Trump and Verwoerd – What's the Connection?
2024. Donald Trump defiantly raises a fist after being shot.
Alongside him is a 1967 Verwoerd Commemoration 15c stamp with the ‘bullet hole’ variety.
Verwoerd was stabbed to death in the House of Patliament, Cape Town, in September 1966.
The 2024 US Presidential election has ended with ex-President Donal Trump declared the victor. During the course of the last four years the American Liberal Left have made many serious accusations against Trump. Among these were accusations of racism. I submit this based on a slender connection between President Trump and Dr Hendrik F Verwoerd, the assassinated Prime Minister of SA, a man whose legacy is almost exclusively that of the the ‘Architect of Apartheid’, South Africa’s policy of racial segregation.
Before you rush to make the assumption that the connection between Trump and Verwoerd can only be that “they are both racists”, please bear in mind that unlike Trump, no Black person ever voted for Verwoerd, the architect of Apartheid. In pre-democratic South Africa, Black adults did not have the vote and could not have voted for Apartheid even if they had wanted to do so. Trump, however, has enjoyed the support of millions of Black Americans, something Verwoerd never enjoyed. IMO, racism is not what connects them.
In the aftermath of the failed assassination attempt on Trump in the USA, I came across some SWA stamps. These were notable for displaying a variety that the vendor called the “bullet hole in the head of Verwoerd”. The SACC (South African Colour Catalogue 2008/9) describes it as the “big spot on forehead variety”. It is pretty obvious why some call it the ” bullet hole variety”. It looks like one and it was also something many people on the Liberal Left wanted to see happen to Verwoerd ….. and Trump. But, IMO, that is not what connects them here.
These 15c stamp was part of a set of three SWA stamps issued on the 6th January 1967 in Commemmoration of the recently assassinated Dr Hendrik Verwoerd who was stabbed to death on 6th September 1966 in the House of Parliament in Cape Town. The 15c stamp is the top value in the SWA Verwoerd Commemoration issue. To get Verwoerd’s life and death in a little perspective, here is some background as to why South Africa issued stamps commemorating him in South West Africa, today the independent country of Namibia.
FDC SWA 1967 Verwoerd Commemoration
South African forces invaded German SWA in WW1 and took control of it. SA wanted SWA as its 5th province but the League of Nations would only grant it a Class C Mandate to rule the territory. After WW2 the League of Nations was replaced by the United Nations. In 1948 the Nationalists came to power in SA promising to introduce the racially discriminatory policy of Apartheid of which Verwoerd was the driving philosopher. Apartheid was an attempt to formalise South Africa’s existing ad hoc segregation laws into something altogther bigger and broader, more overwhelming and compelling. It was racism as state policy.
After Apartheid was also implemented in SWA there was an international outcry. Ethiopia and Liberia failed on a technicality to have SA’s SWA mandate revoked at the International Court of Justice in 1966. In terms of the mandate they were not the proper parties to bring the case to court. This was something only the inhabitants of SWA could do. South Africa’s security police made sure they did not! At this time the National Party enjoyed strong support from the Afrikaner and ethnic German population of SWA. Between 1950 and 1977, all of SWA’s parliamentary seats were held by the National Party. Most SWA Whites, not all, benefitted from the Apartheid status quo and supported the control it offered them at a time when SWA’s native people were demanding equal rights and the franchise.
Unlike Donald Trump who is supported politically by Black and White Americans, Verwoerd was a racist. His policy of Apartheid set out to catergorise and divide people into ‘population groups’ based on race. This made him the target of two assassination attempts. The first attempt was made by David Beresford Pratt, a 52-year old British-South African businessman, Natal farmer and liberal anti-Apartheid activist who had a documented history of mental health issues that required psychiatric treatment.
Despite Pratt being diagnosed as a paranoid depressive, his friends stated that he was perfectly sane, a liberal angered by Black poverty, racial injustice and segregation. Pratt’s views turned to outrage after the Sharpeville massacre in March 1960 when 69 Black protesters were shot by SA police. It is likely that in Pratt’s mind his actions were morally justified by the clamour of international disgust and condemnation which the Nationalist government was subjected to at this time. In the USA, Democrats have similarly called Trump a fascist, an authoritarian and Hitler reincarnate, as well as for his assasination. But that is not what connects them here.
Pratt attempted to assassinate Verwoerd on 9th April 1960 when he was opening the Union Exposition in Milner Park, Johannesburg in his capacity as Prime Minister. Pratt shot Verwoerd with a handgun at very close range, once in the cheek and in the ear. So, there you have it …. my tenuous connection between Trump and Verwoerd. Both men were shot in the ear in the first assassination attempt on their lives.
Unlike Trump whose ear wound was not serious, Verwoerd’s jaw was shattered by the other shot. Like Trump whose security was highly questionable, Verwoerd’s was similarly inept. According to Time magazine, Verwoerd’s personal bodyguard, Major Carl Richter, fainted at the scene. Verwoerd was rushed to a nearby Johannesburg hospital where he recovered. He would be assassinated five years later on 6th September 1966 when he was repeatedly stabbed to death in Cape Town’s House of Assembly by Dimitri Tsafendas, a mentally ill parliamentary messenger. South Africa’s small Greek community were vilified and lived in fear of repercussions for months.
There is little or nothing in Trump’s record in office as President of the USA to supports the Liberal Left’s charges of racism against him. Verwoerd, on the other hand, cannot be extracted from the mire of the history that he made for himself and SA. He was a gifted and successful man in all the areas that he applied his great intellect to – a professor of applied psychology, a newspaper editor and politician and republican Prime Minister – but beneath it all he was a socially conservative authoritarian Afrikaner nationalist, a member of the secretive Broederbond (Afr. Brotherhood), a secret White Calvinist organisation dedicated to advancing Afrikaner interests.
At the start of WW2 Dr Verwoerd protested against South Africa’s declaration of war on Germany and later lost a libel case in which he sued The Star newpaper who had accused him of being a Nazi propagandist. The verdict of the judge was that Verwoerd was a Nazi propagandist who triumphantly headlined every Nazi victory and constantly attacked “British Jewish liberalism”. Verwoerd argued that he was not a racist. No doubt, he believed that he did not dislike Black people with whom he got on well with, like his servants, the garden ‘boy’ and the postman. The reality was that his policies excluded them from his White South African society. Apartheid, something later renamed as ‘separate development’, allowed him to sweep his Black South Africans servants out of White society and into dustbins located on the far edge of every South African town.
Today, Verwoerd is remembered for one thing only – being the Architect of the failed policy of Apartheid. He described it as a policy of “good-neighbourliness”, ignoring the massive distress and upheaval caused by the Group Areas Act’s cruel social engineering and racial rezoning invariably at the expense of ‘Non-Whites’. There are some who argue he should be rehabilitated, who say that he only wanted the best for all of SA’s people. I do not remember it like that. He was a plague on my country and my youth!
1]. Top: 1967 6 January Commemoration of Dr Verwoerd. 15c ‘Bullet in the Head’ flaw.
2]. First Day Cover 1967 6 January full set.
3]. Time Magazine, ‘The Delusion of Apartheid’. Prime Minister Herndrik Verwoerd.
4]. Calendar. Daily Task for Nationalists.
