Students rapt at de Klerk talk
South Africa’s former president visits York school Praises Canada’s approach to multiculturalism
The first time he met Nelson Mandela in 1989, it was in secret and under cover of darkness. Mandela was still in prison.
“ We did not discuss anything of substance. We sized each other up,” former South African president F. W. de Klerk said in answer to a question from a group of Richmond Hill High School students yesterday.
“( Mandela) was taller than I expected. I found him to be a good listener. I found in him a man with an analytical mind,” said de Klerk, who from 1989 to 1994 was South Africa’s last president under apartheid.
Although negotiating an end to the racist policy left their relationship in shreds, de Klerk and Mandela shared a Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 for their roles in dismantling apartheid. De Klerk has officially apologized for human rights abuses that occurred under that policy, which was instituted in 1948. He was invited to visit Richmond Hill High yesterday by Stan Daneman, a South African immigrant, who helps coach rugby at the school and has a daughter there. Daneman had met de Klerk 13 years earlier at a dinner in South Africa. When he heard the former president was in Toronto this week, he contacted the F. W. de Klerk Foundation, which promotes peace in multicultural countries and asked if de Klerk would visit the students.
Last Thursday, he sprang the news of de Klerk’s acceptance on school officials, who quickly organized a video hook up with four other York high schools. About 600 students in the Richmond Hill gym were rapt at a 20th-century history lesson taught by a man who was a key player on the world stage. Even after de Klerk explained the historical context for apartheid, which took about 20 years to dismantle, one student wanted to know if there was a defining moment in which de Klerk realized that denying political and legal rights to blacks was wrong.
“ It was a process of realization that we had failed to bring justice to all the people of South Africa. We had landed in a corner where we were practising a system that was inherently unfair,” de Klerk told the students. He complimented Canada’s more successful approach to multiculturalism.
“ The root cause of what is happening in Paris is the failure to accommodate the multicultural nature of France. The challenge for the world is to develop a concept of collective human rights,” he said, referring to the violence among immigrant groups there.
“ The challenge of your generation is to tackle the problem of poverty, the problem of oppression and challenge the underlying reasons that are being used by the terrorists for their vile actions,” he told the students.
His visit was an eye- opener for Grade 12 student Kurt Matson, who had earlier invited Daneman to talk to his politics class about apartheid.
“( De Klerk) was one of the pioneers to help engineer a multicultural society from oppressive to free,” said the 17- year- old.
Matson’s teacher, Don MacKinlay said the visit was a chance to inspire activism in students.