FW DE KLERK has obviously decided his golf game is more important than his place in history. How else does one explain the desertion of the political wisdom that was so manifest on February 2 1990, when he seemed to have the world at his feet?
Surely this petty politician railing against the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is not a Nobel Peace Prize laureate? With each whining attempt to evade responsibility for the appalling history of his party, De Klerk grows more and more diminished, a sad figure out of touch with his country.
The truth commission’s mandate comes from Parliament, where the National Party helped draft and ratify the legislation that gave it birth. And now that the commission does precisely what it was created to do – drill De Klerk on his culpability as apartheid’s last president – he bleats that the body is biased towards the African National Congress and demands an apology from it.
Despite being confronted with State Security Council minutes at the commission’s political party hearings, De Klerk continued to refuse to take responsibility for human rights abuses committed by his former security forces. Faced with this amnesiac and stubborn response from a lifelong member of the party that brought such misery, mayhem and murder to this country, it is perfectly understandable that even the oft-forgiving commission chair Desmond Tutu would lose his cool.
De Klerk appears to be trapped in a lie. He began rewriting history in the run-up to the 1994 elections, claiming that he had personally liberated South Africa from apartheid. And he has consistently stuck to this story ever since, abrogating all responsibility for the atrocities committed by the NP before and after 1990.
His real problem is that to the vast majority of South Africans the NP is synonomous with a racist and murderous system. Each week the revelations at the truth commission drive this home. The NP’s response – a transparent state of denial – shows the party is an anachronism. Judging by the numbers of supporters and office- bearers deserting the sinking ship and following Roelf Meyer out of the party, this view is shared by many of those who supported De Klerk in 1994.
The NP failed in government and now they are failing in opposition. Its only logical path is to disband. Unable to face up to the past, it has no future. The sooner it makes way for a real opposition, the better the prospects for real democracy.