Apartheid: the posthumous apologies of Frederik de Klerk
Former South African President Frederik de Klerk, here in Pretoria in May 2019, passed away on Thursday, November 11, 2021. AP - Jerome Delay
Text by: RFI Follow
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A few hours after his death, the foundation of former South African President Frederik de Klerk released a video in which he apologized for the crimes committed under apartheid.
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It is a 7-minute video presented as the last words of
Frederik de Klerk, who died this Thursday
from cancer.
The former South African president appears aged and emaciated, his voice broken, but still elegant and his gaze straight.
We see in the background, in a room of his residence, a photo of him and his wife, and a painting of a black woman.
“
Let me tell you, since the 1980s my beliefs have changed,
” he says.
“
It is true that in my youth I defended the separate development system, as we preferred to call it.
"But it had evolved, he assures:"
On multiple occasions, I have apologized.
Many believed me, but others didn't.
"
He therefore reiterates in this video: “
I apologize wholeheartedly for the pain, suffering, indignity and damage that apartheid has caused to blacks, mestizos and Indians in South Africa.
"
Predecessor of Nelson Mandela at the head of South Africa, Frederik de Klerk had the leader of the ANC released, legalized the opposition parties and led the transition until the first multiracial elections, which he had lost, in 1994. Vice-president of Mandela, with whom he shared a Nobel Peace Prize for the end of apartheid, he had retired from politics in early 1997.
But in South Africa, his lack of repentance in the 1990s and thereafter was criticized.
In particular before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where Frederik de Klerk had minimized the crimes of the apartheid regime.
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