'Shock' at De Klerk's ignorance
"It is unarguable and hopeless to claim today that apartheid is not, and has never been, a 'crime against humanity,'" said Philippe Sands, QC, a professor and expert on international law. To push home that same point, another former South African President, Thabo Mbeki, announced that he would send Mr de Klerk a copy of the relevant UN convention, having been shocked to learn from the man himself that his predecessor "actually did not know" about its existence. Some voices - particularly, but not exclusively, those of white South Africans - responded to Mr De Klerk's comments by calling for people to "move on" and to focus on more urgent priorities like fighting corruption, tackling poverty, and reviving a stagnant economy. Those same voices suggested that the furore was being deliberately, cynically, exploited by the ANC and others, in order to deflect attention from its own failings, and to shift blame to the white minority. There is no doubt that in recent years, under former President Jacob Zuma, and spurred on by the EFF, the political rhetoric in South Africa has become increasingly racialised. White farmers and "white monopoly capital" have frequently been blamed for the country's slow pace of economic transformation. People queued in their millions to vote in South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994 The former leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance, Helen Zille, has regularly bemoaned the growth of racial nationalism, and of "identity politics" which has also caused friction within her own party. But to many others here - perhaps even to the majority - Mr De Klerk's comments appeared to reinforce a wider perception that many white people have never been obliged to confront, properly, the evils of the past. This is in part, perhaps, because apartheid ended through negotiation rather than a military victory. "Far too many white South Africans… continue to deny the full horror of apartheid," wrote constitutional expert Pierre de Vos. "[They] refuse to admit that they or their parents actively, or tacitly, propped up the system and still reap the benefits bestowed on them by that system."'De Klerk should repent'
"Sadly, FW de Klerk, his foundation, and the behaviour of some of our white compatriots of even trying… to justify the systemic destruction of black lives for generations, has opened old wounds at the time when many are questioning the very democracy and its liberation dividends," wrote political commentator Somadoda Fikeni on Twitter. "De Klerk soaked up the glory and the money on the speaking circuit when he should have repented every single day," tweeted prominent journalist Carol Paton. The ANC issued its own statement, condemning Mr De Klerk's argument as "a blatant whitewash [which]… flies in the face of our commitments to reconciliation and nation building". Soon afterwards, Archbishop Desmond Tutu's foundation called on the De Klerk Foundation to "withdraw its statement". It angrily chided the former president: "It is incumbent on leaders and former leaders of the white community, in particular, to demonstrate the courage, magnanimity and compassion necessary to contribute to societal healing." This row has surfaced at a particularly difficult time. As Desmond Tutu himself put it in his foundation's statement, South Africa "is on an economic precipice. It is beset by radical poverty and inequity. Those who suffered most under apartheid continue to suffer most today." Some black South Africans have taken to arguing that Mr Mandela himself was a sell-out, and that the painful and hard-won compromises that led to the emergence of a democratic "rainbow" nation, now need to be re-examined. In his second statement, withdrawing his first, Mr De Klerk acknowledged that his comments about apartheid had been "totally unacceptable".DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.
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