Tempered praise after South Africa's former president FW de Klerk dies aged 85

LAST UPDATE | 11 Nov 2021

TRIBUTES ARE BEING paid following the death of FW De Klerk, South Africa’s last white president, at the age of 85.

De Klerk and South Africa’s first black president Nelson Mandela shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 for leading the “miracle” transition from white rule in the country.

He died after a battle with cancer, his foundation said in a statement.

De Klerk had announced his diagnosis on his 85th birthday, on 18 March this year.

“It is with the deepest sadness that the FW de Klerk Foundation must announce that former president FW de Klerk died peacefully at his home in Fresnaye earlier this morning following his struggle against mesothelioma cancer,” it said.

He is survived by his wife Elita, children Jan and Susan, and grandchildren.

“The family will, in due course, make an announcement regarding funeral arrangements,” it added.

The death of South Africa’s last white president drew mixed reactions, with some hailing his role in ending apartheid while others criticised a failure to atone for the horrors endured by majority blacks for decades.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin paid tribute to De Klerk this afternoon, tweeting: “Saddened to hear of the death of FW de Klerk, a man whose decisions at a key moment advanced South Africa’s journey from apartheid to democracy. 

“His vision, along with Nelson Mandela, moulded a new South Africa.”

The office of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s office said: “The former president occupied an historic but difficult space in South Africa.”

Tutu, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his resistance to apartheid, led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) charged with uncovering the horrors of the white-minority regime.

After de Klerk’s appearance at the TRC, Tutu “addressed the media to express disappointment that the former president had not made a more wholesome apology on behalf of the National Party to the nation for the evils of apartheid,” the archbishop’s office said in statement.

However, it added: “The late FW de Klerk played an important role in South Africa’s history. At a time when not all of his colleagues saw the future trajectory of the country unfolding in the same way, he recognised the moment for change and demonstrated the will to act on it.”

Saddened to hear of the death of of FW de Klerk, a man whose decisions at a key moment advanced South Africa’s journey from apartheid to democracy.

His vision, along with Nelson Mandela, moulded a new South Africa.

— Micheál Martin (@MichealMartinTD) November 11, 2021

“De Klerk’s legacy is a big one,” the Nelson Mandela Foundation said. “It is also an uneven one, something South Africans are called to reckon with in this moment.”

The two leaders sparred frequently, but the Mandela foundation recalled his remarks at De Klerk’s 70th birthday celebrations.

“If we two old, or ageing, men have any lessons for our country and for the world, it is that solutions to conflicts can only be found if adversaries are fundamentally prepared to accept the integrity of one other,” Mandela said at the time.

De Klerk ensured his place in history when on 2 February 1990, he announced Mandela’s release from 27 years in jail and lifted the ban on black liberation movements, effectively declaring the death of white-minority rule.

“I would hope that history will recognise that I, together will all those who supported me, have shown courage, integrity, honesty at the moment of truth in our history. That we took the right turn,” De Klerk said.

20 years after that speech, De Klerk said freeing Mandela had “prevented a catastrophe”.

Frederik Willem de Klerk was born in Johannesburg on 18 March 1936.

His father, Jan de Klerk, was a minister in the National Party (NP) government that instituted apartheid. His uncle, JG Strijdom, was a prime minister notorious for stripping mixed race people of voting rights.

De Klerk followed in their footsteps. After practising law for 11 years, he won a seat in parliament for the NP in 1972 and climbed the political ladder through cabinet until he became the party’s leader in February 1989.

Just six months later, after PW Botha was forced to resign, De Klerk became president of South Africa.

“When he became head of the National Party, he seemed to be the quintessential party man, nothing more and nothing less,” Mandela wrote of him. “Nothing in his past seemed to hint at a spirit of reform.”

Negotiated end to apartheid 

Yet Mandela sensed an opening and sent him a letter outlining a negotiated end to apartheid.

Less than two months later, De Klerk announced Mandela’s unconditional release and the end of the ban on the African National Congress.

De Klerk helped negotiate a new constitution, transforming South Africa into a non-racial democracy. He served for two years as Mandela’s deputy.

Despite relinquishing power and ushering in democracy, De Klerk never moulded to the new South Africa.

He appeared before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, apologising for apartheid. He also stormed out and accused the panel of bias.

As Mandela became a global icon, De Klerk in a 2012 speech insisted: “He was by no means the avuncular and saint-like figure so widely depicted today.”

I am saddened by the death of FW de Klerk. My condolences to his family for their loss. pic.twitter.com/WA1J7Ngisg

— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) November 11, 2021

In his later years, De Klerk called on the ANC government to take accountability for rampant poverty and joblessness.

But he would bristle at efforts to hold him accountable, and never accepted responsibility for the torture, rapes, and killings committed by the whites-only government.

He tried to make excuses for apartheid’s network of “bantustans”, intended to confine black South Africans to supposed ethnic homelands.

And in 2020, he sparked a national furore by refusing to call apartheid a crime against humanity.

He always backtracked, especially if the scandals rippled into international headlines. But even when he found the right words, he was never able to strike the right tone in modern South Africa.

For all he gave the country, what he couldn’t give was a sense of remorse.

De Klerk and his first wife, Marike, who married in April 1958, had three adopted children. The couple divorced in 1998 after he admitted to an affair with Elita Georgiades, the wife of a Greek shipping tycoon. De Klerk and Georgiades married the same year.

Posthumous video

Showing a keen awareness of his tarnished legacy, de Klerk delivered a posthumous video message apologising for apartheid, released just hours after his death.

“I am often accused by critics that I in some way or another continued to justify apartheid or separate development, as we later preferred to call it,” he said in the message released by his foundation.

“It is true that in my younger years I defended separate development,” De Klerk said.

“Afterwards, on many occasions, I apologised to the South African public for the pain and indignity that apartheid has brought to people of colour in South Africa. Many believed me but others didn’t.”

“I without qualification apologise for the pain and hurt and the indignity and the damage that apartheid has done to black, brown and Indians in SA,” he said.

De Klerk said he made the apology both in his personal capacity and as the former leader of the National Party, which instituted the violent apartheid system of segregation.

- © AFP 2021