The video was “a last-minute revision of history” and Mr. de Klerk’s self-conscious try and protect his legacy because the hero who launched Mr. Mandela from jail, mentioned Sithembile Mbete, a senior lecturer on the University of Pretoria.
“The more tragic part of F.W. de Klerk’s death is that he dies with so many secrets,” mentioned Ms. Mbete.
Among these secrets and techniques is any information of the planning that led to the homicide of the “Cradock Four,” 4 activists killed in 1985 by state safety forces as violence roiled within the final years of apartheid, analysts and relations of the victims mentioned.
“He takes all of that knowledge with him, and it deprives us of the truth and closure of the deaths of the Cradock Four,” mentioned Lukhanyo Calata, the son of a type of activists. While their households refused to interact with Mr. de Klerk straight, they pushed for him to disclose any info that might have led to a trial, and demanded in useless that prosecutors compel him to take action.
“If he’d said, ‘I apologize and this is what I am now going to do with my assets, with my foundation, this is how I am going to speak up for the people who were the victims on my watch, I will account for my part’ — but there was nothing of that at all,” mentioned Michael Lapsley, an Anglican priest and anti-apartheid activist who misplaced each of his fingers when he opened a letter bomb despatched by the apartheid regime’s safety forces in 1990.
“No matter how much he acknowledged that apartheid was a mistake, he refused to come to terms with it as a gross human rights violation, as an atrocity,” mentioned Mac Maharaj, an anti-apartheid activist who participated within the negotiations to dismantle the system.
Cyril Ramaphosa, the present president of South Africa, who led these negotiations on behalf of the African National Congress, was extra gracious, lauding Mr. de Klerk’s “key role in ushering in democracy” in South Africa.
