South Africa’s last president under apartheid De Klerk passed away Abroad

De Klerk and Mandela were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 for their work for a relatively peaceful transition to a democracy without racial segregation. The segregation of populations on the basis of race or racial characteristics was introduced in South Africa in 1948 and was overthrown in 1990 as a result of majority opposition and foreign pressure. De Klerk was the driving force behind the dismantling of apartheid in the last minority government. The Afrikaner term apartheid became infamous around the world and rarely translated.

De Klerk was the son of a politician in the National Party and he became a Member of Parliament in 1972. In addition to being a member of the National Party, he was a member of the secretive Broederbond, a society of influential Afrikaners. De Klerk first became Prime Minister in 1978 under Prime Minister John Vorster. He subsequently held numerous ministerial positions. In February 1989, then-president Pieter Willem Botha, a staunch supporter of racial segregation, suffered a stroke and De Klerk succeeded him after some time. Exactly one year later, in February 1990, he emerged as a destroyer of the apartheid regime by no longer banning opposition movements. He ordered the release of Mandela, then one of the most famous political prisoners in the world.

After years of negotiations between parties, the country won democratic elections in April 1994 where all South Africans could vote. Mandela became president and De Klerk one of the vice presidents. He was the opposition leader in parliament for some time, but retired from South African politics in 1997. The politician who was a product of the apartheid regime proved crucial in its dismantling, but later insisted that the minority governments he was part of had also achieved many good things.

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