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LAST UPDATE | 11 Nov 2021
TRIBUTES ARE BEING paid following the death of FW De Klerk, South Africa’s last white president, at the age of 85.
De Klerk and South Africa’s first black president Nelson Mandela shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 for leading the “miracle” transition from white rule in the country.
He died after a battle with cancer, his foundation said in a statement.
De Klerk had announced his diagnosis on his 85th birthday, on 18 March this year.
“It is with the deepest sadness that the FW de Klerk Foundation must announce that former president FW de Klerk died peacefully at his home in Fresnaye earlier this morning following his struggle against mesothelioma cancer,” it said.
He is survived by his wife Elita, children Jan and Susan, and grandchildren.
“The family will, in due course, make an announcement regarding funeral arrangements,” it added.
The death of South Africa’s last white president drew mixed reactions, with some hailing his role in ending apartheid while others criticised a failure to atone for the horrors endured by majority blacks for decades.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin paid tribute to De Klerk this afternoon, tweeting: “Saddened to hear of the death of FW de Klerk, a man whose decisions at a key moment advanced South Africa’s journey from apartheid to democracy.
“His vision, along with Nelson Mandela, moulded a new South Africa.”
The office of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s office said: “The former president occupied an historic but difficult space in South Africa.”
Tutu, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his resistance to apartheid, led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) charged with uncovering the horrors of the white-minority regime.
After de Klerk’s appearance at the TRC, Tutu “addressed the media to express disappointment that the former president had not made a more wholesome apology on behalf of the National Party to the nation for the evils of apartheid,” the archbishop’s office said in statement.
However, it added: “The late FW de Klerk played an important role in South Africa’s history. At a time when not all of his colleagues saw the future trajectory of the country unfolding in the same way, he recognised the moment for change and demonstrated the will to act on it.”
Saddened to hear of the death of of FW de Klerk, a man whose decisions at a key moment advanced South Africa’s journey from apartheid to democracy.
— Micheál Martin (@MichealMartinTD) November 11, 2021
His vision, along with Nelson Mandela, moulded a new South Africa.
“De Klerk’s legacy is a big one,” the Nelson Mandela Foundation said. “It is also an uneven one, something South Africans are called to reckon with in this moment.”
The two leaders sparred frequently, but the Mandela foundation recalled his remarks at De Klerk’s 70th birthday celebrations.
“If we two old, or ageing, men have any lessons for our country and for the world, it is that solutions to conflicts can only be found if adversaries are fundamentally prepared to accept the integrity of one other,” Mandela said at the time.
De Klerk ensured his place in history when on 2 February 1990, he announced Mandela’s release from 27 years in jail and lifted the ban on black liberation movements, effectively declaring the death of white-minority rule.
“I would hope that history will recognise that I, together will all those who supported me, have shown courage, integrity, honesty at the moment of truth in our history. That we took the right turn,” De Klerk said.
20 years after that speech, De Klerk said freeing Mandela had “prevented a catastrophe”.
Frederik Willem de Klerk was born in Johannesburg on 18 March 1936.
His father, Jan de Klerk, was a minister in the National Party (NP) government that instituted apartheid. His uncle, JG Strijdom, was a prime minister notorious for stripping mixed race people of voting rights.
De Klerk followed in their footsteps. After practising law for 11 years, he won a seat in parliament for the NP in 1972 and climbed the political ladder through cabinet until he became the party’s leader in February 1989.
Just six months later, after PW Botha was forced to resign, De Klerk became president of South Africa.
“When he became head of the National Party, he seemed to be the quintessential party man, nothing more and nothing less,” Mandela wrote of him. “Nothing in his past seemed to hint at a spirit of reform.”
Yet Mandela sensed an opening and sent him a letter outlining a negotiated end to apartheid.
Less than two months later, De Klerk announced Mandela’s unconditional release and the end of the ban on the African National Congress.
De Klerk helped negotiate a new constitution, transforming South Africa into a non-racial democracy. He served for two years as Mandela’s deputy.
Despite relinquishing power and ushering in democracy, De Klerk never moulded to the new South Africa.
He appeared before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, apologising for apartheid. He also stormed out and accused the panel of bias.
As Mandela became a global icon, De Klerk in a 2012 speech insisted: “He was by no means the avuncular and saint-like figure so widely depicted today.”
I am saddened by the death of FW de Klerk. My condolences to his family for their loss. pic.twitter.com/WA1J7Ngisg
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) November 11, 2021
In his later years, De Klerk called on the ANC government to take accountability for rampant poverty and joblessness.
But he would bristle at efforts to hold him accountable, and never accepted responsibility for the torture, rapes, and killings committed by the whites-only government.
He tried to make excuses for apartheid’s network of “bantustans”, intended to confine black South Africans to supposed ethnic homelands.
And in 2020, he sparked a national furore by refusing to call apartheid a crime against humanity.
He always backtracked, especially if the scandals rippled into international headlines. But even when he found the right words, he was never able to strike the right tone in modern South Africa.
