Up for auction the "President of South Africa" FW de Klerk Hand Signed 4X6 Color Photo.

ES-171A

Frederik

Willem de Klerk (Afrikaans

pronunciation: [ˈfrɪədərək ˈvələm də ˈklɛrk]; born 18 March

1936) is a South African politician who served as State President of South Africa

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 from 1989 to 1997. Born in Johannesburg,

British

Dominion of South Africa, to an influential Afrikaner

family, de Klerk studied at Potchefstroom University before pursuing a

legal career. Joining the National Party, to which he had family ties, he was

elected to parliament and sat in the white-minority

government of P. W. Botha, holding a succession of

ministerial posts. As a minister, he supported and enforced apartheid, a system

of racial segregation that privileged white South Africans. After Botha

succumbed to ill health, in 1989 de Klerk replaced him, first as leader of the

National Party and then as State President. Although observers expected him to

continue Botha's defence of apartheid, de Klerk decided to end the policy. He

was aware that growing ethnic animosity and violence was leading South Africa

into a racial civil war. Amid this violence, the state security forces committed

widespread human rights abuses and encouraged violence between Xhosa

and Zulu,

although de Klerk later denied sanctioning such actions. 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 program. 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, although not for apartheid itself. He oversaw the 1994 non-racial election

in which Mandela led the African National Congress (ANC) to

victory; the National Party took second place with 20% of the vote. After the

election, de Klerk became a Deputy President in Mandela's ANC-led coalition, the Government of National Unity.

In this position, he supported the government's liberal economic policies. De

Klerk had desired a total amnesty for political crimes committed under

apartheid and opposed the Truth and

Reconciliation Commission set up to investigate past human rights abuses by both pro and

anti-apartheid groups. His working relationship with Mandela was strained,

although he later spoke fondly of him. In May 1996, after the National Party

objected to the new constitution, de Klerk withdrew it

from the coalition government; the party disbanded the following year and

reformed as the New National Party. In

1997, he retired from active politics and since then has lectured

internationally. De Klerk is a controversial figure. The recipient of a wide

range of awards—including the Nobel Peace

Prize—he was widely praised for dismantling apartheid and bringing

universal suffrage to South Africa. Conversely, anti-apartheid activists

criticised him for offering only a qualified apology for apartheid and for

ignoring the human rights abuses carried out by his state security forces,

while South Africa's white right-wing claimed that by abandoning apartheid he

had betrayed the interests of the country's white minority.