F.W. de Klerk, South Africa's Last Apartheid-Era President, Dies At 85

F.W. de Klerk, the last white president of apartheid-era South Africa whose collaboration with Nelson Mandela on the peaceful transition to a multiracial democracy and market-oriented economy won both men the Nobel Peace Prize, died at his home in Cape Town at the age of 85. De Klerk had announced in March that he had been diagnosed with mesothelioma.

A Political Scion: Frederik Willem de Klerk was born March 18, 1936, in a wealthy Johannesburg suburb. The de Klerk family was heavily involved in South African politics — his father served as president of the nation’s Senate and his paternal aunt’s husband, J. G. Strijdom was the nation’s fifth prime minister.

De Klerk graduated from Potchefstroom University in 1958 with Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Law degrees and focused on a legal career. He was elected to the South African House of Assembly in 1972 as a member of the National Party and joined the cabinet of Prime Minister John Vorster in 1978 as Minister of Social Welfare and Pensions. De Klerk held additional ministerial positions in the administration of Vorster’s successor, P.W. Botha, at which time the head of state structure shifted from prime minister to state president.

Botha suffered a stroke in 1989 and resigned from his office, with de Klerk succeeding him after he won the vote to lead the National Party.

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The Road To Change: De Klerk’s rise to prominence was accommodated by the apartheid system’s exclusion of non-whites from government authority. Before becoming president, de Klerk showed no willingness to dismantle the apartheid system that disenfranchised the nation’s Black majority, nor was he eager to restructure an economy where the government controlled many industries and systematically excluded Blacks from gaining financial and professional opportunities.

During the 1970s and 1980s a global effort to isolate South Africa had a significant impact on its economy, and by 1989 de Klerk acknowledged that it was impossible for the nation to continue as a global pariah. De Klerk held meetings with anti-apartheid leaders Desmond Tutu and Allan Boesak and held a historic three-hour meeting with Mandela, who had been imprisoned since 1962 and for years his name could not be mentioned in South Africa’s media.

De Klerk changed the course of his nation’s history with an address to the parliament on Feb. 2, 1990, that pledged massive political, social and economic reforms that included the release of Mandela and other political prisoners and the legalization of long-banned political parties including the African National Congress. Laws designed to segregate and impoverish Black South Africans were to be repealed and de Klerk proposed shifting the nation to a market-oriented economy that limited government control of industries.

The New Era: De Klerk worked with Mandela to bring full voting rights to all South Africans and to dismantle the suffocating aspects of the apartheid laws. In 1994, South Africa held its first national election open to people of all races, with Mandela’s African National Congress winning and de Klerk’s National Party taking second place in the vote. Mandela became South Africa’s first Black president and de Klerk served as his Deputy President in a coalition government until 1996.

De Klerk and Mandela shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. In his post-political life, de Klerk established a foundation promoting world peace and served as chairman of the London-based Global Leadership Foundation. In 2020, he sparked a controversy in South Africa when he declined to define apartheid as a crime against humanity.

The Nelson Mandela Foundation paid tribute to the late leader in a statement that said de Klerk would "forever be linked to Nelson Mandela in the annals of South African history. De Klerk's legacy is a big one. It is also an uneven one, something South Africans are called to reckon with in this moment."

Photo: F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela in 1992. Photo courtesy of First Run Features.