By: Ollus Ndomu
Hours after the passing on of South Africa’s last apartheid President, FW De KLERK, international media were buzzing with colonized history that always defends the wrongs of colonialists against Africans. We have heard, read and seen how neocolonialist minds are trying to portray De Klerk as an angel who facilitated the 1994 transition to a new South Africa. Their views are true except that they deny to acknowledge the many evils which De Klerk committed both directly and indirectly.
To many South Africans who lived under the brutal apartheid regime, the name FW de Klerk brings horrifying memories, a sense of loss and sheer injustice. It is under his 1989 – 1994 reign that many black nationalists were killed or jailed without trail, while their families and communities witnessed the worst form of brutality.
Sugarcoating the legacy of De Klerk is an insult to the families of the Cradock Four, a group of four anti-apartheid activists who were abducted and murdered by state police in 1985. Such misplaced praise of apartheid ramnants further undermines the memory of people of Boipatong, Mthata, Bhisho, the people of Vosloorus, and many communities who were maimed by De Klerk’s 1990-1994 state-sponsored black-on-black violence.
We remain strongly opposed to all those spreading colonized apartheid history. Why should one praise a De Klerk who upto his death saw nothing wrong with the apartheid system? A system which dehumanized indigenous South Africans, deprived them of their land, opportunities and basic human rights.
Africans in general must learn to call a spade, a spade. Death should not be used to sanitize injustices, homicides and violation of human rights, all written on the sands of time. FW de Klerk goes to the grave with his volitional evil acts and few good acts which we believe were but a culmination of international pressure against his regime’s sponsor killings of anti-apartheid South Africans.
