Melanie Verwoerd (Afrikaans: [fərˈvuːrt]; née Fourie; born 18 April 1967) is a South African and Irish political analyst and diplomat.

Like most Afrikaners, her family's rise to middle class status was only recent as she recalled: "My grandparents were farmers, working a subsistence farm about the size of a small Irish one; they had a few cows, pigs and vegetables.

She was a typically strong, but tiny, Afrikaner woman -- absolutely fearless, very aware of her Trekker history in South Africa.

Her fiancé, Wilhelm Verwoerd, was a Rhodes scholar, and she credited her time living in the Netherlands for three months prior to moving to Oxford in 1986 as changing her views.

[11] In late 1986, she met a group of South African emigres in London who "...told us about a country that I did not know of and I will be forever thankful for that".

Like Roman Catholicism, the Dutch Reformed Church [one of the supporting blocks of apartheid] was vehemently opposed to women clergy.

[21] Irish journalist Catherine Cleary wrote in 2005: "In the early 1990s the Verwoerds, whose story has a film-script flavour, were the poster boy and girl of South Africa's journey from apartheid to democracy.

But when the press leaked the fact that there was a Verwoerd in the ANC camp, all hell broke loose...I lost every single friend I had.

She took part in fact-finding missions, travelling to various locations including The Netherlands, UK, Sweden, Cuba, Chile, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, and the US.

[4] About the South African wine industry concentrated in the Cape province, she wrote in 2014: "Behind the high dam walls or trees, there were literally thousands of labourers leading a meagre existence in grim shacks and hovels, secluded from the outside world.

These labourers were the invisible machine that pumped out the gallons of wine destined for the tables of the privileged people of South Africa and Europe".

[28] As an MP, she wrote that she had: "...immediately discovered a secret world of abuse, exploitation, and squalor that was horrifying even by the standards of apartheid-era South Africa.

[28] As part of her investigation into the wine industry, Verwoerd had to don disguises when she went out to the countryside at night to avoid the angry farmers who did not welcome her activities.

My constituency office close to the Du Toit station [in Stellenbosch] increasingly saw rows of workers waiting patiently outside to see me.

[32] She took heart from a speaking at an ANC rally in 1999 at a poor black township in Northern Cape province where she apologized for the fact that the ANC government had failed to provide modern houses, running water and electricity for the people in the townships as it had promised in the 1994 election, only for an elderly black man to raise up and say: "You know, I've waited fifty years of my life, and it's the first time that I've seen a member of parliament.

[4] Wilhelm Verwoerd Jr. had been involved in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, which led him to become interested in a similar project for Northern Ireland.

[34] On 20 March 2001, Verwoerd arrived at the Áras an Uachtaráin to present her credentials as the ambassador of South Africa to Ireland to President Mary McAleese.

[34] In late 2001, Verwoerd was one of the founders of the Africa Solidarity Center in Dublin intended to break down prejudices against African refugees in Ireland.

As part of her duties, she introduced him to a host of Irish celebrities such as Bono and the rest of the U-2 band, the businessman Tony O'Reilly and the actor Pierce Brosnan, the latter of whom Mandela was unaware of when Verwoerd arranged the meeting.

[40] Initially, the approach at Spectrum when it debuted in June 2005 was "celebratory", as the producer Aonghus McAnally described it, but starting in its second season in September 2005 the show became more "issue-driven".

[42] Other guests in the first season included leaders of the Muslim and Jewish communities in Ireland, who discussed what it felt like to be members of non-Christian groups in a society that until recently had dominated overwhelmingly by the values of the Catholic church.

Reflecting the turn to the "issue-driven" approach was a show aired on 18 November 2005 that featured representatives of Pavee Point, the main organisation for the Irish Travellers.

Verwoerd stated in an interview: "But our remit has changed slightly in that are now asking more, not so much what is lacking as it comes up, but what is the society that we want to create in Ireland".

[43] On 9 October 2005, Spectrum aired a show from Waterford about the case of Osagie Igbinedion, a Nigerian immigrant who in 2003 performed a botched circumcision on an infant boy who bled to death.

[6] During her tenure she travelled extensively to UNICEF field offices, including Mozambique, Rwanda, Kenya, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe.

[52] In a 2012 interview on BBC Radio 4 with Jane Garvey, Verwoerd noted that divorce only become legal in Ireland in the 1990s, and said "there is a big discomfort and I believe a difficulty in dealing with the second partner and we were the first high-profile couple that this had happened to... [I was] the other woman.

About the coverage of Ryan's death, largely based on what Verwoerd said were "minute traces" of cocaine in his blood, she stated: "frankly, the media destroyed him and his reputation.

[53] In July 2011, the Board of UNICEF Ireland dismissed Verwoerd, citing the media attention and its handling following the death of Ryan as the reason, and offering a substantial ex-gratia payment.

Horn stated about Verwoerd: "She was very well qualified and as well as her personal attributes and excellent character, she was from the developing world and that made her even more attractive".

[56] UNICEF Ireland settled the case out of court in April 2013 and issued a statement stating that "her departure was in no way a reflection of her performance, which was always of the highest standards.