Endgame
By Wilson Deng
The downfall of the Apartheid was marked on the 2nd of February 1990. Frederik Willem de Klerk was the president at that time, and had once supported racial segregation. However, during his term of parliament, he lifted the bans on the African National Congress and Communist Party of South Africa. This allowed the people arrested solely due to their association to the parties to be released. One of those released was Nelson Mandela. This choice of President Klerk was very strange, this was soon justified by his speech not long after his decision. “For many years I supported the concept of separate states. I believed it could bring justice for everyone,” he said “…But by the early 1980s I had concluded this would not work and was leading to injustice and that the system had to change.” He says he had “come to the realisation 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.” This change in the parliament was significant as this meant that people had started to notice how wrong the Apartheid was. This was a major turning point of South African history. ‘Klerk opened the way for South Africa's first fully democratic election in 300 years by promising "a totally new and just constitutional dispensation in which every inhabitant will enjoy equal rights, treatment and opportunity"’* After 30 years, the release of political exiles meant that the natives in South Africa had a fair go alongside the Whites. One of these prisoners was Nelson Mandela, who had been imprisoned for 27 years. ‘Mandela, watching on TV, later remarked: "It was a breathtaking moment, for in one sweeping action he had virtually normalised the situation in South Africa. Our world had changed overnight."’* In the next election, Nelson Mandela was elected as president, marking the end of the Apartheid in 1994 |
|
Refrences
*Usborne, Simon, Mr. "FW De Klerk: The Day I Ended Apartheid." The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, 02 Feb. 2010. Web. 29 May 2014. <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/fw-de-klerk-the-day-i-ended-apartheid-1886128.html >.
Russell, Alec, Mr. "Lunch with the FT: FW De Klerk - FT.com." Financial Times. Ft.com, 22 Jan. 2010. Web. 29 May 2014. <http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5fed1072-06df-11df-b058-00144feabdc0.html>.
*Usborne, Simon, Mr. "FW De Klerk: The Day I Ended Apartheid." The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, 02 Feb. 2010. Web. 29 May 2014. <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/fw-de-klerk-the-day-i-ended-apartheid-1886128.html >.
Russell, Alec, Mr. "Lunch with the FT: FW De Klerk - FT.com." Financial Times. Ft.com, 22 Jan. 2010. Web. 29 May 2014. <http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5fed1072-06df-11df-b058-00144feabdc0.html>.