Tag Archives: Hendrick Verwoerd

For Allister Sparks

In May 2015, I wrote “Apartheid: A Policy of Good Neighborliness” in defense of Allister Sparks, anti-apartheid journalist and author; and also to educate people about Hendrik Verwoerd, who was the architect of apartheid in South Africa. I was responding to an article on enca.com, that still falsely claims that Sparks “expressed his admiration”(their words, not his) for Hendrik Verwoerd in a speech. The original article included a video of his speech, which I watched several times to hear for myself what he said, but when I went to look at the article again recently, they took down the video and had edited the article.

Allister Sparks passed away on 19 September 2016, and because my post about him is the highest viewed here and people are still clicking on the link to the enca.com article, I am speaking up for him once again.

Here is a snippet from The Washington Post obituary, celebrating his courage and dedication to end apartheid. Rest in peace Allister.

[…]”Mr. Sparks wrote most recently for The Post in 2004, on the 10th anniversary of [Nelson] Mandela’s swearing-in as his country’s first black president.

“It was the most stirring moment of my life,” Mr. Sparks wrote. “For more than 40 years as a journalist in South Africa, I had written about the pain and injustices that apartheid inflicted on people. I had been harassed and threatened by a white regime that regarded me as a traitor for doing this, and here at last was a kind of vindication or triumph.

“It is a terrible thing to feel alienated from one’s own people,” he continued. “. . . I could not identify with the land of my birth because it stood for things I abhorred; I felt no sense of patriotism when I heard my national anthem or saw my national flag. But on that day in 1994, as I stood before a new flag, listening to a new anthem, watching a new president being sworn in, I felt, yes, my very first twinge of national pride.”

No to racism and white supremacy!

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Ian Smith, the last Prime Minister of Rhodesia, in this news report from 1976, says “I am not a racist”, he just has “standards” – he was only following the “standards” of the British colonists that came before him, “and if it was right then, I wonder, why it is wrong now?” I had to rewind this crazy interview several times(starting 15:35), Smith has a forked tongue, manipulating words and changing their meaning to justify the unjustifiable, stirring up violence – like the snake currently occupying the White House. His tone in defense of white minority rule reminds me of Hendrick Verwoerd, who also spoke like a very concerned and condescending parent, as if apartheid for Black Africans was a fair thing, a neighborly thing.

I do not need to ask why there is a lack of cooperation in getting information concerning the death of uncle Vlado and Dag Hammarskjold and their friends on September 17-18, 1961, I know why. For governments and organizations to open up their archives to examination of the past, that would mean an examination into present day activities, and the truth is that nothing has changed, it’s business as usual. One has to be willfully blind not to connect the dots of the past to the present, racism is real and so is white supremacy. There have been so many times it has scared the hell out of me to speak up here and stand for what is right, but I refuse to let fear silence me!

“…the press rules the minds of men.”

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From “Rhodes: the race for Africa”, by Antony Thomas(pub. St. Martin’s Press, 1996), here is a quote from Cecil Rhodes’ ‘Confession of Faith’, written at age 23; he wrote this on the same day he joined the Freemasons, which he considered a pointless Order “with no object, with no aim.”:

“The idea gleaming and dancing before ones’s eyes like a will-of-the-wisp at the last frames itself into a plan. Why should we not form a secret society with but one object, the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole uncivilized world under British rule, for the recovery of the United States, for making the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire?’

[It] would be a society not openly acknowledged but which would have its members in every part of the British Empire…placed at our universities and our schools…in every Colonial legislature. The Society should attempt to have its members prepared at all times to vote or speak and advocate the closer union of England and the colonies, to crush all disloyalty and every movement for the severance of our Empire. The Society should inspire and even own portions of the press for the press rules the minds of men.

What a dream, but yet it is probable. It is possible.”

Cecil Rhodes was a horrible racist leader who begat many racists, like Hendrick Verwoerd and Donald Trump, and all these men understand the power of the press, and that when you own the press you own the minds of men.

From Rhodes Last Will and Testament, and final edition of his ‘confession’/manifesto, he makes it very clear that it doesn’t matter what country the white person comes from, but that white rule is the only rule:

“I have considered the existence of God and decided there is an even chance that He exists. If He does exist, he must be working to a Plan. Therefore, if I am to serve God, I must find out the Plan, and do my best to assist him in it’s execution.

How to discover the Plan? First, look for the race that God has chosen to be the Divine instrument of future evolution.

Unquestionably, that is the white race. Whites have clearly come out top…in the struggle for existence and achieved the highest standard of human perfection. Within the white race, English-speaking man, whether British, American, Australian or South African, has proved himself to be the most likely instrument of the Divine Plan to spread Justice, Liberty and Peace…over the widest possible area of the planet.

Therefore, I shall devote the rest of my life to God’s purpose, and help Him to make the world English.”

Apartheid: “A Policy of Good Neighborliness”

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Here are a few videos of Dr. Hendrick Verwoerd, who has been called the “Architect of apartheid” for the policies he put into practice during his time as Minister of Native Affairs and as Prime Minister of the Republic of South Africa.

Recently, in a speech to the Democratic Alliance’s Federal Congress, Allister Sparks listed Verwoerd as one of the “really smart politicians” he had met in his 64 years as journalist in South Africa – but he also included his friend and colleague Helen Zille – an anti-apartheid activist and journalist, who put her life in danger to expose the cover-up of Steve Biko‘s death, calling her “the smartest political tactician of all.” I think the assumption by those upset with his inclusion of Verwoerd, is that they think he admires him personally, when he only called him “smart”. Verwoerd was smart, in that he knew how to manipulate public opinion for personal gain and to turn human rights backwards – when Dag Hammarskjold met with Verwoerd in January of 1961, Brian Urquhart wrote in his biography of him “He had felt that he had been speaking to Verwoerd across a gulf of three hundred years”. But to better understand why people are upset to even hear his name, you must hear Verwoerd in his own words.

“Our policy is one, which is called by an Afrikanns word “Apartheid”. And I’m afraid that has been misunderstood so often. It could just as easily, and, perhaps, much better be described as a policy of good neighborliness. Accepting that there are differences between people, and that while these differences exist, and you have to acknowledge them, at the same time you can live together, aide one another, but that can best be done when you act as good neighbors always do.”

“The Republic is the only sure and stable friend that the western nations have in Africa. We are here to stay, and we are here to aide all others in whatever they may need and can get from us. We have, for a very long time, developed in South Africa a nation of our own – friendly, prosperous, progressive. We hope that the rest of Africa will become likewise.[…] Of course there has been sensational journalism and conditioned reporting, which created the impression that there would be great difficulties ahead of us. We have no doubt at all this will pass. Certain restrictive measures had to be taken recently, mainly to insure to protection of the masses – of all races who seek peace and order. Therefore, a stable government will continue in South Africa.[…] Here the solution is sought by openly retaining the white man’s guiding hand; which elsewhere is the hidden guarantee of industrial development, and even good administration.”

In 1966, Hendrick Verwoerd was assassinated, stabbed in the chest and neck while at his desk in Parliament, but it wasn’t the first attempt made on his life. Six years earlier, at the Johannesburg agricultural show, he was shot in the head twice. This video shows that earlier attempt.

*Update found here.