in the South African parlament 44 years ago today.
BBC made an almost one hour special editon on South Africa the same day, and for those of you who have enough time, it´s well worth watching (which is the reason for putting up this diary).
From Wikipedia:
On 6 September 1966, Hendrik Verwoerd was assassinated in Cape Town, shortly after entering the House of Assembly at 2:15 PM. A uniformed parliamentary messenger named Dimitri Tsafendas stabbed Verwoerd in the neck and chest four times before being subdued by other members of the Assembly. Members who were also trained as medical practitioners rushed to the aid of Verwoerd and started administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Verwoerd was rushed to Groote Schuur Hospital, but was declared dead upon arrival.
Tsafendas escaped the death penalty on the grounds of insanity. Judge Beyers ordered Tsafendas to be imprisoned indefinitely at the "State President's pleasure."
Verwoerd's funeral, attended by a quarter of a million people, was held in Pretoria on 10 September 1966. He was buried in the Hero's Acre in front of the Union Buildings.
The still blood-stained carpet where Hendrik Verwoerd lay after the murder remained in Parliament until it was removed in 2004.
From BBC´s introduction:
Hendrik Verwoerd was the architect behind apartheid, which built upon earlier colonial legislation to keep the different racial groups apart. Verwoerd believed in the 'separate development' of the different racial groups as an ideology as much as a political system. He was born in the Netherlands but moved to South Africa due to his sympathy with the Afrikaner people after the Boer War. He was native affairs minister before becoming prime minister in 1958.
The shock assassination of Hendrik Verwoerd in the Cape Town Parliament causes questions to be raised about the future of South Africa. Verwoerd was killed by a white man who thought that poor white people needed more help. Individuals from all sides of the political spectrum give their views on his assassination and the future of South Africa.
Link to the one hour programme. It´s interesting, informative and more than all thought provocative. In the start it mostly focuses on the assassination and Verwoerd himself, but they then go on to the discuss the political situation in South Africa in a broader perspective. It includes a section dealing with the sentence of Nelson Mandela - and it rightly predicts that the successor to Verwoerd would be John Vorster who mainly would continue the politics already in force.