Later in life, after South Africa’s wrenching political transition, de Klerk said there was no longer any animosity between him and Mandela and that they were friends, having visited each other’s homes. De Klerk did not seem to fit easily into the role of a Nobel laureate. He remained a target of anger for some white South Africans who saw his actions as a betrayal. Though he publicly apologized for the pain and humiliation that apartheid caused, he was never cheered and embraced as an icon, as Mandela was.
Despite his role in South Africa’s transformation, de Klerk would continue to defend what his National Party decades ago had declared as the goal of apartheid, the separate development of white and Black South Africans. In practice, however, apartheid forced millions of the country’s Black majority into nominally independent “homelands” where poverty was widespread, while the white minority held most of South Africa’s land. Apartheid starved the Black South African education system of resources, criminalized interracial relations, created black slums on the edges of white cities and tore apart families.
De Klerk late in life would acknowledge that “separate but equal failed.”
F.W. de Klerk was born in Johannesburg in 1936. He earned a law degree and practiced law before turning to politics and being elected to parliament. In 1978, he was appointed to the first of a series of ministerial posts, including Internal Affairs. In the late 1970s and 1980s, South Africa faced violent unrest as the government tried modest reforms to cultivate a Black South African middle class and allow limited political power to the country’s other marginalized groups, mixed race people classified as “coloreds” and those of Asian and Indian backgrounds.
The moves only increased bitterness over apartheid, while international pressure for more fundamental changes increased. In February 1989, de Klerk was elected the National Party leader and in his first speech called for “a South Africa free of domination or oppression in whatever form.” He was elected president in September of that year.