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Fw De Klerk

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Norbert Ndjeka was born on World TB Day. Decades later, he would reshape how South Africa treats the deadliest forms of the disease. (Supplied)

How a boy born on World TB Day helped turn the tide on SA’s deadliest TB

Norbert Ndjeka was born on World TB Day. Decades later, he would reshape how South Africa treats the deadliest forms of the disease

A sea of blue memorial peace race participants were ferried by dozens of boats to take part in the third annual
10km run and walk hosted by the Robben Island Museum Council. Photo: Marlan Padayachee

Bittersweet return to Robben Island

For decades, the island was a towering emblem of punishment—first for enslaved labourers and lepers under colonial rule and later for the anti-apartheid resisters who dared to…

Respect: Co-editors Anton Harber (behind) and Irwin Manoim haven’t changed (much) in the 40 years since they launched the Weekly Mail, when they were joined by a range of reprobates who believed in a cause. Photo: Weekly Mail

Bitching and moaning. For a cause

This is an edited version of former co-editor Irwin Manoim’s speech delivered at a reunion of those who were there when the Weekly Mail, now the Mail & Guardian, was founded 40…

(Graphic: John McCann/M&G)

GNU: Will we work together this time?

When a unity government was being formed in the 1990s there was suspicion and mistrust

EFF leader Julius Malema. (Photo by Gallo Images/Sharon Seretlo)

KHAYA KOKO: We need a Julius Malema whisperer

The EFF leader changes his views faster than a Nigerian man running in flip-flops

Jacob Zuma’s MK party were the big winners in this year’s elections. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)

Zuma’s election antics are wild, even by South Africa’s standards

The door-to-doors have door-to-doored and now it’s all over – except for the voting

It was the prospect of power sharing between barely reconciled ideological and moral enemies that confounded the people. (Photo  Louise Gubb/CORBIS SABA/Corbis via Getty Images)

Mandela and De Klerk: South Africa’s first election debate

Ten days before the first democratic election the extraordinary occurred when the leader of the liberation movement and that of the apartheid National Party sat down to talk

What’s in a name?: William Nicol Drive in Johannesburg, named after an administrator of the Transvaal, was last month renamed Winnie Mandela Drive. Photo: Papi Morake/Gallo Images

Name changes: The long road to a national identity

The change of street and place names rouses the country’s attention unlike anything else and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon

Royalty: Mangosuthu Buthelezi (right) confers with the now late King Goodwill Zwelithini. (RAJESH JANTILAL/AFP via Getty Images)

Buthelezi made the Ingonyama Trust, but lost influence over it in the end

The Zulu traditional prime minister and his king quarrelled over the trust during his final months

Photographing past and present newsmakers

As I enter the exhibition titled Names in Uphill Letters — A historiography of the newsmakers who tread(ed) South Africa’s soil, at the Workers Museum in Newtown, I encounter a…

Auspicious: Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela are among other familiar, if younger, faces at a protest march in 1990 on the same day as FW de Klerk unbanned the ANC. Photo: Susan Winters Cook/Getty

Unbanned are now the damned

The ruling party was unbanned 32 years ago on 2 February, but few ANC leaders can be feeling festive today

The news of the death of FW de Klerk, apartheid’s last president, caused varying reactions across the country.

Why many people are rejecting De Klerk’s post-death apology

What can one fix with an 85-year-old white man whose apology to black people only surfaced after he is dead? The answer is nothing

A priest leads a funeral procession for four United Democratic Front activists from Queenstown who were abducted and murdered by the South African security police. Those slain included Matthew Goniwe and Sparrow Mkonto. One mourner carries a small ceremonial spear within his black power salute, symbolic of Umkonto Wa Sizwe, which means “spear of the nation”. (Photo by Gideon Mendel/Corbis via Getty Images)

Let us not allow FW De Klerk’s death to tear us apart

His blanket apology did not cast him as a man of principle but as a man of cowardice

South Africa’s last apartheid president, FW de Klerk.

White South Africans must not follow De Klerk’s example and apologise for apartheid but commit to restoration

The problem with a racial superiority complex is that it does not come to an end with the abolishment of discriminatory laws but finds its expression informally

Tiny steps: Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk make opening press statements during the first talks between the National Party government and the ANC.(Photo by © Louise Gubb/CORBIS SABA/Corbis via Getty Images)

Apartheid truths die with De Klerk

The regime’s last president may have ushered in democracy but he refused to take responsibility for the deeds of his National Party government