Op-Ed: Unsung South African Hero Passes Away

A true gentleman, a scholar and a courageous reformer has passed away in South Africa. Former President F.W. De Klerk’s elder brother, Willem de Klerk, died on Friday.

A true gentleman, a scholar and a courageous reformer has passed away in South Africa. Former President F.W. De Klerk’s elder brother, Willem de Klerk, died on Friday, aged 81. De Klerk, a Dutch Reformed priest, journalist, political analyst, author and academic was often ahead of his time, predicting the necessity of throwing out Apartheid at a time when that was not ”politically correct,” in the Apartheid-ear establishment. The powers of the day pressured his newspaper, the then Transvaler, to get rid of him, and he resigned. He edited another Afrikaans newspaper, Rapport, but left after more pressure in 1987. De Klerk, inevitably called ”Wimpie,” gave the Afrikaans language and South Africa’s political dialogue two key words, “verlig” (“enlightened”) and “verkramp” (“ultra-conservative.”) So common are the words that the English language South African Pocket Oxford Dictionary still has them. It was this ”enlightened” influence he exerted on his ”verkrampte” brother, F.W. De Klerk, when F.W. was President of South Africa. The Wimpie’s son, Willem de Klerk junior, told Rapport:

Yes, there were certainly clashes and friction in connection with politics between my dad and uncle (F.W.) in the late 1980s, in my dad’s newspaper years.

Precisely how much influence is not yet clear, but many believe it was Wimpie who convinced F.W. to meet Nelson Mandela, then in prison. The former president and Nobel Prize winner, F.W. De Klerk said in a statement:

Many of his ideas and insights remain relevant for the future. We are grateful for his legacy. I am proud to call him my brother. His passing leaves a great void.

Professor Wimpie de Klerk was a self-effacing man, a fact needing no more proof than the fact that a Google Image Search did not turn up a single photo of him. He worked behind a desk, behind a typewriter and behind the scenes. He was a founder of the Democratic Party, a non-racial party in a time when that was a whole new concept here. It is now the Democratic Alliance, the official opposition party in South Africa. I knew Wimpie personally. I was doing an M.A. at what was then Rand Afrikaans University (now University of Johannesburg) and he was head of the communications department. He was a kindly, gentlemanly prof who was interested in new thinking and in challenging his students. I remember talking about the direction South Africa was heading in the early 1990s. He recalled the truly ”verkrampte” President P.W. Botha’s words, which referred to ”a new South Africanism” and asked what I thought about it. That led to a lot of thinking and discussion Now he’s gone. The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) had a nice piece on his death, but only on the Afrikaans channel. I saw next to nothing in the English-language press or in the Black press, and even online I saw one or two short obituaries, like the one on the Independent Newspapers’ site. Considering the impact his strong moral values must have played in changing former president F.W. De Klerk’s thinking, I feel he played an important role in removing Apartheid from the South African scene. I don’t feel the few short obits did him justice. He was without any doubt an unsung hero. For lack of a better alternative, I have written these few words. I do not claim to sing his song. But it’s more than nothing.