South Africa’s last apartheid president
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 the Fresnaye area of Cape Town, a spokesman for his foundation 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, another towering antiapartheid activist, issued a similarly guarded statement about de Klerk’s death.
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,” said Tutu’s foundation.
However, 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 Tutu. At that time, Tutu expressed disappointment that de Klerk did not fully apologize for the evils of apartheid, the statement noted.
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 a visibly gaunt and frail 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.”
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said that de Klerk “played a vital role in our transition to democracy in the 1990s … He took the courageous decision to unban political parties, release political prisoners and enter into negotiations with the liberation movement amid severe pressure to the contrary from many in his political constituency.”
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. 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, 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 antiapartheid political groups.
Amid gasps, several members of parliament left the chamber as he spoke.
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 country would be, de Klerk told the media after his fateful speech, “a new South Africa.” But Mandela’s release was just the beginning of intense political negotiations on the way forward. Power would shift. A new constitution would be written. Ways of life would be upended.
De Klerk is survived by his wife, Elita, and two children.