For all he gave the country, what he couldn’t give was a sense of remorse.
De Klerk and his first wife, Marike, who married in April 1958, had three adopted children. The couple divorced in 1998 after he admitted to an affair with Elita Georgiades, the wife of a Greek shipping tycoon. De Klerk and Georgiades married the same year.
Showing a keen awareness of his tarnished legacy, de Klerk delivered a posthumous video message apologising for apartheid, released just hours after his death.
“I am often accused by critics that I in some way or another continued to justify apartheid or separate development, as we later preferred to call it,” he said in the message released by his foundation.
“It is true that in my younger years I defended separate development,” De Klerk said.
“Afterwards, on many occasions, I apologised to the South African public for the pain and indignity that apartheid has brought to people of colour in South Africa. Many believed me but others didn’t.”
“I without qualification apologise for the pain and hurt and the indignity and the damage that apartheid has done to black, brown and Indians in SA,” he said.
De Klerk said he made the apology both in his personal capacity and as the former leader of the National Party, which instituted the violent apartheid system of segregation.
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Cue the pest control being back in a month to get rid of the rats/mice and other vermin the cats are currently keeping under control
Hit the nail on the head with this comment. I’d rather have some feral cats who will run away if they see you than mice or rats getting into my home.
Love the people before profit logo on the butchers letterhead !! She’ll find her own in Gaia’s Karma stream & bad scrawn to PbProperties !!
Neuter. Have a small food/shelter section for them. They’ll keep mice/rats away.
‘Rat a tat, tat’!
“Whose there”?
“Cat”!!
“Cat who…?”
“Cat-ch you if I can”!!
Save the cats, don’t kill them they are providing a service to us all.
The removal – and presumptive killing – of these cats by a pest control company is unethical, immoral, illegal, more expensive than TNR and in any event will only make their feral cat problem worse.
Our experience in the veterinary profession has shown that removal of feral cats will only result in other feral cats taking their place. The only long term solution is to trap the cats that are there, neuter them and return them back (Trap-Neuter-Return, TNR). TNR has been demonstrated to be the most humane and effective long term solution to the feral cat problem.
To use TNR to solve the problem in Diamond Valley will result in a small healthy population of cats that will not reproduce and that will continue to do their job of keeping down the rat and mice problem. This stable neutered and healthy cat colony will prevent other cats from entering the complex. Furthermore, apart from the ethical and moral dimension, it is actually far cheaper to trap and neuter the cats than it is to engage a pest control company to trap and kill them. My understanding is that some of the cats in Diamond Valley have already been neutered and returned to the complex and finally some of these cats are actually pet cats that are owned by residents. It will not be possible for the pest control company to be able to tell the ‘feral’ cats from the ‘owned’ cats and should they remove and kill any cat they may well be removing owned pet cats. This is obviously unacceptable and is also illegal (ref. Animal Health and Welfare Act 2013)
I have informed the management company that I am more than happy to discuss this further with them to find a solution that will be acceptable to the general public and will also be effective in the long term.
If you wish to read further on TNR and in particular how one local Tesco store is using it as the preferred method to control their feral cat population please see an article my colleague Pete Wedderburn and I wrote at http://goo.gl/cq5GI9
Well said Alan, cats are territorial and they protect their own space. If there are to many then nuter them and locate some of them somewhere else. Don’t destroy them.
Hiring a Pest control company to remove and kill the cats is totally immoral,barbaric and unacceptable. These
Cats would undergo a painful death. Trap,neuter and return is the way to go. How does the management know
That some of these cats might have owners? To my mind anyway, owners should neuter their cats unless, the
Cats are pedigree for breeding and showing, they would therefore be kept in confined spaces. Our 5 lovelies have
An enclosure attached to our house. There are too many dangers out there especially what I have just read.
These cats have a right to life.
If the cats have collar+/- microchip then it is possible to determine if they are feral. Every pet cat should have a collar with bells on if it is outdoors.
How exactly will the cats undergo a painful death?
And if they have a bell on their collar they’re not going to be able to catch mice or rats now are they?
The bells reduces the amounts of birds they kill!
I would rather have the cats running around the place than rats and mice. The cats keep the rat population in check.
Wild cats are vermin. Cull is the only way .
Same as mink .
It’s not the cats that are vermin but their owners who never looked after them.
Not vermin, they kill vermin. Not Wildcats either.
Why do you say they are vermin?
Why don’t these people take the cats in if they feel so strongly bout it …
If they are feral it is too late. They can’t be domesticated.
Theres only so many cats someone can take in :P
Feral cats are a big problem in Ireland but I think if a humane society has offered to neuter them then that’s a fair compromise. Seven cats may not seem much of s problem but cats mature and breed very quickly, that initial seven could be over a hundred in a year’s time. So, by all means neuter them but do something.
There is an island in Greece called Meganissi, has loads of feral, its called cat island, they annoy tourists at the outdoor tavernas , begging for food, so there is a cull every 2 years, in the interm year the island is called rat island…
Unofficial but my understanding is that the property management has agreed to talk to Louise Cardiff of Greystones Kitty Hostel & TNR (https://www.facebook.com/Kittyres1?fref=ts) about utilising TNR on site and apparently cancelled the pest control, so at the moment, it seems like a good result. Well done to all.
