Editing Hendrik Verwoerd (section)

== Goverment Service ==
The South African general election of 1948 was held on 26 May 1948 and saw the [[National Party (South Africa)|Nationalist Party]] together with the Afrikaner Party winning the general elections. [[Daniel François Malan]]'s Herenigde Nasionale Party (HNP) concluded an election pact with the Afrikaner Party in 1947. They won the elections with a very narrow majority of five seats in Parliament, although they only got 40 percent of the voter support. This was due to the loaded constituencies in cities, which was to the advantage of rural constituencies. The nine Afrikaner Party MPs thus made it possible for Malan's HNP to form a coalition government with the Afrikaner Party of Klasie Havenga. The two parties amalgamated in 1951 as the National Party although Havenga was not comfortable with NP policy to remove coloured voters from the common voters' roll.

Running on the platform of self-determination and apartheid as it was termed for the first time, Prime Minister Daniel Malan and his party benefited from their support in the rural electorates, defeating General Jan Christiaan Smuts and his United Party. General Smuts lost his own seat of Standerton. Most party leaders agreed that the nationalist policies were responsible for the National Party's victory. To further cement their nationalist policies, Herenigde Nasionale Party leader Daniel Malan called for stricter enforcement of job reservation protecting the rights of the White working class, and the rights of White workers to organise their own labour unions outside of company control.

Verwoerd was elected to the South African Senate later that year, and became the minister of native affairs under Prime Minister Malan in 1950, until his appointment as prime minister in 1958. In that position, he helped to implement the Nationalist Party's programme.<ref>https://archive.org/details/headsofstatesgov00lent</ref>

Among the laws which were drawn and enacted during Verwoerd's time as minister for native affairs were the Population Registration Act and the Group Areas Act in 1950, the Pass Laws Act of 1952 and the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act of 1953. Verwoerd wrote the Bantu Education Act, which was to have a deleterious effect on the ability of black South Africans to be educated as Verwoerd himself noted that the purpose of the Bantu Education Act was to ensure that blacks would have only just enough education to work as unskilled laborers (the act barred blacks from all but the most basic education and effectively relegated them to the role of unskilled labour in South Africa.<ref>https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-should-south-africa-remember-architect-apartheid-180960449/</ref>