How does SA develop? Will he make concession to non-black minorities such as Indians? Is Vorster still his successor?
6th September 1966
Prime Minister Verwoerd entered the House of Assembly lobby promptly at 2.15. Lost in thought, he barely acknowledged the greeting of passing members and hardly noticed the huddled trio of Vorster, Schoeman and Louw standing next to the bust of Cecil Rhodes. After a few paces, something in their demeanour troubled him mildly but he couldn't quite place it. Abruptly, he turned to return towards them and bumped directly into a figure who had silently come up behind him. The short, swarthy Parliamentary Messenger stared, wide-eyed, straight into Verwoerd's face in shock. Before the Prime Minister could form the words of an apology the Messenger raised his right arm clutching a sheathed knife and lunged forward, screaming.
The knife dashed Verwoerd's thick, leather bound folder from his hands, scattering sheaves of paper across the lobby floor. Tsafendas ripped the sheath from the knife's blade and raised his arm for a second blow, only to be floored by Frank Waring with all the force a former Springbok could muster. Within seconds several younger Members had joined the fray and Tsafendas was quickly disarmed and subdued.
An only mildly shaken Verwoerd delivered his famous 'Watershed' speech later that afternoon.
South Africa was to engage in the most far-reaching diplomatic and economic initiative in Africa.
"Neither the West, nor the Communist World have produced a solution to Africa's problems", Verwoerd announced.
He went on to claim that Western exploitation and Communist mischief- making were both intent on keeping Africa poor. He peppered his speech with references to religion, to the Africaness of Afrikaaners and loaded allusions to South Africa's wealth.
He proposed an African Common Market that would provide massive investment capital, technical know-how and trade opportunities for its members to go hand-in-hand with the rapid development of South Africa's own Homelands, that he diplomatically called, New Nations.
Astonishingly, he not only announced an inaugral summit for this African Common Market, he dropped the names of attendees. Apart from the possibly predictable King Johnathan, Seretse Khama and King Moshoeshoe, he named Kaunda, Mobutu, Banda, Houphouët-Boigny, Bongo and Kenyatta. The Portugese colonies of Angola and Mozambique were included but, pointedly, the rebel state of Rhodesia was not.
South Africa, Verwoerd announced, had more than two billion dollars of investment capital available; more than the combined GDPs of the candidate states for this African Common Market.
Internationally, Verwoerd's speech was a major success. Hailed in Europe and America but condemned by the Communist Bloc, the Britsh Left and individuals like Nkrumah from his exile in Conakry and Obote in Uganda-the speech received positive reaction from influential financial figures world-wide. When attacked for deigning to deal with Apartheid during a BBC interview Kenyan vice-President Tom Mboya famously stated that "He would sup with the Devil, as long as the Devil picked up the tab!"
Among the Afrikaaner right there was outrage. The expression "Giving our money to Kaffirs!" was freely used in pubs, churches and factories by a people unaware that the Johannesburg stock exchange surged by 500 points as a reaction to the speech. The Verkrampte wing of the National Party began a whispering campaign that Verwoerd had been bought by the English and the Jews. The accusations that Verwoerd himself had made against Smuts twenty years before were beginning to made against him.
March 1967
With a successful African summit behind him, a constant stream of positive news headlines of new African development projects and diplomatic thaws, Verwoerd decided to call a snap General Election. The decision was calculated to garner support from the English and liberal Afrikaaner voters and relegate his increasingly vocal right-wing opponents.
In a risky precedent he had detemined to make his first public speech in the election campaign in Durban, the heart of United Party opposition territory. He was also to make the speech in English and live on Radio.
That radio broadcast allowed the whole of South Africa and later the world to hear the five shots fired by Koos Botha from his police service revolver.
Three of the .38 rounds hit the Prime Minister full in the chest. The second two were delivered at close range to the head, ensuring that Verwoerd would make no recovery this time.
With Johannes Bathazaar Vorster as new leader of his party, the Nationalists were comfortably elected with an increased majority. Vorster's premiership was characterised by a renewed crackdown on any hint of anti-apartheid activity and an increasing consolidation of the apparatus of the police state, while presenting a clumsy pretence of friendship to African countries. The progress of the National homelands towards Independence was put on hold and South Africa's financial muscle directed towards self-sufficiency and the development of a military economy.
Koos Botha, like Pratt and Tsafendas before him was declared insane and detained at the Sterkfontein Mental Institution at the State President's pleasure.
For all of his failings Verwoerd was an intellectual, something that no subsequent South African leader can claim. He turned down a scholarship to Oxford but studied in Germany, Britain and America. As an academic, he was a serious psychologist and sociologist. His concept of Grand Apartheid grew from the contemporary American concept (in the 1920s) of 'Separate, but Equal' and not from racism for racism's sake. However he was no democrat and more than once stated publicly that the 'Nationalists would never surrender power, whatever means were neccessary'
Verwoerd was the architect of the Homelands Policy, which in his concept, required massive amounts of investment in industry and infrastructure to make them viable.
Vorster was a two-bit thug. A Flat-Earther and ex-Nazi who was originally considered too right-wing to be considered either a Nat or an Afrikaaner Party MP. He was a leading member of the Broederbond, together with his brother who became head of the Dutch Reformed Church. The man was not only a crashing Boer, but also a crashing boor and bore. He was also a creature of Hendrik van der Burgh, head of the security police and South Africa's very own Himmler. It was Vorster and van den Burgh that created the Security State in the early 1960s as much as a measure to crush White (English and non-Nat Afrikaans) political opposition as Black Nationalism.
If one wants to look for a conspiracy, Vorster, as Minister for Justice (how's that for an Oxymoron) was the undisputed leader of the Nationalist right wing (Verkramptes). The right wing had an issue with the large government expenditure on non-Whites caused by investment in the Homelands and Separate Development Policies, Verwoerd's assassination effectively slowed the Homeland development and severely restricted investment--in fact, the planned scale of transfer of industry to the Homelands never happened and 'Independence' for the Homelands only commenced in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Neither Pratt nor Tsafendas were ever available for interrogation and teh Attorney General who suspected an assassination plot mysteriously died in a car crash.