Before dying, FW de Klerk recorded a video of himself apologising for apartheid.
“I, without qualification, apologise for the pain and the hurt and the indignity and the damage that apartheid has done to black, brown and Indians in South Africa,” the last apartheid era president says in the video.
“I am often accused by critics that I in some way or another continued to justify apartheid…It is true that in my younger years I defended [it]”.
De Klerk, who died of a rare form of cancer, appears thin, gaunt and frail in the video. He sometimes seems close to tears.
He continues: “Since the early 1980s my views changed completely. It was as if I had a conversion….I realised that apartheid was wrong.”
De Klerk avoids discussion of any personal responsibility for any crimes or human rights abuses committed by the governments he served before or after he became president in 1989.
He says that after the political changes he effected – which resulted in the release of Nelson Mandela and the unbanning of the ANC – “on many occasions, I apologised to the South African public for the pain and indignity that apartheid has brought to people of colour in SA. Many believed me but others didn’t”.
Video source: @NewsHawksLive
