The Crying Book

by Heather Christle

in 1966, the year Dimitri Tsafendas assassinated Hendrik Verwoerd, the “architect of Apartheid.”170 Verwoerd was largely responsible for laws that forced black South Africans to live in government-designated “homelands,” and which forbade black students from attending “white universities.” Before his career as a politician, Verwoerd had worked as a psychologist. In 1926 he published an article, “A Method for the Experimental Production of Emotions.” His method did not produce tears, but it did produce satisfaction, disappointment, compassion, regret, exaltation, delight, fear, relief, shame, embarrassment, relief, malicious joy, anger (and vexation).171 Tsafendas—a multiracial, schizophrenic man who was not allowed to live with his girlfriend because of the country’s bewilderingly complicated system of racist classifications—stabbed Verwoerd in the throat and chest. Tsafendas is buried in an unmarked grave in Krugersdorp. Verwoerd is buried in Pretoria, in the “Heroes’ Acre.”