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F.w De Klerk Frederik Willem de Klerk F.W. De Klerk is a South African politician. In 1988 South Africa was in a state of deadlock. With sanctions causing difficulties and the main African political parties banned there seemed little hope of progress. The break came from an unlikely source - the National Party itself. In 1989 Botha has a stroke and resigned as leader of the party, so the leadership passed to F.W. de Klerk. De Klerk accepted that apartheid could not survive and that concessions would need to be made with, at best, power sharing between black and white people. In his opening address to parliament on 2nd February 1990 he legalised the ANC, PAC and Communist Party, ordered the release of manypolitical prisoners, reduced emergency detentions to six months and suspended the death sentence. - The Release of Nelson Mandela
The release of Nelson Mandela nine days later began a chain of events that few had anticipated. - The Government and the ANC began talks in May 1990; by June the state of emergenmcy had been lifted and the ANC had agreed to a ceasefire.
- In 1991 the Acts which restricted land ownership, specified seperate living areas and classified people by race were all repealed. South Africa had taken its first real steps towards becoming a multiracial society.
De Klerk's reforms led many pro-apartheid supporters to leave the National Party and join the Conservative Party, which was against many of the reforms. It also provoked a resugence of opposition from the white far-right Afrikaner Resistance Movement. Violence also continued between Inkatha and the ANC fuelled by the revelation that the government had given economic and military aid to Inkatha.
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