It’s been interesting to see the social media attacks on those who declined to criticise FW de Klerk, after his passing last week.
Coloureds in particular were singled out as suffering from something akin to Stockholm Syndrome for not vilifying a man who headed an oppressive system that victimised them as much as it did all other people of colour.
Many political figures made their disdain for the man clear, despite how undignified it appeared to those who choose to not speak ill of the departed.
One of them may have been Julius Malema, who simply just tweeted “Thank you, God,” alongside dancing emojis. He hasn’t confirmed whether it was in celebration of the news or not.
Others speculated about De Klerk’s unqualified apology video for the wrongs of apartheid and whether his change of heart was perhaps brought about by the fact that he has coloured grandchildren.
It is of course a known fact that the innocent, unrestricted love of a child has the power to soften the hardest of hearts and melt away any convictions one may have held before their arrival.
I know stories of children who were disowned by their parents for their choice of partners, which led to long-standing family feuds.
But the moment those unions produce grandchildren for those same angry people, resentments fade away, hostilities are set aside and all bets are off.
So there’s a very real chance that De Klerk’s watery prejudices were dissolved by time, and the thicker blood he shared with his grandkids.
Almost all of last week’s obituaries referred to him as South Africa’s last apartheid president, a phrase meant as a slight. But we mustn’t forget that his actions ensured that he was indeed the last one.
There seems to be a pathological disappointment over his real motives for ending apartheid, the implication being that he didn’t do it for the right moral reasons.
Rather than bravery, his actions are dismissed as having been forced upon him by a sustained global anti-apartheid campaign that would eventually bring the regime to its knees anyway.
It’s true that economic sanctions were biting, civilian unrest and guerrilla resistance were growing, pressure from democratic states was mounting and so was global public sentiment.
So the argument is that because circumstances painted the NP government into a corner and left De Klerk with no choice, he simply pre-empted the inevitable.
But the fact is, he could’ve chosen to ignore all of that.
He could’ve decided to hedge his bets and continue riding apartheid’s wave and not be seen as a sell-out by some in his own party.
After all, other countries had managed to limp along in isolation for years; decades even, despite being labelled “pariah states”, and some even managed to emerge victorious at the other end.
Besides, there were a few countries who were either openly, or quietly doing business with the apartheid government, so De Klerk could’ve easily maintained the status quo.
We may never know all the reasons why he chose not to. And it’s almost certain that he could not have foreseen the far-reaching repercussions of his actions.
Maybe his decision was simply a self-serving one; to ensure an altruistic legacy for himself.
At least he was concerned about how history would remember him and did something radical about it. His predecessors didn’t. And there’s something to be said for that.