Thoughts on FW de Klerk, plus five talking points from ‘Vrye Weekblad’

Julius Malema and his ilk can crow as much as they like; FW de Klerk’s name is cemented in the history books as the man who eventually signed the death certificate of apartheid as state ideology, writes Max du Preez in this week's edition of Vrye Weekblad. 

De Klerk is often compared with Mikhail Gorbachev, who signed the old Soviet Union’s death certificate, but Gorbachev had grappled with his ideas of perestroika and glasnost and planned fundamental reform for years. 

If De Klerk had died before August 15 1989, few people would have taken notice, and only the death notices in the Afrikaans newspapers would have said anything positive about him. It was in the six years afterwards that he became a national and international figure. In the preceding decades he was a dull, narrow-minded Afrikaner nationalist ideologically and an apartheid disciple, completely complicit in all the evil of what the rest of the world called a crime against humanity. 

Apartheid South Africa was at a crossroads when De Klerk took over from PW Botha; the economy was on the precipice, there was internal unrest, international isolation and sanctions, border wars, and even otherwise well-disposed Western governments demanding an end to apartheid.

These factors, and in particular the fall of the Berlin wall two months after he became president, must have played a role when he initiated the process of a negotiated settlement on February 2 1990. 

Afterwards, many said De Klerk had no choice. Well, the same could be said of Iraq’s Saddam Hussain and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, who continued to seek military solutions when they were cornered. 

Despite strong opposition from within his own party, his church, his Afrikaner community, the police and defence force, De Klerk persevered with his commitment to negotiate a new democratic order. He accepted the risk that his political career could end abruptly and called a white referendum. 

I was never under the impression that De Klerk envisioned the events of April 27 1994 on February 2 1990. Yet there he was, deputy president to Nelson Mandela along with Thabo Mbeki. The government of national unity was key to peace in the immediate aftermath of the transition and the “rainbow nation” was born.

In 1996, however, De Klerk resigned as deputy president and, against the wishes of his NP cabinet colleagues, withdrew the National Party from government. At the time De Klerk’s colleagues told me he was the driving force behind the disintegration of the agreement, that he simply no longer wanted to be number three to Mandela and Mbeki.

We can but speculate how a continuance of the government of national unity would have impacted governance, the ANC, and the attitudes of the South African public. It is interesting that there is now, 25 years later, a clamour for a new government of national unity. 

Yesterday the FW de Klerk Foundation released a frail De Klerk’s “last message”, detailing his “conversion” on the damage apartheid caused. It sounded more sincere than his previous efforts asking forgiveness for apartheid.  

FW de Klerk deserves, at the very least, a dignified farewell.

Read the full column, and more news, analysis and interviews in this Friday's edition of Vrye Weekblad. 

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