The Dutch Reformed Church minister who officiated when former president FW de Klerk married his first wife, Marike, on Thursday testified in the Cape High Court about the former first lady.
Dominee Pieter Bingle was called by prosecutor Tessa Heunis to testify in aggravation of sentence for former security guard Luyanda Mboniswa (22) convicted this week of murder, robbery with aggravated circumstances and housebreaking.
Testifying before Judge President John Hlophe and assessors Colin Cloete and Gessie Lategan, Bingle told the court he had ”gone a long road” with the De Klerk’s.
He said he and Marike had met as students at Potchefstroom University in 1957. She had done a BCom degree and had been a brilliant student. She was highly intelligent and a good hostess, although she had had her likes and dislikes. She was a person of integrity who had strongly believed in Christian values.
During her many years with FW, she had done a lot of street work politically, and had reached out to the less privileged. Bingle told the court: ”She had a passion for people who were hurting, because she had also got hurt.”
She had enjoyed the company of her three children, Jan, Susan and Willem, and after her retirement from public life when she spent more time with them. She had five grandchildren. A month before her death she had attended the baptism of her
granddaughter, ”Klein Marike” in Pretoria.
She had thereafter regularly attended his own church services at the Dutch Reformed Church near the Mount Nelson Hotel in Cape Town. Bingle said Marike de Klerk was eager to have the dominee’s work, already published in newspapers and several publications, published in book form and for this she had wanted to introduce him to a publisher.
Bingle said he had telephoned her on December 4 to confirm an appointment to meet her but all he got was messages from her telephone answering machine.
He told the court: ”Little did I know she was already dead.”
He said when she returned from the Pretoria baptism in November last year, she had zest and sparkle and he could see the old Marike again.
He said she had been diagnosed in 1987 with cancer which had left her left arm weakened, which had rendered her virtually defenceless. It had been traumatic for her children when the De Klerk’s divorced, and even worse for them to lose their mother.
Willem and his wife were to have had lunch with Marike de Klerk at Camps Bay on December 4. When she failed to arrive at the restaurant Willem had telephoned his mother but got no answer. He then telephoned his brother Jan, a farmer in the Northwest province, who had informed him of his mother’s death. The hearing continues. – Sapa