{"id":202243,"date":"2020-02-10T08:09:06","date_gmt":"2020-02-10T08:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=202243"},"modified":"2020-02-12T07:52:21","modified_gmt":"2020-02-12T07:52:21","slug":"30-years-since-f-w-de-klerks-great-betrayal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=202243","title":{"rendered":"30 Years Since F. W. de Klerk\u2019s Great Betrayal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ilana Mercer \u2013 The Unz Review Feb 6, 2020<\/h1>\n
\"Image

FW de Klerk, left, and Nelson Mandela<\/p><\/div>\n

On February 2, 1990, 30 years ago, F. W. de Klerk, South Africa\u2019s last white president, turned the screws on his constituents, betraying the confidence we<\/em> had placed in him.<\/h5>\n
I say \u201cwe,\u201d because, prior to becoming president in 1989, Mr. de Klerk was my<\/em> representative, in the greater Vereeniging region of Southern Transvaal, where I resided. (Our family subsequently moved to Cape Town.)<\/h5>\n
A constellation of circumstances had aligned to catapult de Klerk to a position of great power. A severe stroke forced the \u201cThe Crocodile<\/a><\/span>,\u201d President P. W. Botha, from power in 1989. Nothing in the background of his successor, President, F. W. de Klerk, indicated the revolutionary policies he would pursue.<\/h5>\n
To a 1992 referendum asking white voters if they favored de Klerk\u2019s proposed reforms, we returned a resounding \u201cyes.\u201d Sixty-eight percent of respondents said \u201cyes\u201d to the proposed reforms of a man who sold his constituents out for a chance to frolic on the world stage with Nelson Mandela.<\/h5>\n
For surrendering South Africa to the ANC, de Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Mandela.<\/h5>\n
Why was de Klerk trusted to negotiate on behalf of a vulnerable racial minority? For good reason: De Klerk had made his views abundantly clear to constituents. \u201cNegotiations would only be about power-sharing,\u201d he promised. At the time, referendum respondents generally trusted de Klerk, who had specifically condemned crude majority rule. Such elections, in Africa, have traditionally amounted to one man, one vote, one time. Typically, elections across Africa have followed a familiar pattern: Radical black nationalist movements take power everywhere, then elections cease. Or, if they take place, they\u2019re rigged.<\/h5>\n
Among much else, de Klerk\u2019s loyal constituents agreed to his scrapping of the ban on the communistic African National Congress. Freeing Nelson Mandela from incarceration was also viewed as long overdue as was acceding to Namibia\u2019s independence, and junking nuclear weapons. Botha, before de Klerk, had, by and large, already dismantled the most egregious aspects of apartheid<\/a><\/span>.<\/h5>\n
What de Klerk\u2019s constituents were not prepared for was to be legislated into a permanent position of political subordination. President de Klerk, the man entrusted to stand up for crucial structural liberties, went along with the Great Centralizers. He caved to ANC demands, forgoing all checks and balances for South Africa\u2019s Boer, British and Zulu minorities.<\/h5>\n
By the time the average \u201cyes\u201d voter discerned the fact that de Klerk had no intention of maintaining this opposition when push came to shove, it was too late.<\/h5>\n
Thus, with de Klerk\u2019s collaboration, and under the wing of the American eagle\u2014in particular, U.S. negotiators like Herman Cohen, under-secretary of state for Africa\u2014the Afrikaner, Anglo and Zulu minorities were ordered to forgo minority veto power, meaningful power-sharing and checks on power in the form of a second chamber. Substantive devolution of authority to the regions of South Africa was also denied.<\/h5>\n
Yet somehow, a new generation of South Africans<\/a><\/span>, Afrikaner and English, reveres F. W. de Klerk, even crediting the former South African president as a reformer, who led \u201cthe country out of the political dead-end [in which] it found itself.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cToday,\u201d declares de Klerk adulator Pieter du Toit, \u201cSouth Africa is a democracy, with rights-based guarantees.\u201d The writer, editor of a large internet news site<\/span><\/a>, is perfectly serious when he touts South Africa as a country that affords its citizens \u201crights-based guarantees.\u201d For this reason, du Toit should not be taken seriously.<\/h5>\n
