‘Forgiveness liberates the soul, it removes fear. That’s why it’s such a powerful weapon. Reconciliation does not mean forgetting or trying to bury the pain of conflict, but that reconciliation means working together to correct the legacy of past injustice.’ — Nelson Mandela 1995.
FW de Klerk has died. And his passage has unleashed a cacophony of pent-up emotions that for nearly three decades we have swept under the carpet. A festering sore has broken and its pus oozes painfully into our public debate.The key question is: who stole our revolution?In the 1980s we were fierce opponents in a deadly struggle to reclaim our human dignity and the right to elect the leaders we wanted.
De Klerk was a conservative who came from a long line of family who served the National Party, which was key in constructing the apartheid architecture that dominated our country. And I, and many others were on circulating death lists of the apartheid state and its collaborators. In that period of repressive actions that saw tens of thousands of young people in detention or forced to leave the country, there can be no escaping the culpability De Klerk had in what happened.On the political spectrum, we were the polarities. We fought on many issues: The National Party’s demand to write white minority rights into the Constitution.
I never recognised De Klerk as my president in an apartheid South Africa. But I did serve in the first democratically elected government of South Africa in 1994 in which he was the deputy president. And I respect that office. The elusive peace and democratic dividend that has been funnelled into the fattening carcass of corrupt officials and politicians, aided and abetted by global multinationals and our locally bred mercenary middlemen, is responsible for the sorry state of our democracy.Well, let’s look at the Zondo Commission. It’s been an unsightly parade of tarnished bandits from the public and private sector, who, irrespective of their political affiliation, have so muddied the waters of our democracy.
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