F.W. de Klerk

Frederik Willem de Klerk (1936 to 2021) was the last state president of South Africa under the apartheid constitution, serving from 1989 to 1994 as leader of the National Party. In his opening address to Parliament on 2 February 1990 he announced the unbanning of the African National Congress, the Pan Africanist Congress and the South African Communist Party, and the imminent release of Nelson Mandela, who walked free nine days later after twenty seven years in prison. De Klerk's government then negotiated South Africa's transition away from apartheid with the ANC and other parties through the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, leading to the country's first universal-suffrage election in April 1994. He and Mandela were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 for their work toward the peaceful end of apartheid. After the election de Klerk served as one of two executive deputy presidents under Mandela in the Government of National Unity until his party withdrew from it in 1996, and he retired from politics in 1997.