THE CRUCIFIXION OF FW DE KLERK
In his recent article on “The Crucifixion of FW de Klerk” News24 journalist Pieter du Toit writes, with very little sympathy, of the growing rejection of the former president’s legacy. De Klerk, who announced on his 85th birthday on 18 March that he is suffering from mesothelioma - a cancer that affects the tissue lining of the lungs - and has just begun a course of immunotherapy.
Du Toit compares De Klerk with Mikhail Gorbachev who was described by Barack Obama as “…a strangely tragic figure…who was a largely disdained…in his own country.” He is right: there are elements of tragedy in De Klerk’s present situation. King Lear came to mind on 13 February last year as he and his wife Elita sat with quiet dignity in the gallery of the parliament that he helped to create, while he was howled at for over an hour by rampaging red-clad EFF MPs.
De Klerk is disdained by some in his own country - by woke journalists and commentators; by the ANC who insist that they forced him to end apartheid - and by the right - that excoriates him as a sell-out. There are also those in the centre who agree that transformation was necessary - but believe that they could have managed it so much better…
That is where the similarity between De Klerk and Gorbachev ends. Gorbachev wanted to reform - and not dismantle - communism. It was never his intention to abolish communism or to break up the Soviet Union. He completely lost control of his reform process and was swept aside by the forces that he unleashed.
De Klerk - by contrast - set out from the beginning of his presidency to abolish apartheid and to negotiate a new non-racial constitutional democracy. As Niccolò Machiavelli observed six hundred years ago “There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.”