Former South African president Frederik Willem (F.W.) de Klerk passed away Thursday at the age of 85 in Cape Town after a battle with …
Former South African president Frederik Willem (F.W.) de Klerk passed away Thursday at the age of 85 in Cape Town after a battle with mesothelioma. He shared the Nobel Prize for Peace with Nelson Mandela in 1993 for the dramatic steps he took to end the apartheid regime and begin negotiations that led to South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994. His path from nationalist apparatchik to groundbreaking reformer and peacemaker remains one of the most extraordinary changes in contemporary political history. In another stunning, parting gesture, De Klerk left a video message to be released after his death, in which he apologized for the pain caused by the apartheid system to millions of South Africans. “Allow me in this last message to share with you the fact that since the early 80’s, my views have changed completely. It was as if I had a conversion and in my hearts of hearts realised that apartheid was wrong. I realised that we have arrived at a place which was morally unjustifiable,” he declared. WATCH: I apologise for pain, hurt, indignity of apartheid – De Klerk’s final message https://t.co/3QUGKJaNxV pic.twitter.com/MQM7whVklk Jacaranda News (@JacaNews) November 11,2021 De Klerk was born near Johannesburg into an Afrikaner family in 1936, descended from the French Huguenots who sought refuge in the Cape, then under Dutch control, in the 17th century. He pursued a legal career and joined the National Party, which had come to power in 1948 and which created the apartheid system, which both formalized and expanded existing racial segregation laws in South Africa.