Universal suffrage is not to be conflated with freedom. As Iraqis learned after their \u201cliberation,\u201d ink-stained fingers don\u2019t inoculate against blood stains, or, rather, rivers of blood.<\/h5>\n
As the democratic South Africa amply demonstrates, political rights<\/em> and a paper constitution don\u2019t secure the natural rights<\/em> to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.<\/h5>\n
A civilized society, ultimately, is one in which the individual can go about the business of life unmolested. If he can\u2019t do that simple thing, of what value is the vote or a constitution? Extant societal structures that safeguard life and property can always be improved upon. But once these bulwarks against mob rule and mayhem disintegrate, as they have in South Africa, they\u2019re seldom restored.<\/h5>\n
Far and away the most perplexing paragraph in du Toit\u2019s ode to de Klerk<\/span><\/a> is his historical justification <\/a><\/span>for de Klerk\u2019s giving the shop to the ANC:<\/h5>\n
\u201cWhen the Berlin Wall fell in 1989,\u201d writes du Toit, \u201calong with a series of governments in the Eastern Bloc, [de Klerk] knew it was a matter of time before the Soviet Union fell, and with that the ANC\u2019s biggest support base. De Klerk recognized the moment to move forward.\u201d<\/h5>\n
Let me see if I grasp the logic of a surrender without defeat:<\/h5>\n
The ANC\u2019s biggest backer, the USSR, was on the verge of collapse. Therefore, goes the author\u2019s logic, the time was ripe to surrender South Africa to the Soviet Union\u2019s satellite, the ANC? This is worse than a non sequitur. It\u2019s nonsense.<\/h5>\n
At the time de Klerk, pushed by American negotiators, gave away the store, the ANC heroes were a ragtag bunch of exiled has-been communists, scattered all over Africa and Europe; monosyllabic, apathetic, oft-inebriated men, whose main admirers were their Swedish groupies.<\/h5>\n
By contrast, someone who did have real power was Constand Viljoen<\/span><\/a>, a military hero and former chief of the South African Defense Force. Gen. Viljoen represented the hardliner Afrikaners and the security forces. Viljoen believed, correctly, that de Klerk had shirked his responsibilities to the electorate. He planned on leading a coalition that would have deposed the freelancing de Klerk and negotiated for an Afrikaner ethnic state.<\/h5>\n
Ditto Dr. Mangosuthu Buthelezi, chief minister of the KwaZulu homeland and leader of the Zulu people and their Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). His championship of self-determination had been denied.<\/h5>\n
Buthelezi was fed up to the back teeth<\/a><\/span> with being sidelined. He and his Zulu impis<\/em> (warriors) were every bit as fractious as Viljoen; every bit as willing to fight for their rightful corner of the African Eden.<\/h5>\n
For setting his sights on decentralized sovereignty in Zululand<\/span><\/a>, the Zulu royal and his following (close on 20% of the South African population) were condemned as reactionaries by the West, whose interests de Klerk was, by now, championing.<\/h5>\n
Alas, the African gentleman (Buthelezi) and the Afrikaner general (Viljoen) were no match for conniving communists (ANC) and a knavish collaborator:<\/h5>\n
F.W. de Klerk.<\/h5>\n
**<\/h5>\n
Citations are in \u201cInto The Cannibal\u2019s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa<\/span><\/a>\u201d (2011) by ilana mercer<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How South Africa\u2019s last white president sold his own people, plus the Zulu\u2019s and South Africans of British descent, down the river<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-202243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Hidden_and_Revisionist_History"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=202243"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":202263,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202243\/revisions\/202263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=202243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=202243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=202243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}