Now that the dust around the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report has settled, the reputation of former president FW de Klerk’s legacy as a peacemaker and a co-liberator is being reassessed.
The final report castigates De Klerk’s snubbing of its process, and in the first week of April a former TRC commissioner joined TRC chairperson Archbishop Desmond Tutu and senior former National Party members in painting a less sanguine picture of the former president.
Tutu’s autobiography, No Future without Forgiveness, slates De Klerk, saying that he should have withheld endorsement for De Klerk’s Nobel Peace Prize.
De Klerk, now a speaker on the international statesman’s circuit, insists his reputation has not been tarnished, and he continues to blame a loaded TRC for painting him in an uncomplimentary light.
At issue for the TRC is De Klerk’s refusal to acknowledge his and the Nats’ responsibility for the gross human rights violations that took place under the apartheid regime.
TRC commissioner Yasmin Sooka said in the first week of April: “We [the TRC] had great expectations from De Klerk, a Noble Peace Prize-winner, who unlike PW Botha had crossed the Rubicon and would avail himself of the magnanimous opportunity offered to all white South Africans.”
The TRC, in its final two volumes released two weeks ago, cites international law, including the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. These state that any acts committed by subordinates do not relieve their superiors of criminal responsibility.
Sooka says this section was written with reference to the NP governments that oversaw the apartheid order.
The TRC report describes as “indefensible” De Klerk’s statement before the commission in 1996 that none of his colleagues in the Cabinet, the State Security Council or Cabinet committees had authorised assassination, murder or other gross violation of human rights. The finding was made in relation to the bombing of Khotso House.
Tutu wrote in his memoirs that when the Norwegian Nobel committee telephoned him for his opinion on their intention to award the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize jointly to Nelson Mandela and De Klerk, he had supported the decision enthusiastically. Tutu writes: “Had I known then what I know now, I would have opposed it vehemently.”
De Klerk’s refusal to admit responsibility was glaring in the face of the testimony given by his former colleagues and members of the State Security Council. Those who testified before the commission included former NP minister of law and order Adriaan Vlok, minister of foreign affairs Pik Botha and deputy justice minister Leon Wessels.
De Klerk’s failure to follow in his colleagues’ footsteps caused Tutu to remark: “He was incapable of seeing apartheid for what it was — intrinsically evil. He is a very bright lawyer who qualifies his answers carefully to protect his position, but in doing this he has steadily eroded his stature, becoming in the process a small man, lacking magnanimity and generosity of spirit.
“I hope he has the sensitivity to realise that his idea of establishing an institute for reconciliation, which he announced in 1998, would rub salt into the wounds of the victims of a policy over which he presided.”
Tutu’s remarks are the most castigating pall over De Klerk’s legacy, though his former colleague, Roelf Meyer, says his decision in 1990 to begin dismantling apartheid was a historic moment.
Meyer says history cannot deny De Klerk credit for having begun the dismantling of apartheid, but says the leader did not really undertake the “paradigm shift” that power should vest in the hands of the majority.
Meyer says the Nats who decided to appear before the TRC of their own accord were unhappy with De Klerk’s written submission to the commission. “I did not agree with his approach, which is why I made my own submission, and by that time I had already been sacked by him.”
After 1994, De Klerk’s progressive political will seemed to seep away, and he actively opposed efforts to transform the NP. Meyer explains that before 1994 De Klerk was the state president, and with the position came the authority with which he could shut down voices of dissent from the conservative elements within the NP.
Throughout the negotiations, says Meyer, De Klerk fought for the conservative elements within the NP to support him.
“I remember when Nelson Mandela was released, De Klerk said to me, ‘We are now starting with the liquidation of the old regime’ — that to my mind was a very clear statement about his commitment to change.”
Yet in 1997 it was De Klerk who turned down Botha’s proposal that the entire former Nat Cabinet apply for amnesty. Botha recalls that when the ANC leaders decided to apply for amnesty, he wrote a letter to De Klerk in 1997: “I reasoned with him that since the ANC was doing it we would stand out like a seer duim [sore thumb]. I said if he takes the lead with all the ex-Cabinet ministers, it would also help in the reconciliation between the ANC and the NP.” It was shot down by the conservative elements within the party, with whom De Klerk concurred.
De Klerk this week denied that his legacy is questionable. His spokesperson, Dave Steward, says: “The whole theme and purpose of Mr de Klerk’s presidency was the systematic dismantling of all the remaining apartheid laws, culminating finally in the negotiation of a new non-racial and fully democratic constitution.”
He said the former Nat leader “could not accept — and was under no obligation to accept — responsibility for actions that were taken in express contravention of his instruction, and were aimed at undermining the policies of transformation that he himself had initiated”. The TRC, Steward says, has chosen to ignore the “sincere apology” that De Klerk made for all the human rights violations caused by apartheid.
Steward claims the TRC was biased against the NP and wished to impose its own “struggle” version of the past.
He says: “It also became clear that the TRC — and particularly the staffers on the commission — were determined to do as much damage as possible to De Klerk’s reputation presumably because of their view that nothing good or honourable could possibly come from the past.”
He also refutes Meyer’s observations that De Klerk was not prepared for majority rule. He points out that since it was De Klerk who had initiated the transformation process in 1990, he was well aware the process would lead to majority rule — though De Klerk has subsequently issued withering critiques of majoritarianism.
“The majoritarian reality, which has now, to a certain extent, been thrust on us, contains the clear threat of the kind of racial domination which must be avoided at all costs,” he says in his autobiography, called The Last Trek: A New Beginning.
Steward points out that De Klerk established the Goldstone commission and the Steyn investigation to “uncover evidence of wrongdoing” involving the security forces.
But journalist Allister Sparks, in his book Tomorrow Is Another Country, says De Klerk made “half-hearted attempts to clamp down on the renegade elements in his security forces” after the investigations found evidence of third-force activity.
How should De Klerk go down in history? The jury’s still out, but on balance, the view from the most influential quarters of South Africa is that his history is that of a political pragmatist and a man whose hand was forced by circumstance rather than by principle.
Many have criticised the TRC for various reasons, but De Klerk’s snubbing of it went further than most — he took them to court twice and continues to cast aspersions on its constitution.
A question the Nobel Peace Prize committee should perhaps ask itself is one being asked in many South African quarters: did we act in haste?