Should De Klerk be in prison with Eugene?

On February 2 1990 ,the last president of the repressive nationalist regime FW de Klerk stood before parliament and made this important and long overdue announcement: “I wish to put it plainly that the government has taken a firm decision to release Mr Mandela unconditionally.”

The announcement of the release of Mandela marked a crucial turning point in the political history of black people in this country. Many lives had been lost in the persistent fight against the repressive system of apartheid. The death of apartheid was inevitable. The evil Nationalist regime had recognised that the tide was shifting, that the global climate was unfavourable to the continuation of such a demonic system such as apartheid.

De Klerk had no other choice but to respond positively to insurmountable pressures internally and internationally. There may be those who wish to attribute some measure of heroism to De Klerk for unbanning political parties and paving a way for the negotiations that led to the new dispensation for all South Africans but the reality is that he did what he needed to do and what was the right thing to do and had been for a long time.

It was evidently clear in his speech before parliament that the decision to release Mandela was not inspired by the genuine willingness to secure the freedom of the oppressed black people but other interests. His government’s decision to release Mandela was a further response to the revolutionary wave that swept across Eastern Europe towards the end of 1989. Communism was staring the end of its relevance as the people of Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria rose against the rule of authoritarian oppression.

For a protracted period during the liberation struggle against apartheid, the Nationalist government suffered from chronic paranoia of “die Rooi Gevaar” to the security of the white minority. PW Botha once proclaimed that “the free world wants to feed South Africa to the Red Crocodile [communism], to appease its hunger”, “Die Groot Krokodil” as Botha was commonly known was obviously ignorant to the fact that indeed black people in this country could no longer contend with spasms of hunger for freedom. The liberation of black people was necessary, by any means.

While the West had pretended to hold a moral high ground when it colonised Africa, the Soviet Union had taken a principled position to support the cause for the liberation of Africans. Vladimir Shubin wrote that “according to the USSR Constitution ‘supporting the struggle of peoples for national liberation and social progress’ was regarded as one of the aims of the Soviet foreign policy”. The Russians and the Cubans were with Africans. not against them nor conniving with the apartheid regime against them.

The fall of communism in Eastern Europe must have brought a collective sigh of relief among the Afrikaner Nationalists because liberation movements across Africa had enjoyed unwavering support from the Soviet Union. The support by the Soviet Union for liberation movements such as the ANC under Mikhail Gorbachev was faltering. De Klerk along with his Afrikaner Nationalist cronies was imbued by these developments and opportunistically moved to unban political parties and “unconditionally” release Mandela and other political prisoners.

In his speech to parliament he warned that “those who seek to force this failure of a [communist] system on South Africa, should engage in a total revision of their point of view. It should be clear to all that is not the answer here either”.

He knew very well that communism was a direct threat to the accumulation of illicit wealth by the white minority at the expense of the oppressed masses. His posturings were in the interest of the preservation of economic interests of the white minority. If indeed he had real interest in the freedom of the oppressed masses, he and his cronies should have immediately prepared for the first democratic elections without the need for a negotiated settlement. They were negotiating to preserve whose interests? They were not negotiating for the greater good of the oppressed masses. The dream of Afrikaner self-determination was at the core of this pursuit of a negotiated settlement.

The ANC bent over backwards to appease paranoid Afrikaner Nationalists, compromising the immediate prospect of real economic empowerment of black people. Fifteen years in, the ownership of the JSE by black companies is still dismally low, hovering below a shameful 5% though the control of market capitalisation is slightly higher. The ANC policy of black economic empowerment has not assisted much as it served only to dispense patronage to the politically connected. Technically, black people have been screwed!

Now on the 20th anniversary of the release of Mandela from prison, there are those who seek to exalt De Klerk as a hero who the black people should be eternally indebted for ushering their freedom. De Klerk had no choice. Apartheid had to end. It is an insult to heroes of the liberation struggle to seek to credit De Klerk with the freedom of the black people. It was even more of an insult to Mandela to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize which he had to share with De Klerk. The period of black-on-black violence between 1990 and 1993 is a serious indictment on De Klerk.

The then Kenyan president, Daniel Arap Moi, on his visit to South Africa pleaded with De Klerk to stop the senseless cycle of violence which had engulfed the country and resulted in great loss of life. De Klerk did nothing to stop the ferocious violence among black people. It was reported that his police force was training and arming supporters of the Inkatha Freedom Party to launch a violent offensive against supporters of the ANC.

Mandela had very harsh words for him during the 1991 Codesa negotiations: “I have said to him: You have got a strong, well-equipped, efficient police force and defence force. Why are you not using that capacity to stop this violence. I have pointed out to him that the perception that exists amongst our people is that in the forefront of this violence, are elements of the security forces. No doubt. It is common knowledge that organisations like the CCB, their main task is to eliminate freedom fighters in this country. So many activists have been killed, without trace. The killers have never been traced, or hardly ever traced. And in those massacres not a single member of the National Party was even grazed with a spear. It is all activists who are in your position who fight apartheid … we could never give our arms to a government which we are sure either has lost control over the security forces or the security forces are doing precisely what he wants them to do. I can’t see any head of government who would allow such a culture of violence to take root, without interfering.”

Mandela also said “even the head of an illegitimate, discredited, minority regime as his, has certain moral standards to uphold”. It had become apparent to the ANC that De Klerk and his cronies were not negotiating in good faith while South Africa burned.

It is important that as we celebrate an important occasion in the history of our country we do not distort which side of history De Klerk stood. It must be remembered as De Klerk attempts to endear himself to the nation that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that while he claimed he was never aware of the full extent of the human-rights abuses, he very well knew about the 1988 bombing of a building in Johannesburg used by several anti-apartheid groups.

De Klerk should be sharing a jail cell with Eugene de Kock for presiding over one of the most violent periods in the struggle of our people for freedom. He is no hero, neither to black people nor the progressive section of the white minority.