The attempted assassination of Henrik Vorwoed, PM of South Africa
Dr. Hendrik F. Vorwoed was the man who conceived and implemented the notorious apartheid system. Born in Amsterdam, Vorwoed grew up in Rhodesia and South Africa. He quit his job as an editor to represent Dr. D.F. Malan’s National Party in the Senate. In 1950, Malan made him the Minister of Native Affairs where he rolled out segregation programs intended at hiving off Black reservations as autonomous states. In 1958, the man who once said that Africans were meant to be ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’ became the Prime Minister of South Africa.
AS Dr. Vorwoed was delivering his opening address at a ceremony to mark the Jubilee of the Union of South Africa at Milner Park, Johannesburg, shots ring in the air. The assassin, who shot Vorwoed twice at point blank range, was a rich English businessman called David Pratt. One bullet hit the PM on his right cheek and the other his right ear. The President of the Witswatersrand Agricultural society knocked the gun off Pratt’s hand before he could shoot again. Security men then overpowered and arrested him. Pratt, a mentally disturbed man who had tried to commit suicide thrice, claimed Vorwoed was the ‘epitome of apartheid.’
The troubled assassin committed suicide while being held at a mental hospital in 1961.
Vorwoed survived the attack, but would not be so lucky the next time someone tried to kill him. In 1966, he was killed in the South African parliament by Dimitri Tsafendas, a uniformed parliamentary messenger. Tsafendas stabbed him in the chest and neck four times, fatally wounding him.
Pictured:
1. Verwoerd's failed assassination scene.
2. Dimitri Tsafendas, Verwoerd's successful assassin.
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