John Vorster

John Vorster (born Dec. 13, 1915, Jamestown, Union of South Africa—died Sept. 10, 1983, Cape Town) was a far-right Nationalist politician who served as prime minister (1966–78) and president (1978–79) of South Africa. He was forced to resign from the presidency because of a political scandal.

Vorster was the 13th child of a wealthy Afrikaner sheep farmer. He studied at the University of Stellenbosch, where he gained attention as a Nationalist student leader. In 1938 Vorster left the university to act as registrar to the judge-president at the Cape, and the next year he practiced law at Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha). During World War II (1939–45), Vorster helped to found the anti-British Ossewa Brandwag (Ox-Wagon Guard) and became a “general” in its extremist wing. Vorster expressed his contempt for the democracies and respect for Germany and was arrested for undermining the war effort in 1942. He was released after 14 months and allowed to resume his legal practice.

Vorster tried to enter politics after the war but was at first rejected by the National Party. He was narrowly defeated in the 1948 parliamentary election. By 1953, however, he was accepted by the party and was a successful candidate from the Nigel constituency in the Transvaal. As a leading member of the National Party’s right wing, Vorster helped to bring to power Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, who became prime minister in 1958. Vorster, in turn, was appointed deputy minister of education, arts and science, and social welfare in October. He soon gained a reputation for rigid enforcement of apartheid policies. When Verwoerd decided that a firmer hand was needed after the Sharpeville massacre (1960), Vorster was made minister of justice, police, and prisons in 1961. With expanded legal authority, Vorster vigorously suppressed and harassed opponents of his government’s racial policies.

One week after Verwoerd was assassinated (September 1966), a National Party caucus chose Vorster as his successor. He had rivals for the office, but none could match the support he received from the combined forces of the party’s strong right wing, the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk (Dutch Reformed Church), and the influential Broederbond, a secret Afrikaner society. Despite his vow to uphold apartheid, his program was, in practice, more liberal than his predecessor’s. He did much to remove hated symbols of the separatist policy and some of the grosser practices of racial discrimination. He was quick to understand the change of power in Southern Africa after the collapse of the Portuguese colonial empire in 1974 and offered cooperation with neighbouring black African leaders in trying to achieve a peaceful settlement of the continuing crises in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South West Africa (now Namibia). This advantage was lost, however, when he sent South African forces into Angola in an unsuccessful effort to oppose Soviet and Cuban support for the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). He worked with U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to persuade Ian Smith of Rhodesia to share power with black leaders, while he remained adamantly opposed to any such future for South Africa.

In September 1978 Vorster resigned his post for health reasons and on October 10 became his nation’s president, a largely ceremonial position. In November the so-called Muldergate scandal (involving misappropriation of huge sums of government money and abuse of the parliamentary system), which had been simmering for months, came to a boil. Continuing revelations in the scandal shook the country and the National Party. On June 4, 1979, after an investigating commission reported that Vorster had known all about the misuse of funds and had helped to conceal the abuse, he resigned the presidency.