de Klerk and Mandela Avoid a Civil War

In the late 1980’s, the country of South Africa was perched on the edge of civil war. The white Afrikaner minority population had enforced a brutal range of policies under its apartheid system. Whites were to live in the wealthy areas, blacks were legally sequestered to the poor lands. Only the pro-apartheid National Party was allowed, and detention without trial, the banning of free speech, and a death penalty to anyone convicted of the broadly phrased crime of “furthering the aims” of communism had led to levels of repression and an environment of simmering violence. And then on February 2, 1990, the white Afrikaner President FW de Klerk decided to pull the plug and entirely dismantle apartheid in one surprise speech.

Here you see de Klerk with the African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, leader of the anti-apartheid movement who worked with de Klerk to steer the course of his country away from civil war. When the two men first met, each independently expressed admiration for the other, thinking there was a man “we could do business with”.

Mandela recognized de Klerk’s aims, and later wrote that he elected to negotiate with the National Party leader because “it simply did not make sense for both sides to lose millions of lives in a conflict that was uncessary”.

On de Klerk’s part, he had “long come to the realization that we were involved in a downward spiral of increasing violence and we could not hang on indefinitely. We were involved in an armed struggle where there would be no winners”.

And so on that February 2, de Klerk completely surprised his political party with a speech that only his closest cabinet members had known he was going to make. Apartheid was over: there were many in his party who turned against him, but de Klerk and Mandela had avoided civil war.