F.W. De Klerk: Perfect 20th Century Villain/Hero
On December 8, 1993, Nelson Mandela and F. W. de Klerk received the Nobel Peace Prize together in Oslo, Norway. After the ceremony, the two men emerged onto the first floor balcony of the hotel where the awards ceremony had taken place. A crowd proceeded down the avenue by candlelight, shouting ANC slogans. Suddenly, some people began to shout, "Kill the farmer, kill the Boer!" and "De Klerk, go home!" De Klerk and his wife Marike faced the crowd, waited until the strains of "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika" died down, and then slipped into the hotel away from the hostility.
Later, rumors that de Klerk and his wife had turned their backs on the crowd during "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika" surfaced. "It is untrue," de Klerk defends himself in his autobiography The Last Trek: A New Beginning. "For me and Marike, it was a very unpleasant situation. However, we stood our ground and faced the crowd..." ( de Klerk 299).
F. W. de Klerk remains a 20th century enigma. The reception the crowd gave him on the hotel balcony after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize characterizes the ambiguous perception that the world retains of the former state president of South Africa. On the one hand, he was one of the men who led South Africa into a new era by dismantling apartheid and creating a democratic government. On the other hand, his character and purpose retain the smear associated with the National Party, the architect of apartheid. Historians who have analyzed South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy consistently question de Klerk's motives, arguing that through it all, his intent was to retain a power base for white South Africans. He had to admit the inevitability of power sharing with blacks, but his every action and argument rested on defending white power and retaining a semblance of it.
The Last Trek, de Klerk's autobiography, is his response to personal and political criticism; in particular, it is a response to Nelson Mandela's public criticism in speeches and his own autobiography, Long Walk To Freedom. Indeed, de Klerk's title declares his intention to have the last word. If Mandela's "long walk to freedom" ended in 1994 at his presidential inauguration and with the publication of his autobiography, then de Klerk's "final walk/trek" suggests an end to the argument in 1999.
(Don't forget that the word "trek" is a word heavily laden with cultural and historical connotations for Afrikaners. It evokes memories of "The Great Trek," when Afrikaners escaped British authority by migrating to the highveld early in the nineteenth century. Not only does using that word remind people of de Klerk's Afrikaner heritage, but it suggests the same sort of patriotism that Americans think of when we read about Americans in the Revolutionary War.)
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