As we reminiscence on leadership challenges of our country, and pontificate what to do next, we are saddened to hear of the passing-on of one of Africa’s Noble Peace Price laureates, FW de Klerk, the last President of Apartheid South Africa, and its first post-Apartheid Deputy President.
In the ilk of, and in Noble Peace Price terms, Chief Albert Luthuli, Anwar Sadat, Desmond Tutu, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Nelson Mandela, Dalai Lama, Barrack Obama, and several others, he,like them, remains an institution of leadership we continue to learn from as enrollees in the open University called our universe.
Their selflessness, as demonstrated in their ability to be removable as the ecdysis process unfolds, distinguishes them as a necessary cohort of leaders to point to, for those amongst us that want to be traditional leaders in a leadership change etched democratic paradigm. Their ability to have what they did as standing monuments for generations beyond them to benefit, makes them a benchmark of leadership that instructs to all of us the following dictum: when its time to handover please do so.
As, FW, affectionately called by those he enjoyed their close proximity endearment, said in his apology to South Africa, 'I went through a conversion' and realised there was nothing good about apartheid, he acted. The series of events that followed his 'conversion' have defined the course of South African history in ways many that are now entombed onto it would potentially not have found space in it. He unleashed a process that allowed its full potential, positive and negative, to come to the fore that we now know it to be.
In his famous February 2, 1990, speech FW declared, "our country and all its people have been embroiled in conflict, tension and violent struggle for decades. It is time for us to break out of the cycle of violence and break through to peace and reconciliation. The silent majority is yearning for this. The youth deserve it." He spoke into the future we are now living in when he imbued on the then Parliament that "among other things" the aims of engaging in negotiations with the liberation movement complex "include a new, democratic constitution; universal franchise; no domination; equality before an independent judiciary; the protection of minorities as well as of individual rights; freedom of religion; a sound economy based on proven economic principles and private enterprise; dynamic programmes directed at better education, health services, housing and social conditions for all." These are aspects of South African life, few dare to argue are untrue, save for the lack of consensus on the extent to which the benefits emanating therefrom are equitable.
Like others in the Noble Peace Price community, as they ascended the podiums that required their institutionness as persons, they brought into their societies and other podiums, themselves in a way that made those their decisions served greater than them. Out of the conversion FW went through, and him being NP royalty, sat on dinner tables with the worst that apartheid South Africa had produced, he was able to transcend his base socialisation and see all of us as South Africans deserving of the rights our Constitution has now entrenched.
As we mourn our nation's fourth Nobel Peace Price laureate, and first, and thus far only non-black, post-Apartheid Deputy President, we should do so understanding that for every tear shed, it waters the tree of the leadership institution he was. Leadership in Africa is in abundance, we must just shift when we have served, in order to allow the new to emerge, and this he did, irrespective of whatever reasons we want to append to that, and his, decision.
In the Cornel West parlance ‘he had to be the President of Apartheid South Africa at the time he was, for South African leadership excellence to stand up in the world’. Like the many other revered and controversial African leaders that shaped the course of African history and its many civilisations, he contributed in towering for Africa a new context within which democracy could emerge as an uncompromising governance and government paradigm for posterity’s sake.
Of FW's conversion that ushered in a new and true understanding of democracy to all South Africans, we can only say it was confirmatory to what a South African poet writes on Democracy,
I have utility value
But I can’t be valued
I can be bought yet
Cannot be prized
I am democracy
Many a great men tried to kill me
Many a great empires collapsed,
Because of my appealing power
Those that stood for me became great,
Only to collapse when they forget who I am,
I am democracy
Icons are, for I am
Villains are, for I am
Wars start, for I am
Constitutions are adopted, for I am
Nations become, for I am
I am democracy
Interests are at the center of my being
My being arbitrates the Capture of states
My being creates captured slates
Coalitions define my presence
Yet, my absence creates coalitions to fight for me
Yes, I am democracy
Economies are now measured by me
I am criteria for stability
I am criteria for development
I am abusable if in wrong hands
I can be a dictatorship, if the wrong are in charge
I do incubate tyrannies and suffocate reason
I am democracy
The wise think I am for the people
The wiser think they are the people
The rich believe they are the only people
The wealthy control who defined the people
Amongst the people, however defined, I am found
I am democracy, I am democracy, I am democracy
Like a flag, Former President FW de Klerk's leadership is a polyvalent symbol of the various meanings ascribed to it. We can all be forgiven by history when it records in our absence, how at fault many of us were by not gazing in the direction this South Africa flag was hoisted and continued to fly in full mast, with or without our permission. He represented in himself the many facets of being South African.
Ons aanvaar u versoek vir ons vergifnis. Verskoon ons ook dat ons nie dieper kyk na wat u vir ons wou hê nie.
By voorbaat, slaap mooi, mnr de Klerk. Ons eerste adjunkpresident onder president Mandela se versoenende regeertermyn.
Rest In Peace
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