VICTIM OF HIS OWN REFORMS

F.W. DE KLERK HELPED SAVE SOUTH AFRICA, AND LAST WEEK HE RESIGNED TO TRY TO SAVE HIS POLITICAL PARTY

A conservative, dark-suited son of Afrikanerdom, President Frederik Willem de Klerk could not have rocked the political world more when, in 1990, he unbanned the African National Congress, released Nelson Mandela and set South Africa on the road to the end of apartheid and a black-majority democracy. And when De Klerk, who with Mandela won the Nobel Peace Prize for engineering the transition to a new South Africa, surprised his nation last week by announcing that he was retiring as head of the opposition National Party, South Africa had more to reflect on than his role in the historic transition process....

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