Word: verwoerds
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...century and a half, blacks in the Union of South Africa have had to carry passbooks. But it is only in recent years, under the Boer regime of stubborn, stiff-necked Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, that the passbook has become almost a physical shackle...
...South Africa was stunned by the sudden bloodshed that had always been implicit in Verwoerd's unrelenting policies. The English-language Johannesburg Star assailed the government's "pathetic faith in the power of machine guns to settle basic human problems," and the Anglican Bishop of Johannesburg appealed "to all those in South Africa who have any human feelings" to stop the police tactics. More than 500 white students at the University of Natal, carrying banners reading HITLER 1939, VERWOERD 1960, assembled on campus to lower the British and South African flags to half-mast...
Even South Africa's rabidly nationalistic Afrikaans press was having second thoughts. The day before the riots, the Johannesburg Vaderland called for a "simpler and less hurtful pass system." The influential Cape Town Die Burger urged moderation on Prime Minister Verwoerd. But Verwoerd obstinately said that "nothing would be done" to abolish the pass laws, and belatedly discovered that the demonstrators at Sharpeville had "shot first," even though no one found arms on the Africans...
Neither Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd nor any member of his Cabinet has ever set foot in the Negro-ruled new states of Africa, but this does not prevent South Africa's confident Prime Minister from speaking for the millions who populate them. "The mass of Africans do not want independence," he assured his Parliament last week. "They are just being used by a few small groups [of Africans] who are really considering their own interests." In the same building six weeks before, Britain's Harold Macmillan had warned of the "wind of change" sweeping the continent and of Britain...
South Africa, said Verwoerd, will welcome whites who flee from lands that come under African rule, "because they . . . are the best immigrants," but his country would never surrender to the black tide. Apartheid was the only way Verwoerd saw, and he begged the opposition United Party to rally behind his policies in toto. He was to be disappointed in this, but could claim another victory of sorts last week. The South African government's Bantu Education department ruled that its officials no longer may shake hands with Africans they meet on official business. To get around any awkward encounters...