蜜芽传媒

FW de Klerk, South Africa's last apartheid president, has died aged 85. HIs political legacy continues to divide many in South Africa. During his time in office, security forces were responsible for extreme violence against black South Africans who wanted an end to rule by the country's white minority. For others, he was a great statesman and a central part of the country's transition to a multi-racial democracy who will be remembered for ordering the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990.

Pallo Jordan was a minister in the first Government of National Unity headed by de Klerk and Mandela and he outlines his understanding of de Klerk's "paradoxical" legacy. He says that he and his forces were responsible for terrible violence, but that he was also a man of moral courage, in the fact that he chose to inaugurate democracy in the later years of his leadership, and that "a lesser man wouldn't have had the guts to do what de Klerk did".

Photo: FW de Klerk, former President of South Africa, June 1994 Credit: 蜜芽传媒