Historical Figure
F. W. de Klerk
1936–2021
President of South Africa from 1989 to 1994
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Biography
Frederik Willem de Klerk was a South African politician who served as final state president of South Africa from 1989 to 1994 and as deputy president alongside Thabo Mbeki under President Nelson Mandela from 1994 to 1996. As South Africa's last head of state from the era of white-minority rule, he and his government dismantled the apartheid system and introduced universal suffrage. Ideologically a social conservative and an economic liberal, he led the National Party (NP) from 1989 to 1997.
In Their Own Words (2)
You have Palestinians living in Israel with full political rights. You don’t have discriminatory laws against them, I mean not letting them swim on certain beaches or anything like that. I think it's unfair to call Israel an apartheid state. If Kerry did so, I think he made a mistake.
As quoted in "South Africa's de Klerk: Israel not an apartheid state" (27 May 2014), The Times of Israel , 2014
I have great sympathy with America. It's very, it's very tough to be the only remaining superpower in the world.
Timeline
The story of F. W. de Klerk, told in moments.
Elected to Parliament. For a decade, he serves in a succession of cabinet posts under P.W. Botha, enforcing apartheid. He supports and defends the system of racial segregation. Nothing in his record suggests what's coming.
In his first major speech as president, unbans the ANC, the South African Communist Party, and 31 other organizations. Nine days later, Nelson Mandela walks free from Victor Verster Prison. The world can't believe the apartheid government dismantled itself.
Shares the Nobel Peace Prize with Mandela "for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime." He also secretly dismantles South Africa's six nuclear weapons, the first nation to voluntarily abandon its nuclear arsenal.
Serves as deputy president under Mandela after South Africa's first fully democratic election. The arrangement is awkward. De Klerk leaves government in 1996 and withdraws from public life.
Dies of mesothelioma in Cape Town at 85. In a video message recorded before his death and released afterward, he apologizes for apartheid: "It was wrong."
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