F.W. de Klerk

Frederik Willem de Klerk (1936–2021) led South Africa's National Party from February 1989 and served as State President from September 1989 until May 1994. Coming from an Afrikaner political dynasty—his father Jan de Klerk had been a senator and cabinet minister—he was widely seen as a conservative when he took office, making his subsequent reforms especially unexpected.

In his opening address to parliament on 2 February 1990, de Klerk announced the unbanning of the African National Congress, the Pan Africanist Congress, the South African Communist Party, and dozens of other organisations. Nine days later, on 11 February 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from Victor Verster Prison after 27 years in detention. Over the following four years de Klerk dismantled the legal architecture of apartheid, including the repeal of the Population Registration Act, the Group Areas Act, and the Land Acts in 1991. He also disclosed and terminated South Africa's covert nuclear weapons programme.

De Klerk's government and the ANC negotiated through the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) and the Multi-Party Negotiating Forum, producing an interim constitution and the first non-racial elections of 27 April 1994. A whites-only referendum in March 1992 gave him a mandate of roughly 68% to continue reform.

He and Mandela jointly received the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize. After the ANC's 1994 victory he served as one of two Deputy Presidents in Mandela's Government of National Unity until the National Party withdrew in 1996. He later led the F.W. de Klerk Foundation.

His legacy remains contested. Critics point to ongoing state-linked violence during the transition and his 2020 reluctance to unequivocally label apartheid a crime against humanity, for which his foundation later apologised. Supporters credit him with averting civil war by ceding power voluntarily—a rare occurrence in 20th-century politics.