In fairness the property management company may not have known about TNR, may not have understood that the pest control company generally kill the cats they catch, may not have realised that pet cats may be trapped in error and may now consider TNR as their preferred method to control feral cat populations on their properties.
Any chance of pest control dealing with Dublin inner city feral youth?
Those lobster releasing animal rights activists are going to free the non native cats then put them out into the country side where there are plenty of native birds and rodents for them to eat.
Whilst your tone is a bit off you are right in saying it is not acceptable to release cats into the wild like that. It is only acceptable to neuter them and then return them to where they originally were, in an urban setting.
No according to a Horizon program cats do not have an impact on birds as crows, magpies, birds of prey and modern farming methods have a bigger effect on birds than cats do.
Feral cats have a huge impact on threatened ground nesting species like corncrake.
Feral cats exist only because of irresponsible pet owners who fail to neuter their pet and turn a blind eye to the litters of kittens they produce several several times a year. This problem is compounded by owners who abandon they cats. This problem might be helped in some way if the ‘feral cat problem’ was addressed by our Minister but even in the latest Animal Welfare Bill cats were not even mentioned!. A feral cat is simply a cat that has not been socialised and not used to human contact. Every piece of research in the world shows the most effective way to treat feral cats is the TNR method which as it suggests stops the cats from reproducing. Anyone who thinks that pest control is going to solve ‘this problem’ is fooling themselves and more important causing the needless deaths of innocent animals. Let those who know look after the cats and leave the pest companies out of it.
I tawt I taw a puddy tat.
Save Mrs. Slocumbs pussy!!!!
Did we ever get to see her pussy?
Some people have too much time on their hands.
Really? What do you do with yours? Post stupid comments?
They’re cats. Move on.
I tried everything to stop cat’s shitting on my little vegetable patch, and spraying piss all over the place, The cat owners don’t give a fukk where their cat shites .anyone got the exterminaters number, please.
22 with a good nightvision scope .
How do you propose cat owners control where their cats do their business? Probably helping your veg to grow anyway !
it’s attitudes like yours that has cat shite all over the kip. why a license for a dog and not a cat.
Lol ! How will a cat Licence stop them shitting on your veg ? How do you train a cat where to go ? Also most cats bury it, the vast majority of what you see has been left behind by dogs not cats.
I do know the difference between a dog and a cat . but I have a plan B under way sorted.
By keeping your filthy rotten cat on your own property! How would you like it if you couldn’t let your kids out to play in your own enclosed back garden because your neighbour thinks it’s perfectly fine to let their animal roam free all f€%king day to shit where it likes?! I have the same problem as you op. I don’t own any pets but my garden is still covered in cat shit! It’s all by disgrace.
If cat owners want a pet so much they should have to control where it goes. I don’t care how they do it but they should have to be responsible for their animals. they’d be giving off if they awoke to a neighbours dog ruining their back gardens. At least with dogs they can call the dog warden if they’re let roam about. But cat owners aren’t expected to have any responsibility for their pets.
Either of you horrific creatures from Waterford? http://www.thejournal.ie/dogs-and-cats-poisoned-waterford-2132700-Jun2015/
Who are you calling ahorrific creature? I never called for them to be harmed just don’t like that dog owners have to (rightly) pick up after their dogs but cat owners open the door in the morning and let their cats out to do as they like for the day without considering that their animals are a nuisance to others and are ruining other people’s gardens. So spare me the bleeding heart act, you wouldn’t as understanding if you couldn’t set foot onto your lawn for fear of what you might step in. It’s disgusting
So how do suggest cat owners keep cats on their property Aoife ? 10ft high walls ? nets over their gardens ? lol.
But sure why would ye? Why would you let your filthy cats sh#t in your own gardens when they could do it in the neighbours?
If ye were in any way a responsible pet owner or if ye had even an ounce of respect for your neighbours you’d all know these things exist. Morons
Lol ! do you think we tell our cats were to do it ?!?!. C’mere Felix, a word in your cat – like ear… My cat is probably a lot more hygienic than you by the way, spends an awful lot of her time washing herself so she does. I I’d say you go mad when a bird shits on your driveway too. Who are you gonna blame for that ? You’ve obviously little to be worried about. lol…
Little to worry about?! I pay crazy rent and can’t even use my back garden because people like you can’t be arsed to keep your cats in your houses or on your property! If you can’t contain your animal you shouldn’t have one. And I don’t care how clean you think your manky cat is I can’t let my niece play in my garden when she comes to visit because of my neighbours cats using my garden as a toilet. It’s disgusting and it’s not fair on people like me who don’t keep pets and try to be good neighbours and tenants. It’s a joke.
And your an egg head.
Move on to… what do you suggest? Children in Africa?
How do they know that all of them are feral cats as cats can attract other local cats?
have your say