Thursday November 11, 2021
Companion of Mandela
South Africa’s ex-president de Klerk is dead
Frederik Willem de Klerk ushers in the end of the racist apartheid regime in South Africa with a radical reform course. For this, the politician receives the Nobel Peace Prize together with Nelson Mandela. Now the former president has died at the age of 85.
South Africa’s former president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Frederik Willem de Klerk is dead. De Klerk, who initiated the abolition of South Africa’s racist apartheid regime in 1989 with a radical reform course, died at the age of 85, the FW de Klerk Foundation announced. It was said that he peacefully succumbed to the fight against cancer in his house in the tourist metropolis of Cape Town that morning.
The Cape State was internationally isolated in the 1980s because of the systematic separation of blacks and whites. Domestically, security forces had increasing difficulties keeping uprisings and protests under control, while other countries put South Africa under pressure with harsh sanctions.
During his tenure as president, de Klerk initiated the legalization of the black opposition and the unconditional release of the anti-apartheid fighter Nelson Mandela. Together, the two negotiated South Africa’s transition to a democracy in which all people have equal rights.
In October 1993 de Klerk and Mandela were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their willingness to reconcile and “their personal integrity and great political courage”. In the first democratic elections on April 27, 1994, Mandela’s ANC won, as expected, a majority with 62 percent of the vote, de Klerks NP got a good 20 percent of the vote.
In the unity government under Mandela, de Klerk became one of two vice-presidents, but quickly lost influence. In 1997 he retired. Mandela gave up the presidency two years later. He died in late 2012 at the age of 95. De Klerk leaves behind his wife Elita, his children Jan and Susan and grandchildren, the foundation announced.