anti-Semitic secret society. Founded in 1919, it labored to...