AS IT HAPPENED | 'He played a crucial role in our country' says Ramaphosa at De Klerk state memorial service

FULL TEXT | 'Let us release him to rest': Ramaphosa delivers eulogy at FW de Klerk's state memorial

Read President Ramaphosa's full speech here.

Memorial service concluded. President Cyril Ramaphosa leaves the church with De Klerk family.

Ramaphosa: “We can never forget the humiliation, the degradation and the inhumanity and cruelty. Nor must we ever forget the responsibility that we each bear to consign such suffering and injustice to the past.”

Ramaphosa says he acknowledges De Klerks contribution and his legacy remain contested.

“We can neither ignore nor must we ever seek to dismiss, the anger, the pain and the disappointment of those who recall the place FW de Klerk occupied in the hierarchy of an oppressive state.We must never forget the injustices of the past.”

Ramaphosa says there were strong words often exchanged between him and De Klerk.

“We had moments of friendliness, but we also had our disagreements. He could be affable but he could also be stubborn,” says Ramaphosa.

Ramaphosa: Our freedom was also made possible by many people around the world in African countries that rallied to the calls as they became convinced that apartheid was indeed a crime against humanity. Many countries on our continent helped by giving shelter and support to Oliver Reginald Tambo and many others who were driven into exile.

The leaders of these countries also supported and encouraged and negotiated a peaceful transition to democracy.

From across the aisle in our Parliament chamber, representing the National Party, the party that had for nearly half a century held the country in an iron grip of racial tyranny, then deputy president FW de Klerk said: “Ons grondwet skep die kanale waarlangs alle Suid-Afrikaners hulself op demokratiese manier kan laat geld. Dit skep instellings en meganismes om die demokrasie in stand te hou, om korrupsie te beveg, om die reg van die verlede te herstel, om diskriminasie tee te werk, om die regspraak te laat geld, en om ons kultuur verskillendheid te akkommodeer.”

In making this statement, that stood in stark contrast to the political ideology on which FW de Klerk had been raised, for which he had stood, he acknowledged both his fears about change and the extent to which the new democratic dispensations answered those fears.

Ramaphosa: In many ways, the journey of our nation was not unlike the path that the life of FW de Klerk followed.

Born into white privilege as well as power, raised in the ideology of racial superiority, committed to the defence of an abhorrent and inhuman system, FW de Klerk would come to play an important role in our democratic dispensation.

President Cyril Ramaphosa says:

Two days ago the marked 25 years since the passage of the first Constitution of a democratic South Africa with its guarantee of freedom for all.

The Constitutional Assembly which I led together with Leon Wessels, had decided that this pivotal moment in our history should be memorialised at the place where the human rights of our people had been violated: Sharpeville.

Seated not far from President Mandela that day, on the dusty streets of Sharpeville, was De Klerk.

His presence on that day to bear witness to the signing of the Constitution was deeply significant.

His presence was a measure of the changes that had taken place in our country.

Elita de Klerk: FW was a man of long planning. Once he knew what he wanted to achieve he planned it meticulously.

He was torn between intellect and emotion. His emotion for the pain the country was going through. He could not find peace in this horrendous system. This had affected him psychologically.

Elita de Klerk: He was often misunderstood due to his over-correctness.

We were once watching Walter Sisulu’s funeral on TV. I remember him being very distraught. He said to me, “what have we done?”I said to him: Why can’t you show this emotion to the public, to the people outside?

He said: I cannot betray my forefathers. But later he was sorry for this."

De Klerk’s widow, Elita, says she will speak about FW the man. They met in London in 1990.

She says she will never forget the man who was about to embark on the Odyssean trip to change the status quo of his country.

I shall never forget this man who mesmerised me who made me want to help him achieve this huge task ahead of him.

She says De Klerk was a man with strong beliefs and he was often misunderstood because of his correctness.

Lord David Trimble, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998 for his efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in Northern Ireland, delivers a message via video.

“Obviously, people will link him with the release of Mandela, which he did, and the changes that have happened in South Africa since then. Not so many people know of another contribution he made, an enormous one in that after he became president, he put in place arrangements for South Africa to cease to be a nuclear state. It’s really the only case where a country that had gone nuclear voluntarily went non-nuclear and an example which we hope will be followed.”

