De Klerk legacy ‘uneven’ says Mandela Foundation
FW de Klerk, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela and as South Africa’s last apartheid president oversaw the end of the country’s white minority rule, has died at the age of 85.
Mr de Klerk, who had been diagnosed with cancer, died at his home in the Fresnaye area of Cape Town.
Mr de Klerk was a controversial figure in South Africa where many blamed him for violence against Black South Africans and anti-apartheid activists during his time in power, while some white people saw his efforts to end apartheid as a betrayal.
“De Klerk’s legacy is a big one. It is also an uneven one, something South Africans are called to reckon with in this moment,” the Mandela Foundation said.
Retired Anglican archbishop Desmond Tutu, another towering antiapartheid activist, issued a similarly guarded statement about Mr de Klerk’s death.
Mr de Klerk “played an important role in South Africa’s history ... he recognised the moment for change and demonstrated the will to act on it”, Mr Tutu’s foundation said.
But Mr de Klerk tried to avoid responsibility for the enormity of the abuses of apartheid, including in his testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was chaired by Mr Tutu. At that time, the retired archbishop expressed disappointment that Mr de Klerk did not fully apologise for the evils of apartheid, the statement noted.
It was Mr de Klerk who in a speech to South Africa’s parliament on February 2 1990, announced that Mr Mandela would be released from prison after 27 years.
The announcement electrified a country that for decades had been scorned and sanctioned by much of the world for its brutal system of racial discrimination known as apartheid.
With South Africa’s isolation deepening and its once-solid economy deteriorating, Mr de Klerk - who had been elected president five months earlier - also announced in the same speech the lifting of the ban on the African National Congress and other anti-apartheid political groups.
Amid gasps, several members of parliament left the chamber as he spoke.
Nine days later, Mr Mandela walked free.
Four years after that, Mr Mandela was elected as the country’s first black president as black South Africans voted for the first time.
By then, Mr de Klerk and Mr Mandela had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 for their often tense co-operation in moving South Africa away from institutionalised racism and towards democracy.
Talking to reporters after his speech to parliament, Mr de Klerk said the country would be “a new South Africa”. But Mr Mandela’s release was just the beginning of intense political negotiations about the way forward, with power shifting, a new constitution written and ways of life upended.
As Mr de Klerk said in his Nobel lecture in December 1993, more than 3,000 people died in political violence in South Africa that year alone. As he reminded his Nobel audience, he and fellow laureate Mr Mandela remained political opponents, but that they would move forward “because there is no other road to peace and prosperity for the people of our country”.
After Mr Mandela became president, Mr de Klerk served as deputy president until 1996, when his party withdrew from the Cabinet.
Mr de Klerk is survived by his wife, Elita, and two children.