40th Anniversary of Prime Minister Verwoerd’s Assassination

Hendrik Verwoerd, a Dutch immigrant, made up for his outsider status by developing South Africa’s apartheid policy and becoming the country’s first foreign-born leader. His segregation laws thwarted the intended marriage of Demitrios Tsafendas, a half-white, half-black legislative page who stabbed Verwoerd to death in the House of Assembly in 1966. Court proceedings ignored the racial politics surrounding the crime, focusing instead on the assassin’s delusion that a giant tapeworm was eating him from the inside out. The judge concluded that he could not rule on the perpetrator’s criminal responsibility “anymore than I can judge a dog.” Tsafendas survived to see apartheid abolished, dying in psychiatric detention in 1999.