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The following lists events that happened during 1961 in South Africa.
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The following lists events that happened during 1961 in South Africa.
Lucas Cornelius Steyn becomes Officer Administering the Government under his dormant commission as a result.
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Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, also known as H. F. Verwoerd was a South African politician, a scholar of applied psychology and sociology, and chief editor of Die Transvaler newspaper. He is commonly regarded as the architect of Apartheid. Verwoerd played a significant role in socially engineering apartheid, the country's system of institutionalized racial segregation and white supremacy, and implementing its policies as Minister of Native Affairs (1950–1958) and then as prime minister (1958–1966). Furthermore, Verwoerd played a vital role in helping the far-right National Party come to power in 1948, serving as their political strategist and propagandist, becoming party leader upon his premiership. He was the Union of South Africa's last prime minister, from 1958 to 1961, when he proclaimed the founding of the Republic of South Africa, remaining its prime minister until his assassination in 1966.
The governor-general of the Union of South Africa was the highest state official in the Union of South Africa between 31 May 1910 and 31 May 1961. The Union of South Africa was founded as a self-governing Dominion of the British Empire in 1910 and the office of governor-general was established as the representative of the monarch. Fifty-one years later the country declared itself a republic and the historic link with the British monarchy was broken. The office of governor-general was abolished.
The following lists events that happened during 1983 in South Africa.
The following lists events that happened during 1967 in South Africa.
The following lists events that happened during 1966 in South Africa.
The following lists events that happened during 1964 in South Africa.
Events from the year 1962 in South Africa. This year is notable for its internal and international resistance campaigns against the country's Apartheid legislation. Umkhonto we Sizwe, the militant wing of the African National Congress, made its first sabotage attacks in 1961, and Nelson Mandela traveled to Ethiopia to rally support for Umkhonto and justify the attacks. Nelson Mandela was sentenced to jail for 5 years upon returning to South Africa for illegally leaving the country. The international sporting community also showed its displeasure with the government's laws. FIFA suspended South Africa in 1962 for fielding an exclusively-white South African national football team, forcing South African football authorities to add black players to the team. The government, in turn strengthened methods of enforcing Apartheid, and the Robben Island prison was made a political prison in 1962.
The following lists events that happened during 1960 in South Africa.
The following lists events that happened during 1959 in South Africa.
The following lists events that happened during 1978 in South Africa.
The following lists events that happened during 1980 in South Africa.
The following lists events that happened during 1981 in South Africa.
The following lists events that happened during 1982 in South Africa.
The following lists events that happened during 1963 in South Africa.
The following lists events that happened during 1965 in South Africa.
The following lists events that happened during 1969 in South Africa.
A referendum on becoming a republic was held in South Africa on 5 October 1960. The Afrikaner-dominated right-wing National Party, which had come to power in 1948, was avowedly republican and regarded the position of Queen Elizabeth II as the South African monarch as a relic of British imperialism. The National Party government subsequently organised the referendum on whether the then Union of South Africa should become a republic. The vote, which was restricted to whites—the first such national election in the union—was narrowly approved by 52.29% of the voters. The Republic of South Africa was constituted on 31 May 1961.
The following lists events that happened during 1970 in South Africa.
The 1961 South African presidential election was the first to be held in South Africa. It occurred as a result of the referendum of November 5, 1960, which ratified the transformation of the Union of South Africa into the Republic of South Africa, and the adoption of a new constitution organizing the new state's political institutions. The new constitution gave the South African Parliament the task of electing a person as State President, the position that replaced the British monarch as ceremonial head of state.
