An Unwitting Assassin: The Story of My Father's Attempted Assassination of Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd

PREFACE

Years ago I thought I should perhaps write down what happened after my father shot South Africa’s Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd at the Agricultural Show in Milner Park, commonly known as the Rand Show, in Johannesburg in 1960.

My mother had died quite young so I decided to discuss the idea with her best friend Marion Smart. She was horrified at the idea and said so in no uncertain terms: You don’t really want to go and rake up all that misery again, do you? I think it’s best forgotten.

I listened to what she said and as I myself had no real urge to drag up all those old memories I gave it no further thought until years later. My conversation with Marion took place during one of my annual visits to South Africa from England where I had gone to live in 1974. I was fortunate enough to be able to accompany my second husband Dick Cazenove when he visited South Africa on business each year.

When my first marriage ended in divorce I returned to Johannesburg from America with my two small daughters. There I met Dick who had been sent by his insurance company in England to work in Johannesburg. We married in 1973. In 1993 Henrietta Loyd and I, having worked for five years with Hartley Safaris, opened the doors of Cazenove and Loyd Safaris which launched us into a world full of the joy and excitement of running our own business.

In my role as a tour operator I visited Fugitive’s Drift Lodge in KwaZulu-Natal. It was owned by David and Nicky Rattray, and I had heard many good things about the experience that David offered with his tours of the battlefields at Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift where fierce conflicts took place during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879.

I arrived at the lodge on a Tuesday afternoon in May 1994 and found that I was on my own as no other guests were booked in. In their early days the Rattrays were always very busy at the weekends but seldom had guests during the week. I was met by David’s wife Nicky who told me he was resting as he was very tired after an extremely busy weekend. However, I would meet him at dinner and in the meanwhile would I like a cup of tea and then a walk up the hill?

Surprisingly, David appeared just as we were setting off and led the walk up the hill at a fair pace with me trotting behind. It was quite a silent, steady walk until I asked him about the trees we were passing. What were they? They reminded me of trees that grow in the Magaliesberg area west of Johannesburg. He came to an abrupt halt and turned around. He was under the impression that I was English and so he asked me how I knew the Magaliesberg. Well, I told him, my father had a farm there.

Who is your father? he asked.

He was David Pratt, I replied.

He was clearly astounded by my reply and walked quietly by my side all the way up to the big flat rock at the top of the hill with a view over ‘a thousand miles of Zululand’.

As we sat on that rock he told me that his father, who was a solicitor based in Pretoria, had a young Afrikaans articled clerk from Bloemfontein in his law firm. In order to earn the money to pay for law school he had worked at The Fort in Bloemfontein, a prison for the criminally insane, which was where my father had been sent for the attempted assassination of the prime minister, Dr Verwoerd. David remembered this young lawyer talking about my father when he came for Sunday lunch with his family, telling them how strange he thought it was that David Pratt had been sent to that place when he was completely competent and sane.

David asked me if I would tell him my story. I laughed, but said maybe. Actually I rarely spoke about it and was not sure I could remember it all properly, having locked it in the back of my brain for such a long time.

I spent the whole of the next day with David on a private tour of Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift.

We sat on a rocky ledge on the hillside at Isandlwana facing the battlefield and while he spoke of the gruesome battle between the Zulu warriors and the British infantry, an agitated tiny bird flew back and forth in front of us. We discovered that the cause of her anxiety was her nest of pale blue eggs beneath the ledge we were sitting on and so we moved away a few feet.

I was bowled over by the beauty and magnificence of the land and the horror of the tales that David so superbly brought to life. After visiting the Mangeni Falls, to which Lord Chelmsford had ridden when searching for the Zulu army after receiving information that it was in the south west, we delivered a box of home-grown vegetables to a very old woman who had filled David’s head with numerous legends of the Zulu battles. Then we headed back home in his truck.

Suddenly I said that I would tell him my story if he really wanted to hear it. When I started talking to him everything just poured out – I had never before told the whole story in such detail to anyone. David was not only an incredible storyteller; he was a great listener too. He made me promise I would write the story and every time I saw him after that he asked me when I was going to start.

When my book Legendary Safari Guides was published in 2005 David Rattray spoke at the book launch in Durban. My husband Dick filmed the event and the speeches. On 26 January 2007 David was tragically murdered in his house at Fugitive’s Drift. I didn’t watch the video for many years after his death but, when I did, there on film is David ending his talk by looking me in the eye and saying: You promised me you would write your other story, don’t ever forget that we have a pact, you and me.

And so I have done my best to remember as much as possible; almost everyone who was involved is now dead, so these are mostly my memories. In fact, David said it should be a ‘Father and Daughter’ story. My children have been pushing me to do this; after all it is a story that will help them to understand a short but sad and dramatic episode in their mother’s life.

David Rattray and I formed a special bond on that first day I spent with him and I feel it’s important to say this, as I don’t think I would ever have written this book if I had not met him. He is the person who hopefully would have written a Foreword for me if he was still with us today.

David Rattray’s death was a tragic loss for his family, South Africa and, indeed, the world. David’s knowledge and understanding of the Zulu people and the British soldiers who fought against them was exceptional, and even more so was his ability to convey the history to his enraptured audiences. He and his wife Nicky entertained more than 60,000 visitors at the Fugitive’s Drift Lodge, including royalty, generals and field marshals. He touched thousands of lives and gave hope and encouragement wherever he went. His passion for South Africa, the people and the land was legendary and his recurring theme was reconciliation.

