F W de Klerk, the last South African president of the apartheid era, presided over one of the most extraordinary political events of the late 20th century: the voluntary handover of power by the white minority regime in conditions of remarkable peace.
De Klerk, who died at home in Cape Town at the age of 85, shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela, the country’s first democratic president, for dismantling apartheid.
But, decades on from that peaceful transition, South Africans still have cause to reflect on Mandela’s description of de Klerk, even in the midst of the peace negotiations. In his 1999 memoirs, de Klerk said Mandela called him the head of an “illegitimate discredited minority regime”. Others regarded him as reluctant to acknowledge the depth of apartheid’s crimes to the end.