Former president FW de Klerk's family has announced it will hold a private funeral for him.
According to the government’s funeral manual, De Klerk had been entitled to a State Funeral Category 1 funeral which is reserved for the president, president-elect and former presidents of the country.
With the ceremony being closed to the public, it was not immediately clear whether incumbent president Cyril Ramaphosa would be among the dignitaries who would be welcomed by the family for the funeral. He disclosed on his 85th birthday in March that he was suffering from lung cancer. “It is also an uneven one, something South Africans are called to reckon with in this moment,” it said.
De Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 with Nelson Mandela “for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic SA”.
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