THEAPARTHEIDERA.
from R 4,434 million in 1950 to R 15,474 million in 1979. 3 The Whites
were the principal beneficiaries. White farmers, most of whom were Af-
rikaners, received massive state support. They mechanized their farms and
trebled their output, while the government assisted them to obtain and
keep black wage laborers and to eliminate the vestigesof black occupation
of white land as sharecroppers or renters.
The Nationalist government also gavefierce expression to its determina-
tion to maintain white supremacy in postwar South Africa. Much of its
early legislation coordinated and extended the racial laws of the segrega-
tion era and tightened up the administration of those laws. The term
apartheid,however, soon developed from a political slogan into a drastic,
systematic program of social engineering. The man largely responsible for
that development was Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd.
Verwoerd was born in the Netherlands in 1901 and migrated to South
Africa in 19°3 with his pro-Boer Dutch parents. Brought up in Cape Town,
Southern Rhodesia, and the Orange Free State, he identified passionately
with the Afrikaners. In private life he was charming; in public affairs,
dogmatic, intolerant, domineering, and xenophobic. After acquiring a