Steward: “FW de Klerk’s epitaph should perhaps be the following remark that he made to the press club in October last year.

“And I quote: ‘None of us can determine the nature of the worlds into which we are born or the injustices we inherit from the past. All we can do is to wrestle with the political forces of our time and try to leave the world a freer, a more just and a better place than we found it.

’“FW de Klerk wrestled with the political forces of his time, and left SA at the end of his presidency a freer, more just and a better place than he had found it.”

Steward: “The climax of [De Klerk’s] career, ironically, recurred on the 10th of May 1994 on the day that he ceased to be president. He believed that he had achieved his goals, because he was handing power, not to Nelson Mandela, not to the ANC, but to a new democratic dispensation in which the Constitution and not the government of the day would be supreme.

“FW de Klerk’s second greatest achievement was the dismantling of apartheid, that caused untold hardship, deprivation and humiliation to generations of South Africans.“His last message included a sincere, heartfelt and unconditional apology for apartheid.”

Dave Steward, chairperson of the FW de Klerk Foundation, says some commentators believe that history is driven by great socio-economic forces. Others argue that it’s individuals that drive its course.

“Perhaps it’s a combination of both forces,” he says.

“Destiny is sometimes determined by exceptional leaders who know how to navigate those tides and sometimes catch the breaking wave of history. FW de Klerk was such a leader. Nelson Mandela was undoubtedly another.”

Noel Basson reads the awards given to De Klerk. He adds, “he was a remarkable man”.

De Klerk received 14 awards and 10 academic awards.

De Klerk’s private secretary Noel Basson says he remembers what De Klerk told him the day Nelson Mandela became president.

He said: “Today is the highlight of your career. Today is the culmination of all the hard work to reach a workable solution for our country.”

“After so many years of blood sweat and tears, you said you and your team are handing South Africa over, not to a political party, but to all the people of South Africa, because the people of South Africa have spoken,” says Basson.

He now delivers the obituary for De Klerk.

Gungubele says we will now continue to the speakers.“Our past we can only inherit,” he says.

“We can have our views about the past. But we have to be the captains of our future. And our future is grounded on the Constitution, to which Mr de Klerk set the conditions for the process that led to its productions. I call upon all South Africans, let’s do what God asked of us, to be the captains of our future.”

Western Cape MEC Ivan Meyer speaks on behalf the premier of the province, Alan Winde. 

President Cyril Ramaphosa has arrived at FW de Klerks memorial service. Ramaphosa was accompanied inside the church by De Klerks wife Elita.

- Marvin Charles

Police have forcefully removed a small group of demonstrators who held posters calling for justice for families whose loved ones died in apartheid atrocities.

The demonstrators were opposite the Groot Kerk, where family members of former president FW De Klerk gathered along with other state officials. Imam Haron Foundation (IHF) coordinator Cassiem Khan led the demonstrations.

“We are saying that President Cyril Ramaphosa shows sympathy for De Klerk, who didn’t answer for the killings, and he has no regard for the victims,” he said.

He added the foundation has been sending letters to Ramaphosa for justice to be served.

“Ramaphosa has time for murderers, but he doesn’t have time for the victims of apartheid and the justice that has to be given to them,” Khan said.

Police then manhandled the group, forcefully pushing them and tearing their posters.

- Marvin Charles

Makgoba says De Klerk asked him to be his pastor in the later years of his life. He now speaks of their relationship.

“What I learnt about FW de Klerk, as the descendant of a bullied minority in France [De Klerk was a descendant of the French Huguenots], was his hatred of bullying, including that perpetrated by the PW Botha administration of which he was part,” says Makgoba.

“It also became clear that he travelled down the road to realise the power of the biblical history of God’s people down the ages. That since liberation is ultimately ushered by God, he could never dissuade that energy.

“While he may have embarked on that road as a pragmatist, seizing the moment which he could still influence that future, the biblical narrative of liberation, became part of his motivation.”

Makgoba says this value is also part of African tradition and known as ubuntu.

"All of these expressions of what it means to be human, points to the understanding that the lives of every person are woven together in the rich tapestry of a shared humanity, embedded in a common history. And all of us, discover at some point in our journey through this world, that coming to acknowledge our common humanity, is in fact, the most humanising moment of our lives," he says.