South Africa’s last apartheid president, F.W. de Klerk, dies
F.W. 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 aged 85.
Frederik Willem de Klerk died after a battle against cancer at his home in Cape Town, a spokesman confirmed Thursday.
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 South Africans 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 of his death.
Retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu issued a guarded statement saying De Klerk “played an important role in South Africa’s history … he recognized the moment for change and demonstrated the will to act on it.”
However, de Klerk tried to avoid responsibility for the abuses of apartheid.
Even posthumously, de Klerk sought to address this criticism in a video message in which he said he was sorry for his role in apartheid. His foundation released the video after announcing his death.
“Let me today, in the last message repeat: I, without qualification, apologize for the pain and the hurt, and the indignity, and the damage, to Black, brown and Indians in South Africa,” said de Klerk.
He said his view of apartheid had changed since the early 1980s.
“It was as if I had a conversion. And in my heart of hearts, I realized that apartheid was wrong. I realized that we have arrived at a place which was morally unjustifiable.”
It was de Klerk who in a speech to South Africa’s parliament on Feb. 2, 1990, announced that Mandela would be released from prison after 27 years.
With South Africa’s isolation deepening and its once-solid economy deteriorating, de Klerk, who had been elected president just five months earlier, also announced in the same speech the lifting of a ban on the African National Congress and other anti-apartheid political groups.
Nine days later, Mandela walked free.
Four years after that, Mandela was elected the country’s first Black president as Black South Africans voted for the first time. By then, de Klerk and Mandela had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 for their often-tense cooperation in moving South Africa away from institutionalized racism and toward democracy. The toll of the transition was high.
As de Klerk said in his Nobel lecture in December 1993, more than 3,000 died in political violence in South Africa that year alone. As he reminded his Nobel audience, he and fellow laureate Mandela remained political opponents, with strong disagreements. But they would move forward “because there is no other road to peace and prosperity for the people of our country.”
After Mandela became president, de Klerk served as deputy president until 1996, when his party withdrew from the Cabinet.
Later in life, de Klerk said there was no longer any animosity between him and Mandela and that they were friends. De Klerk remained a target of anger for some white South Africans who saw his actions as a betrayal. Though he publicly apologized for the pain and humiliation that apartheid caused, he was never cheered and embraced as an icon, as Mandela was.
F.W. de Klerk was born in Johannesburg in 1936. He earned a law degree and practiced law before turning to politics and being elected to parliament. In 1978, he was appointed to the first of a series of ministerial posts. In February 1989, de Klerk was elected the National Party leader. He was elected president in September of that year.
After leaving office, de Klerk ran a foundation that promoted his presidential heritage, and he spoke out in concern about white Afrikaaner culture and language.
His leadership of the apartheid regime dogged de Klerk throughout his life. His assertion in 2020 that apartheid was not a crime against humanity stirred up a furor in South Africa.
Later de Klerk said he accepted that apartheid was a crime against humanity and apologized.
De Klerk is survived by his wife, Elita, and two children.