Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid, is stabbed to death in Cape Town, South Africa during a parliamentary meeting.

The prime minister of South Africa was the head of government in South Africa between 1910 and 1984.

Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, also known as H. F. Verwoerd, was a Dutch-born South African politician, academic, and newspaper editor who served as Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until his assassination in 1966.

Apartheid was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an authoritarian political culture based on baasskap, which ensured that South Africa was dominated politically, socially, and economically by the nation's minority white population. Under this minoritarian system, white citizens held the highest status, followed by Indians, Coloureds and black Africans, in that order. The economic legacy and social effects of apartheid continue to the present day, particularly inequality.

Cape Town is the legislative capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's second-largest city by population, after Johannesburg, and the largest city in the Western Cape. The city is part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality.