Frederik De Klerk, ambiguous responsible for the end of apartheid – archyde

For a man who had the guts, in 1990, to give the decisive impetus to change a world, his world – that of white, racist and violent South Africa – by setting in motion the mechanism intended to end the apartheid four years later, and who could have ended his life crowned with this courage, Frederik De Klerk has not aged gracefully. It had escaped no one: something, constantly, seemed to irritate him, in this South Africa that he had nevertheless helped to shape.

Obviously, he was painfully aware of it, when, shortly before passing away, plagued by the terminal stage of his cancer, he decided to record a statement, his ” last message “, intended to be posthumous. This video was released Thursday, November 11., a few hours after his death. Frederik De Klerk, had just passed away at 85, but still had scores to settle with posterity. The former South African president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, together with Nelson Mandela, for bringing the country to multiracial democracy instead of sinking into a bloodbath.

Why then had it been necessary that Frederik De Klerk, getting older, withdrawing from public affairs, multiplied the unfortunate, ambiguous declarations on the subject of apartheid, the policy of “separate development” whose ultimate goal was to make live in different black and white areas? In his posthumous message, he denies having been nostalgic for this shameful past and wishes to “To apologize for the pain, indignity, deep wounds and destruction that apartheid has inflicted on blacks, people of mixed origin and South African Indians.” He apologizes as a former leader of the ruling party, but also to “Individual title”, admitting – which by the way has never been in doubt – having supported this system in its “Young years”.

Under contrition arises the accusation

And then the ghost of the video says that the spirit which presided over the end of apartheid is in danger, and his words are blurred, when he slips that it is necessary to detect the responsibility for the current South African turmoil in “Ideologies”, or the ” positive discrimination “. Speech known, and immediately recognizable, based on a critique of the present, with its difficulties – unemployment, crime, looting of public companies (part of the country was plunged into darkness by rotating power cuts when the message was put online) – attributable to black power. With a rhetorical about-face, under contrition, the accusation arises.

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