Hendrik Fredresch Verwoerd, psychologist, sociologist, journalist, statesman and the architect of apartheid, was born in Amsterdam on 8 September 1901. He was, as he bluntly admitted in 1947, 'an extreme Afrikaner'.
In 1925, he obtained a doctorate at Stellenbosch University and then went to America and Europe, where he did post-graduate studies at a number of universities, including Hamburg and Berlin. In 1928, he returned to South Africa and was appointed Professor of Applied Psychology and Sociology at Stellenbosch University.
In 1936, he joined a deputation of six professors in protesting against the admission to South Africa of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. From that year on, Dr Verwoerd was destined to be surrounded by controversy.
In 1937, he became the first editor of Die Transvaler, the National Party newspaper in Johannesburg. Under his editorship, Die Transvaler became an extremist organ, strenuously voicing its opposition to the Hertzog-Smuts alliance and to South Africa's involvement in World War II. A Supreme Court judgment against Verwoerd would later hold that Die Transvaler made a tool of the Nazis in South Africa; and he knew it.
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