Frederik de Klerk, South Africa’s last white president, has died

The last white president of South Africa, Frederik de Klerk, who freed the icon of the fight against apartheid Nelson Mandela and shared with him the Nobel Peace Prize, died on Thursday at the age of 85, he announced his founding.

“It is with the greatest sadness that the FW de Klerk Foundation announces the passing of former President FW de Klerk peacefully at his Fresnaye home this morning after having battled cancer,” the organization said in a statement.

“He leaves his wife Elita, his children Jan and Susan, and his grandchildren,” adds the text.

Frederik Willem (FW) de Klerk had claimed that he suffered from cancer affecting the tissues around the lungs in March, the same day he turned 85.

FW de Klerk had a reputation for being a conservative when he succeeded President PW Botha in 1989, weakened by a heart attack. On February 2, 1990, he announced the imminent end of white rule in South Africa.

“The time for negotiations has come,” he declared at the time at the opening of a session in Parliament, announcing the unconditional release of Nelson Mandela, in prison for 27 years, and the lifting of the ban on anti-apartheid parties.

This decision launched the transition process that led four years later to the holding of the first multiracial elections in the country’s history, won by Mandela.

Avoid a “catastrophe”

The two men were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in 1993 for “their efforts towards the peaceful demise of the apartheid regime and the establishment of a new democratic South Africa.”

Twenty years later, FW De Klerk estimated that his decision had prevented “a catastrophe”, brought whites out of their “isolation and guilt” and allowed blacks to access “dignity and equality.”

FW De Klerk accompanied the young democracy for two years, becoming vice president of the country’s first black president. But he resigned in 1996, criticizing that the new Constitution did not guarantee that whites could continue to share power.

The following year he left the presidency of his National Party and began his withdrawal from political life.

Born on March 18, 1936, De Klerk always militated in Afrikaner nationalist circles, descendants of the first European settlers who spoke a language derived from Dutch.

“He seemed to be the quintessential apparatus man (white politician) … Nothing in his past seemed to indicate a spirit of reform,” wrote Nelson Mandela in his autobiography.

In 2020, De Klerk sparked controversy by denying that apartheid was a crime against humanity, before apologizing. (I)