Months after his son Willem died of cancer last October, former South African president FW de Klerk will undergo treatment for lung cancer, his foundation confirmed on Friday.
De Klerk, aged 85, has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, a type of cancer that has affected the lining of his lungs, the FW de Klerk Foundation said.
However, “there is no immediate threat and we are confident that the treatment will be successful,” the foundation said, adding that the former leader was due to start immunotherapy next week.
Willem died of cancer at the age of 53 in October 2020, according to the foundation.
De Klerk was the last president of South Africa’s apartheid government and served between 1989 and 1994 when the country changed from white minority rule to black majority rule following nationwide democratic elections.
He, however, served for two more years as deputy president to Nelson Mandela as part of the country’s reconciliation programme.
De Klerk and Mandela won the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize “for their work in the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundation for a new democratic South Africa,” Norway’s Nobel Prize Committee said at the time.
NM/jn/APA