“I, without qualification, apologise for the pain and the hurt and the indignity and the damage that apartheid has done to black, brown and Indians in South Africa”
Click here for The Guardian’s obituary of F.W de Klerk – South Africa’s last white president.
It states “when De Klerk succeeded P W Botha in 1989, he oversaw an event no less unexpected than the collapse of Soviet communism was when Gorbachev came to power in 1985. His stunning act of realpolitik in announcing sweeping political reform, including the release of his eventual successor, Nelson Mandela, was the grand gesture that saved his country, and in 1993 they shared the Nobel peace prize. The following year Mandela became the country’s first democratically elected leader”.
Yet, de Klerk’s legacy is a mixed one. You might like to read this article from the BBC. It highlights Nelson Mandela’s view in his book, Long Walk to Freedom, “Despite his seemingly progressive actions, Mr de Klerk was by no means the great emancipator. 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.”
This obviously fits in well with your Y224 Apartheid and Reconciliation: South African Politics 1948–1999 course. Have a read an see what you think.
Mr Kydd.
