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Today, 50 years ago, SA Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd was stabbed dead

───   13:19 Tue, 06 Sep 2016

Today, 50 years ago, SA Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd was stabbed dead | News Article
Dr H.F. Verwoerd, the leader of the Nationalist Party and Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 to 1966./Photo: Gallo

Parliamentarian Service Officer, Dimitri Tsafendas, stabbed the architect of apartheid, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd to death on 6 September 1966.


Verwoed was sitting at his desk in the House of Assembly when Tsafendas attacked him with a knife.

During his trial, Tsafendas claimed a giant tapeworm inside of him had instructed him to kill the Prime Minister.

He escaped the death sentence after being declared insane by state psychiatrists.


He was sentenced to solitary confinement at the Pretoria Central Prison and he was transferred to Sterkfontein psychiatric hospital outside in 1994. He died at the age of 81 in 1999.

Source: South African History Online

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