South African politician and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who served as state president from 1989 to 1994 and as deputy president from 1994 to 1996. As South Africa’s last head of state from the era of white-minority rule, he and his government dismantled the apartheid system and introduced universal suffrage. Ideologically a conservative and an economic liberal, he led the National Party (NP) from 1989 to 1997.
He was the ninth and possibly last white man to head South Africa since it was formed in 1910. Not one to take initiative, he always stayed well on the safe middle ground of the tightly structured organization that was the ruling National Party. Nonetheless, he had to make a start with some bold decisions by the necessity of the office.
De Klerk came from a political family, the son of an educator who held national posts. He himself went into law. On 14 August 1989, he succeeded Botha in office as President of South Africa.
He permitted anti-apartheid marches to take place, legalised a range of previously banned anti-apartheid political parties, and freed imprisoned anti-apartheid activists, including Nelson Mandela. He also dismantled South Africa’s nuclear weapons programme.
De Klerk negotiated with Mandela to fully dismantle apartheid and establish a transition to universal suffrage. In 1993, he publicly apologised for apartheid’s harmful effects. He oversaw the 1994 non-racial election in which Mandela led the African National Congress (ANC) to victory; de Klerk’s NP took second place. De Klerk then became Deputy President in Mandela’s ANC-led coalition, the Government of National Unity.
He shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela, saying that he had a clear conscience, knowing nothing about civil rights abuses or murders in the ’80s. In 1997, he retired from active politics and thereafter lectured internationally.
He married Marike Willemse in 1959, they had three children, and divorced in 1996. (She was killed in late 2001; a security guard at her apartment building strangled and stabbed her in Blaauwberg.) De Klerk married Elita Georgiades in 1999.
In 1999, his autobiography, The Last Trek – A New Beginning, was published. In 2002, following the murder of his former wife, the manuscript of her own autobiography, A Place Where the Sun Shines Again, was submitted to de Klerk, who urged the publishers to suppress a chapter dealing with his infidelity during his marriage to Marike.
De Klerk was a heavy smoker but gave up smoking towards the end of 2005. In 2006, he underwent surgery for a malignant tumour in his colon. His condition deteriorated sharply, and he underwent a tracheotomy after developing respiratory problems.
He enjoyed playing golf and hunting, as well as going for brisk walks. He also enjoyed a glass of whisky or wine while relaxing.
On 19 March 2021, it was announced that de Klerk had been diagnosed with mesothelioma. Several months later, on 11 November, he died from complications of the disease in his sleep at his home in Cape Town, at the age of 85. He was the last surviving State President of South Africa.
Link to Wikipedia biography