My conscience is clear - FW
2007-07-26 19:27
Cape Town - Former president FW de Klerk on Thursday denied ever condoning apartheid era murders or other gross violations of human rights.
"I have not only a clear conscience, I am not guilty of any crime whatsoever," he told a media briefing in Cape Town.
He was responding to newspaper reports that former law and order minister Adriaan Vlok, who faces prosecution over the 1989 poisoning of Reverend Frank Chikane, intends to spill the beans on him.
"The stories have done my reputation immense harm," he said.
"They tried to make it difficult for me to continue to play a constructive role nationally and internationally, and they have the very real potential of seriously and negatively affecting my material interests".
'Corrections or right-of-reply'
He had made it very clear to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that he and those who governed with him in the apartheid years accepted overall responsibility for the policies of the past, and a reasonable interpretation of those policies.
"I have never myself approved murder or the random killing of anybody, or gross violations of human rights," he said.
De Klerk, who was head of state from August 1989 to the inauguration of Nelson Mandela in 1994, said he had asked his attorneys to demand either corrections or right-of-reply space from the Mail and Guardian and the Sunday Times, which carried the reports.
The M&G had said it would carry his reply next week.
Former security police chief Johann van der Merwe, who was also supposed to be intending to incriminate De Klerk, had denied the reports in the two newspapers, and the lawyer acting for both men had distanced himself from the reports.
The poisoning of Chikane, now director general in the presidency, took place several months before he, De Klerk, was inaugurated as president, and not during his tenure as reported by several newspapers.
'Good and honourable men'
He himself had become aware of the poisoning only when it was reported in the media.
De Klerk said there were clearly many people in the media and elsewhere who hoped that he would "after all" be revealed as a villain.
He also said that the vast majority of the politicians, public servants and security force members with whom he served - including Vlok and Van der Merwe - were "good and honourable men" who had been struggling with "huge historic forces often in the most difficult circumstances".
"It is to their credit that they joined me in overcoming extremely well-founded fears and concerns in putting an end to the injustices of apartheid and in helping to create our new non-racial democracy."
De Klerk also warned that it would be wrong to concentrate only on the former security forces in post-TRC prosecutions.
If there were to be prosecutions, the same energy should go into finding out who assassinated 400 Inkatha Freedom Party officials, who committed necklace murders, and who were guilty of abuses in African National Congress prison camps in exile.
- SAPA