With Nicky’s courage and determination, Fugitive’s Drift remains a popular destination for visitors to the KwaZulu-Natal Battlefields. Rob Caskie, who was an excellent lecturer and had David’s trust, stayed on for four years until 2011, when Nicky’s eldest son, Andrew, took over the reins and a few years later was joined by Douglas, her second son. The lodge was rebuilt and magnificently refurbished in 2017.

I

BACK IN THE MISTS OF TIME

The raucous wail of sirens pierced the quiet Saturday afternoon, making me drop my book and rush outside to see what drama was taking place. A fleet of cars, their sirens screaming, roared along Oxford Road two hundred yards from our house. Esther, our cook, also ran outside to see what was happening. We both stood on the lawn wondering what on earth it was because sirens were rarely heard near our home. Esther said she thought it must be the ‘big bosses’ from Pretoria going home from the Show.

It was 9 April 1960, a clear sunny afternoon, and Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, South Africa’s prime minister, was attending the opening ceremony of the annual Rand Easter Show. Held every year in Johannesburg since 1907, it was the most important agricultural and industrial showcase in South Africa.

Esther and I went back inside; the commotion was over. But within half an hour our telephone started ringing non-stop. All the calls were for my stepfather Gordon Cumming who was out playing golf. A little later Victor Cowles, a friend of my mother and Gordie’s, hurried up the path to the front door and insisted on taking my mother out for a drive, saying he needed to speak to her.

Gordie was part of a group of young men who had fought with the South African Air Force during World War II, and Victor Cowles was one of them, along with Gordie’s twin brother Bruce, and Cecil Margo who features later in the book. Clearly, they all had a very strong bond. Victor and his wife Helen were at the Rand Show, sitting in the members’ stand about 20 yards below the President’s Box, when Verwoerd was shot, and Victor saw my father. Victor started running to the door, shouting to Helen that they had to immediately tell Gordie what had happened. Helen tried to stop him, saying perhaps he had the wrong person; that one didn’t want to be involved in this sort of thing in case one was mistaken. Victor wouldn’t listen; he knew he was right. They ran like the wind from the stand to the car park, as he was adamant that they should get to the house before the press.

Esther and I were left behind to field the telephone calls. Gordie was a lawyer, one with a most sympathetic ear who always offered wise counsel, which meant we were used to the comings and goings of people in trouble, as many came to our house with their problems. However, this time it was not to be the problems of others that the fuss was about, but ours.

Helen remained in the car while Victor spoke to my mother. Helen was quickly aware that cars were arriving and parking further down the road, which she was sure was the press. They did not come to our house until after the next day.

Someone had managed to get a message to Gordie who had cut his golf game short and returned home. Mummy was back from her ‘drive’ and after a brief discussion behind closed doors they called me into the drawing room. They told me to sit down as they needed to talk to me. My heart sank with fear, it sounded so ominous.

Darling, Gordie said, there is no easy way to tell you this. It’s about your father. He has just shot Verwoerd in the President’s Box at the Show.

I stared at him in shock.

Oh my God, I said. Is he dead?

No. The bullet went through his cheek and lodged in his neck. He has had a miraculous escape and is in hospital. His voice was compassionate but he sounded worried. I slumped back in my chair, horrified and feeling so deeply and desperately sad for Daddy.

We learned later that Verwoerd had made a speech prior to viewing the prize-winning cattle in the arena, which concluded with the following words uttered in his high-pitched voice: We shall become nobody’s corpse, we shall fight for our existence and we shall survive.¹

He turned from the prize bull he had been admiring and made his way up to the President’s Box to sit and watch the animals parade around the arena. Within moments of his arriving in the box my father got up from his seat nearby and, with no warning, walked up and shot Verwoerd on the right side of his face.

Pandemonium erupted. Security men grabbed Daddy and hustled him down the stand into the nearest police car. Blood was pouring down Verwoerd’s face, but he was alive. A stretcher was rushed up the steps above the heads of the bewildered crowds who were surging around the stands, pushing and shoving, trying to see what had happened. Within moments the stretcher rapidly descended carrying Verwoerd wrapped in a blanket, again above the heads of the crowd, to a waiting estate car. A crowd of Verwoerd’s Afrikaans supporters swarmed around the vehicle in front of the Members’ Pavilion, shouting angrily and aggressively at the English-speaking Rand Show membership.

Immediately after the shooting the President of the Rand Show announced over the loudspeaker system that Dr Verwoerd had been shot and wounded and was on the way to hospital. He said that everyone should leave as the Show would now be closed for the day.

The car had raced to a hospital in Pretoria with a cavalcade of escort vehicles, their sirens screaming all the way there. The route to Pretoria took them down Oxford Road, just moments away from our house.

Daddy, whose driver had taken him from his farm Maloney’s Eye in the Magaliesberg on a day trip to the Rand Show with his farm manager and two teenage boys (sons of a friend and neighbour of his), was now being held at Marshall Square Police Station in the heart of downtown Johannesburg.

None of us could understand why he had done such a thing.