STATEMENT: EXTRACTS FROM SPEECHES BY FW DE KLERK HIGHLIGHTING KEY ISSUES DURING FIRST 20 YEARS OF THE NEW SA
2014-04-29
A selection of significant quotes from speeches by former President FW de Klerk
A selection of significant quotes from speeches by former President FW de Klerk
We are about to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the foundation of our non-racial constitutional democracy.
I welcome Cyril Ramaphosa’s response to my speech of 31 January, which dealt, among other topics, with the ANC’s approach to transformation – as embodied in its National Democratic Revolution (NDR).
The FW de Klerk Foundation condemns recent comments by Mr Sandile Memela in an article on the Mail & Guardian’s Thought Leader website on Tuesday, 4 March 2014.
The FW de Klerk Foundation has learned with shock of the new Regulations published on 28 February 2014 by the Department of Labour in terms of the Employment Equity Act (as amended).
Today is the 20th anniversary of the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to FW de Klerk and to Nelson Mandela. Significantly, it is also the day of the principal commemoration in Johannesburg of Mr Mandela’s life. In addition, it is also International Human Rights Day.
Perhaps the greatest significance of the 20th anniversary of the 1993 Peace Prize is the progress that South Africa has made since then.
No doubt to the alarm of his minders and keepers, President Zuma deviated from the prepared text of his speech yesterday to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Giyani, Limpopo. His speech should have been suitably innocuous – with a nod to the older generation on International Grandparents Day, exhortations to the youth and the expression of justifiable pride in the fact that the number of children infected with HIV within the East and Southern African region has more than halved in the past 10 years. There was only one reference to “apartheid colonialism” – and for the rest, the tone of the speech was suitably presidential.
In a speech on 13 September 2013 at the Nedbank SA Charity Golf Day at Foxhills resort in England, FW de Klerk shared his views on South Africa’s past, present and future.
He said that he could recall no time since 1994 when so many South Africans had been so despondent. He added that “we should remember 1994 – not only because it was the birth of our new society – but because it provides an important reminder that we South Africans have the ability to solve even the most intractable problems”.
I have learned with great sadness of the death of former Chief Justice Pius Langa and would like to convey my sincere condolences to his family and friends. As one of the first Judges appointed to our Constitutional Court after 1994 -‐ and later in the key role of Chief Justice from 2005 until his retirement in 2009 - Justice Langa played a crucial role in laying the foundations for our young constitutional democracy and continued to promote the integrity and independence of the judiciary as a cornerstone of our democracy.