At 2.10pm on 6 September 1966, Dimitri Tsafendas, a parliamentary messenger in South Africa’s now defunct Assembly House, crossed the parliament floor, unsheathed a dagger and plunged its blade four times into the chest of the prime minister, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd.
Thus Verwoerd, the so-called “architect of apartheid”, was brought to an abrupt and bloody end. Tragically, the despised system of separate development was to survive another three decades. But each successive prime minister – John Vorster, P W Botha and finally F W de Klerk – was forced to dismantle the edifice brick by brick.
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