De Klerk, Mandela’s partner in ending apartheid, dies
Frederik Willem de Klerk, the former South African president who negotiated the end of apartheid with Nelson Mandela after spending years upholding the system of white minority rule, has died. He was 85.
De Klerk died at his home in Cape Town on Thursday after having been diagnosed with lung cancer in March 2021.
After taking power in 1989, De Klerk removed a ban on the pro-democracy African National Congress, released Mandela from jail and managed the nation’s first all-race elections in 1994. He and Mandela were awarded the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for securing a smooth transition to democracy.
Born in Johannesburg on March 18, 1936, De Klerk worked as a lawyer until 1972, when he became a lawmaker for the pro-segregation National Party. Six years later, Prime Minister John Voster appointed De Klerk as minister of post and telecommunications, the first of several Cabinet positions he held. As education minister, he pushed for racial segregation in universities.
De Klerk came to power in 1989 after President Pieter Willem Botha suffered a stroke and the party leadership deemed him no longer fit to govern.
After negotiating an end to white minority rule, De Klerk gave a qualified apology for apartheid, admitting it was unjust and oppressive.
“Like any other people in the world at any time in history, we were the products of our time and circumstances,” he wrote in his 1999 autobiography “The Last Trek, a New Beginning.”
After the 1994 elections, the National Party joined Mandela’s government, and De Klerk became the nation’s second deputy president.
While De Klerk was well regarded abroad, many of his Black countrymen felt he didn’t take adequate responsibility for atrocities committed under his watch.
De Klerk had three children.