By Abdul Tejan-Cole
Frederik Willem (FW) de Klerk, the last apartheid President of South Africa, passed away on 11 November 2021 in Cape Town. He was 85. Few people in the world provoke more disparate views in life and death than the late FW. President Cyril Ramaphosa praised him for playing a "key role in ushering in democracy" and called him "a committed South African who embraced the democratic constitutional dispensation."
After retweeting an article announcing de Klerk's death, Julius Malema of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) tweeted, "Thank You God." The EFF subsequently issued a statement noting the death of the man "who presided over a murderous and inhumane regime of terror against African people."
Born on 18 March 1936, in Johannesburg, FW came from a lineage of influential Afrikaner leaders. His father, Johannes de Klerk, served as interim State President albeit for nine days, was a senator and held several ministerial positions. His great-grandfather, Jan van Rooy, was also a senator. His uncle, Johannes Gerhardus Strijdom, was the fifth Prime Minister and leader of a member of the largest, Baasskap, the white supremacist faction of the National Party. Upon graduation from law school, FW joined the National Party and was soon elected as a member of the House of Assembly. He held several ministerial positions, including Minister of Interior and later Education.
Supporters of Mr. de Klerk often cite his speech at the State Opening of Parliament on February 2, 1990, in which he announced that "(T)he season of violence is over. The time for reconstruction and reconciliation has arrived." It was in this speech that he declared that "(T)he prohibition of the African National Congress, the Pan Africanist Congress, the South African Communist Party and several subsidiary organisations is being rescinded" and that his government had "taken a firm decision to release Mr. Mandela unconditionally." In recognition of this speech and the subsequent transition, he was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 with Nelson Mandela "for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa."
But De Klerk did not end apartheid by choice. Even the Nobel Peace Prize website notes, "(W)hen de Klerk took office as President in 1989, no one expected him to play a key part in the termination of apartheid. Both as a lawyer, as a parliamentarian, and as a member of the government, he had stood out as a firm upholder of white privilege. But when he realized that the apartheid system was leading to both economic and political bankruptcy, he put himself at the head of a radical change of course."
Even FW acknowledged in his 1990 speech that an "important change of climate" was taking place in South Africa. The Berlin Wall had fallen in 1989 and although this meant that the ANC and other liberation groups would get less support, it also meant that the West didn't need the apartheid regime to serve as a bulwark against communism. The economic sanctions were biting South Africa hard and the cost of fighting wars in the frontline states was adversely impacting the economy.
Domestically, the state of emergency failed to address the growing revolt in the townships. FW realized that the violence would not be ended by military heavy-handedness. Still, FW and others wanted a middle ground that would allow them to continue to wield power. Some sort of option of a white minority veto on black majority rule. When the prison doors were opened and Madiba was released, de Klerk and his National Party realized belatedly that the political game was over.
Sadly, in life De Klerk's apologies were halfhearted. At the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in 1997, he apologized in his capacity "as leader of the NP to the millions who suffered wrenching disruption of forced removals; who suffered the shame of being arrested for pass law offences; who over the decades suffered the indignities and humiliation of racial discrimination." In 2012, he told CNN that he would not apologize for his views as a young man.
In 2020, FW refused to agree that apartheid was a crime against humanity in a South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) interview. He was also quoted as saying that "(T)he idea that apartheid was a crime against humanity was and remains an agitprop project initiated by the Soviets and their ANC/SACP allies to stigmatise white South Africans by associating them with genuine crimes against humanity." Although de Klerk's Foundation later retracted this statement, the damage had been done. His failure to acknowledge that apartheid was a crime against humanity illustrated to many that he did not consider blacks as human.
De Klerk's testimony before the TRC was less than candid. Although he sat on the State Security Council (SSC), the structure at the pinnacle of the National Security Management System, he claimed that "many things happened which were not authorised, not intended and of which we were not aware. The recent information of atrocities I find as shocking and as abhorrent as anybody else. It came to me as just a shocking revelation as to anyone else."
The TRC found his statement that none of his colleagues in Cabinet, the State Security Council or Cabinet Committees had authorised assassination, murder or other gross violations of human rights was indefensible." As a former ICTJ colleague, Howard Varney puts it, "it's untenable that a cabinet minister who sat in the SSC meetings from 1985 to 1989 claims he was unaware that gross human rights violations were being committed on an ongoing basis.”
Varney also mentioned in a Facebook post that 'FW de Klerk was a suspect in the Cradock Four case. He sat on the State Security Council when decisions were made to "remove" the Cradock Four, and the decision to provide an offensive paramilitary unit (hit squad) to Buthelezi and Inkatha. He was an apologist for apartheid, claiming till the end that it was not a crime against humanity, and it was not so bad. In the early 90s, he turned a blind eye to the role of the third force in fueling rampant violence. He claimed at the TRC that apartheid atrocities were just the work of a few bad eggs and that cabinet was blameless. He lied in making this submission. He goes to the grave without answering for his role in apartheid-era crimes.'
On his death bed, he recorded a video that was played after his death. In it, he apologized without qualification "for the pain, hurt, indignity and the damage that apartheid has done to black, brown and Indians in South Africa." Frankly, it was too little too late. De Klerk will be cremated without answering for his role in apartheid-era crimes. To many of the victims, de Klerk chose to turn a blind eye to many of the atrocities that happened under his watch. Instead of owning up to his culpability and applying for amnesty, de Klerk spent his last months in office shredding documents to hide the crimes of apartheid and in distancing himself from atrocities of the security forces. He repeatedly chose to be economical with the truth.
In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela stated that "(D)espite his seemingly progressive actions, Mr. de Klerk was by no means the great emancipator. He was a gradualist, a careful pragmatist. He did not make any of his reforms with the intention of putting himself out of power. He made them for precisely the opposite reason: to ensure power for the Afrikaner in a new dispensation." Madiba was spot on. Like Professor Saths Cooper, a former political prisoner, I can only wish that the soul of the late FW rest in the peace that he denied many.
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