Infamous Assassinations TV -
April 9th 1960 Milner Park Johannesburg mid-afternoon: Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, prime minister of South Africa, takes his place in the VIP stand ... Suddenly, gun shots ring out ... Someone wants the architect of apartheid dead. Infamous Assassinations: Dr Hendrik Verwoerd
The man who has just shot Verwoerd is far from being a victim of apartheid; he is a wealthy farmer and businessman 52-year-old David Pratt; and he’s white. ibid.
His [Verwoerd] newspapers steadfastly ignores the royal visit. ibid.
Since the British first restricted their movements in the nineteenth century the non-white people of South Africa have long been regarded as second-class citizens. But now things are about to get a great deal worse. ibid.
One of the more draconian measures he introduces is the wholesale destruction of non-white homesteads. Entire communities are uprooted and shifted to bleak new housing settlements. ibid.
March 21st 1960 Sharpeville Township, the Transvaal: in a campaign orchestrated by the PAC around ten-thousand non-white people descend on the local police station offering themselves up for arrest for the crime of not carrying a passport ... The police open fire killing sixty-eight men, women and children and wounding around a hundred and eighty. Many of them are shot in the back as they panic and try to run away. What becomes known as the Sharpeville massacre. ibid.
World opinion is outraged. ibid.
April 1st 1960 New York: the United Nations Security Council censors South Africa over apartheid. The country has become an international pariah. ibid.
May 31st 1961 Cape Town ... Vervoerd declares that South Africa is now a republic. ibid.
September 11th 1966 Pretoria: Vervoerd is given a state funeral. ibid.