David Pratt (assassin)

David Beresford Pratt (1 October 1908 – 1 October 1961) was a British-South African businessman, farmer, and anti-apartheid activist. He was a wealthy liberal who was deeply upset over black poverty and racial segregation and spoke out against apartheid. Outraged by the Sharpeville massacre, Pratt tried to assassinate South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, shooting him twice. Verwoerd survived, but was killed six years later by Dimitri Tsafendas.

Life

Pratt was a farmer and wealthy businessman of British descent. He studied at Gonville and Caius College University of Cambridge, England, where he studied Economics (part I) and Law (part II), graduating in 1931 with a third class honours degree. Pratt suffered from epilepsy from an early age and evidence suggests that he was a loner at school. He was married twice. There is evidence that he suffered from his first serious bout of depression in 1946 after his divorce from Mary Hatrick. His second marriage was to Patty van Heijningen. In 1954, shortly after the birth of their first child, Pratt claimed to have received a message which he should convey to South Africa. He was boarded and diagnosed as suffering from "grandiose delusions of the political saviour type".

Pratt was almost constantly in psychiatric treatment. His Dutch wife feared for her safety because he threatened her. In the beginning of 1958 she left him and returned to The Hague, taking their two children with her. He followed her with a gun in his pocket but was apprehended at Amsterdam Airport. His condition worsened and he became manic. His neurologist, Dr Chesler, urged his sister to have a ''curator bonis'' (legal guardian) appointed for him because he could no longer manage his affairs properly. He desperately tried to win his wife back. When that failed, he attempted to kidnap his daughter during a ski holiday. As he became more desperate about his marital problems, Pratt tried to commit suicide on three occasions.

Pratt was deeply upset by the racial injustices of apartheid in South Africa. He was concerned with poverty among black South Africans and built a school and houses on his farm for black workers and their children. Pratt was a member of the South African and British Liberal parties and was active in the British anti-apartheid movement. At meetings of the Liberal Party of South Africa, he spoke openly against apartheid. Pratt's distress over apartheid turned to rage after the South African Police slaughtered 69 black protesters, including 29 children, in the Sharpeville massacre.

Pratt later explained why he tried to kill Verwoerd:

"The feeling became very strong that someone in this country must do something about it, and it better bloody well be me, feeling as I do about it."

Assassination attempt

On 9 April 1960, Pratt shot South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd twice, at point blank range, with a .22 pistol. Verwoerd, who had been opening the Union Exposition in Milner Park, Johannesburg, was rushed to hospital, and within two months had made a complete recovery. Pratt was arrested at the scene and taken to the Marshall Square police station, and then to the Forensic Medical Laboratory. He appeared for a preliminary hearing in the Johannesburg Magistrates' Court on 20 and 21 July 1960, once it was clear that Verwoerd's injuries were not fatal.

Pratt claimed he had been shooting 'the epitome of apartheid'. The court accepted the medical reports submitted to it by five psychiatrists, all of which confirmed that Pratt lacked legal capacity and could not be held criminally liable for having shot the prime minister. On 26 September 1960, he was committed to a mental hospital in Bloemfontein.

Before and after Pratt's court hearing, friends stated that he was perfectly sane. His defence team believed the only way to ensure a lighter punishment was to plead insanity. In his court hearing Pratt declared: "South Africa has to throw off the slimy snake apartheid which is gripping its throat."

Death

Pratt died on 1 October 1961, his fifty-third birthday, and shortly before his parole was to be considered. Pratt's cause of death was asphyxiation and was ruled as a suicide. No inquest was held into his death. Doubts still remain about the circumstances of Pratt's demise as many purported suicides during apartheid were later proven to be murders by the police or security forces.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Pratt, David
1908 births
1961 deaths
Alumni of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
20th-century South African businesspeople
English anti-fascists
English emigrants to South Africa
20th-century English farmers
Failed assassins of heads of government
South African anti-fascists
South African farmers
South African people who died in prison custody
South African expatriates in the United Kingdom
People declared mentally unfit for court
People who died by suicide in prison custody
Prisoners who died in South African detention
Suicides by hanging in South Africa
White South African anti-apartheid activists