Hertzog, << HEHRT sawk >> James Barry Munnik (1866-1942), served as South Africa’s prime minister from 1924 to 1939. Under his leadership, the country’s Parliament passed laws that became part of the foundation of apartheid, the policy of racial segregation adopted by the government in 1948.
Hertzog was born on April 3, 1866, in the Cape Colony, into a Boer family. Now known as Afrikaners, Boers were whites whose ancestors came mainly from the Netherlands, Germany, and France. They spoke Afrikaans, a language related to Dutch. Many other white South Africans were of British descent. Hertzog fought the British in South Africa as a general in the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. In 1914, he founded the National Party to fight for Boers’ rights. During his prime ministership, Parliament made Afrikaans one of South Africa’s official languages, in addition to English. It also reserved many jobs for whites, helped exclude blacks from ownership of nearly 90 percent of South Africa’s land, and prohibited blacks from directly participating in the government. Hertzog died on Nov. 21, 1942.
See also Anglo-Boer Wars ; Malan, Daniel Francois ; National Party ; South Africa, History of (The rise of Afrikaner nationalism) .
