As Minister of National Education, F.W. de Klerk was a supporter of segregated universities, and as a leader of the National Party in Transvaal, he was not known to advocate reform. However, after a long political career and with a very conservative reputation, in 1989 he placed himself at the head of verligte ("enlightened") forces within the governing party, with the result that he was elected head of the National Party in February 1989, and finally State President in September 1989 to replace then president P.W. Botha when the latter was forced to step down after a stroke.
In his first speech after assuming the party leadership he called for a non-racist South Africa and for negotiations about the country's future. He lifted the ban on the ANC and released Nelson Mandela. He brought apartheid to an end and opened the way for the drafting of a new constitution for the country based on the principle of one person, one vote. Nevertheless, he was accused by the close friend of Mandela, Anthony Sampson, of complicity in the violence between the ANC, the Inkatha Freedom Party and elements of the security forces. In Mandela: The Authorised Biography Sampson accuses de Klerk of permitting his ministers to build their own criminal empires.
His presidency was dominated by the negotiation process, mainly between his NP government and Mandela's ANC, which led to the democratization of South Africa.
In 1990, De Klerk gave order to roll back South Africas nuclear weapons program, the process of nuclear disarmament was essentially complete in 1991. The existence of the program was not officially acknowledged before 1993.
Later lifeThe name 'de Klerk' (literally meaning "the clerk" in Dutch) is derived from Le Clerc, Le Clercq, and De Clercq and is of French Huguenot origin, as are a great number of other Afrikaans surnames, reflecting the large number of French Huguenot refugees who settled in the Cape beginning in the seventeenth century as refugees escaping religious persecution.
See also: Huguenots in South Africa
