South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has said that the place that former president FW de Klerk held during the apartheid era and the anger that went with it could not be ignored in the country’s history — but South Africans must “release him so that he could rest in peace.”
Speaking during the state memorial service in honour of the last apartheid-era president in Cape Town on Sunday, Ramaphosa said de Klerk was “one person who played an important role in the evolution of our new democracy — whether we like it or not.”
“FW de Klerk was born of the African soil and it is to the African soil that he has now returned. I would like to call upon all of us, whether we agreed with him or not, to release him so that he can be at peace,” Ramaphosa said.
He added: “We can neither ignore, nor must we ever seek to dismiss the anger, the pain and the disappointment of those who recall the place FW de Klerk occupied in the hierarchy of an oppressive state.”
Ramaphosa acknowledged de Klerk’s role in ending apartheid and crafting the country’s new constitution.
De Klerk, aged 85, died last month of cancer, leaving behind a widow and two children.
Shortly after delivering his eulogy, the president tested positive for Covid-19, and immediately went into self-isolation while receiving treatment at his Cape Town home.
NM/jn/APA