Johannesburg - Betsie Verwoerd, the widow of the former South African prime minister, Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid, died in the whites-only town of Orania yesterday, her family said. She was 98. In 1995 she was visited at her home by President Nelson Mandela in a gesture of reconciliation.
Her husband ruled South Africa during the darkest years of apartheid, and remains the country's most hated leader for institutionalising racial discrimination against blacks. He was stabbed to death by a deranged parliamentary messenger in 1966.