In this Post, I have shared some of the most Powerful F. W. de Klerk Quotes
Frederik Willem de Klerk was born on March 18, 1936, and died on November 11, 2021. He was a South African politician who served as state president of South Africa from 1989 to 1994 and as deputy president from 1994 to 1996 in the democratic government.
de Klerk was South Africa’s last white minority-ruling president, and he and his government abolished the apartheid system and instituted universal suffrage, granting the right to vote to all adult citizens regardless of wealth, income, gender, social status, race, ethnicity, political stance, or any other restriction.
de Klerk was born in Johannesburg to an aristocratic Afrikaner family. He studied law and subsequently became a politician. He joined the National Party, to which he had familial links, and was elected to parliament, serving in P. W. Botha’s white-minority government, holding a series of ministerial posts.
As a minister, de Klerk backed and enforced apartheid, a racial segregation system that favored white South Africans. After Botha resigned in 1989, de Klerk took over as NP leader and later as State President. Despite expectations that he would maintain Botha’s support for apartheid, de Klerk opted to abandon the system.
In 1993, de Klerk issued an official apology for apartheid’s negative consequences. He oversaw the 1994 non-racial election in which Mandela led the African National Congress (ANC) to victory and de Klerk’s NP finished second. Mandela’s ANC-led coalition, the Government of National Unity, appointed him as Deputy President. In this capacity, he backed the government’s ongoing liberal economic policies. He retired from active politics in 1997.
17 F. W. de Klerk Quotes
- “I have made the most profound apology in front of the Truth Commission and on other occasions about the injustices which were wrought by apartheid.”
2. “When I talk about the end of apartheid, I prefer not to claim the honor that I have ended it.”
3. “In our quest for peace, we should constantly ask ourselves what we should do to create conditions in which peace can prosper.”
4. “I believe that first impressions are very important.”
5. “President Mandela was not a hands-on president at any time.”
6. “I played an integral part in helpings formulating that new vision… that we must abandon apartheid and accept one united South Africa with equal rights for all, with all forms of discrimination to be scrapped from the statute book.”
7. “It was fortunate in looking back for South Africa and its entire people that Mandela and I found it possible to work together even though big strains developed between us from time to time.”
8. “I’m a Christian. I’m a South African. I’m an Afrikaner. I’m a lawyer. I love my country, and I think that this country has a great future. In that sense of the word, I`m a practical idealist.”
9. “If we dwell on real or imagined sins of the past, we shall never be able to find one another in the present, nor shall we be able to work together on building the future.”
10. “We’re not doing what we do because of sanctions. We’re doing what we do because we believe it is right.”
11. “My predecessor, P. W. Botha, had an inner circle, and I did not like it. I preferred decisions to evolve out of cabinet discussions. That way, we achieved real co-ownership of our policies.”
12. “I apologize in my capacity as leader of the NP to the millions who suffered wrenching disruption of forced removals; who suffered the shame of being arrested for pass law offences; who over the decades suffered the indignities and humiliation of racial discrimination.”
13. “There is a difference between calling something a crime. Genocide is a crime, apartheid cannot be for instance be compared with genocide, there was never genocide. (Many) more people died because of black-on-black violence than because of apartheid.”
14. “I have great sympathy with America. It’s very, it’s very tough to be the only remaining superpower in the world.”
15. “We are struggling with racism, but racism is also alive and well in many other countries. And what we must overcome is racism being the cause of conflict. And what we need to recognize human beings as human beings; to award merit.”
16 .”For many years I supported the concept of separate states. I believed it could bring justice for everyone, including the blacks who would determine their own lives inside their own states. But by the early 1980s I had concluded this would not work and was leading to injustice and that the system had to change.”
17. “Racism is a part of a problem, a world problem, which has to be overcome.”
My favorite F. W. de Klerk Quotes are, “I believe that first impressions are very important.” and “In our quest for peace, we should constantly ask ourselves what we should do to create conditions in which peace can prosper.”