Henry Fagan
South African journalist and writer · South Africa · On the map · Journalists · Lived 1889 to 1963 · aged 74
Henry Allan Fagan, QC was the Chief Justice of South Africa from 1957 to 1959 and previously a Member of Parliament and the Minister of Native Affairs in J. B. M. Hertzog's government. Fagan had been an early supporter of the Afrikaans language movement and a noted Afrikaans playwright and novelist.
Henry Fagan is read about 11 times a day, in 5 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 8 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 74 days, one point a day.
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Photos 7
D. F. Malan (left) and J. B. M. Hertzog, 1919. Fagan was a close early colleague of Malan's at Die Burger, but remained loyal to Hertzog when he broke with Malan, and came to be an important opponent of Malan and his successors.
Jan Smuts, whose United Party Fagan joined after some hesitation and left after Smuts led South Africa into World War II.
Smuts nevertheless appointed Fagan as a judge in 1943 and head of the pivotal Native Laws Commission in 1946.
Hendrik Verwoerd, who lashed out at the report of the Fagan Commission, and whose hard-line policies as Prime Minister Fagan later opposed.
The building of the Appellate Division (now Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa) in Bloemfontein, where Fagan sat as a judge from 1950 to 1959.
Portrait of Prime Minister JG Strijdom in Die Huisgenoot.
Fagan despised Strijdom's authoritarianism, but acceded in Collins v Minister of the Interior to his disenfranchisement of coloured voters and reluctantly accepted appointment by him as Chief Justice.
CR Swart, who as Minister of Justice controversially appointed Fagan as Chief Justice, and who later defeated him in a Senate election in 1961 to become South Africa's first State President.About this person
Though he was a significant figure in the rise of Afrikaner nationalism and a long-term member of the Broederbond, he later became an important opponent of Hendrik Verwoerd's National Party and is best known for the report of the Fagan Commission, whose relatively liberal approach to racial integration amounted to the Smuts government's last, doomed stand against the policy of apartheid.
