biography
| name: |
Vorster, John
|
| |
originally Balthazar Johannes Vorster
|
pronunciation:
[faw(r)ster]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1915–83)
|
| biography:
| South African statesman, prime minister (1966–78), and president (1978–9), born in Jamestown, SC South Africa. He studied at Stellenbosch, became a lawyer, and joined an extreme Afrikaner movement. In 1953 he became a Nationalist MP, and was minister of justice under Verwoerd (1961), whom he succeeded, maintaining the policy of apartheid. In 1978, after a scandal over the misappropriation of government funds, he resigned for health reasons, and was elected president, but stood down from this position nine months later when an investigating Commission found him jointly responsible. |
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