The last white President of South Africa, FW de Klerk, died at the age of 85 on Thursday this week. He was diagnosed with mesothelioma cancer earlier this year, due to which his health was deteriorating day by day. After the demise of the former president, the tape of his last message to the public is released by his foundation on its website, where he can be seen apologizing for the damage and brutality incited to the black humanity of South Africa in the Apartheid era.
Racial segregation existed in South Africa long before the apartheid era, but then things got out of hand for the people of colour and black South Africans when the National Party gained power in 1948. The policies enacted by the government inhibited the basic human rights from the majority black population as of buying the property, interracial marriages, schooling and jobs segregation, prohibition from visiting certain public places, etc and brought in a lavish and sophisticated life for the minority population that is the white community.
Along with that, the Apartheid officials put a ban on the opposition political parties including the Pan Africanist Congress, South African Communist Party, and South Africa’s most influential party which eventually gave rise to democracy in the nation, African National Congress directed by Nelson Mandela.
Soon after the resentment of the opposing parties and subsidiary organizations, numerous freedom fighters followed by Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu were sent to life imprisonment in 1962.
However, the last apartheid president FW de Klerk rescinded the ban on the above-mentioned political parties. Furthermore, he uplifted the prison time sanctioned on Nelson Mandela. He ruled South Africa under the National Party for a period of 5 years from 1989 to 1994. He held the courage and the revolutionized wisdom to break down his own system.
The former white president, de Klerk while biding for his farewell confessed his sorrow through the video for the public suffered in the apartheid era.
He quoted,
“On many occasions, I apologized for the pain of the indignity that apartheid has brought to persons, to persons of colour in South Africa. Many believed me, but others didn’t. Therefore, let me repeat this last message,”:
“I, without qualification, apologize for the pain and the hurt and the indignity and the damage that apartheid has done to black, brown, and Indians in South Africa. I do so not only in my capacity as the former leader of the National Party but also as an individual.”
In his last video, he additionally confessed that he doesn’t possess any regret for the actions he took during the power, as other scenarios could have led to Catastrophe in South Africa.
The impressions regarding his reputation vary from person to person. For some, his efforts impacted a positive shift from racial intolerance to independence and democracy in South Africa by freeing the freedom fighters. He acknowledged the wrongness of the biased agendas his political party endorsed and thereby stood against it. Yet other netizens believe that his actions were the bare minimum by what was expected in that situation and the end of the Apartheid was a result of global outrage provoked after the news of Nelson Mandela’s arrest emerged amongst the world which ultimately pressurized the administrators to do so.
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