Interviews with Max du Preez

It’s a debate that we’ve had and we are still having in this country, is why did [Frederick Willem] de Klerk make that speech of February 1990 which unlocked this whole process, the unbanning of the ANC [African National Congress] and the release of [Nelson] Mandela? I think there’s no single answer. I mean, I’ve had conversations with him about this, with de Klerk about this, and it’s clear also that there isn’t one answer. [Frederick Willem de Klerk (1936 – ) served as President of South Africa from 1989 – 1994. Under de Klerk’s leadership the apartheid system was dismantled, the African National Congress’ 30 year ban ended, political prisoners were released and majority (multiracial) elections were established. Nelson Mandela (1918 – 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary and politician who served as the first post-apartheid President of South Africa from 1994-1999. Banning was a legal process during apartheid enabled primarily by the Suppression of Communism Act, where individuals were prohibited from communicating with more than one person at a time and from traveling domestically or internationally without permission. Organizations were also banned by the government. The media was restricted in covering banned individuals. The African National Congress (ANC) is a political party that served as the most prominent resistance movement against South Africa’s apartheid system, at times resorting to violence through its military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe. It was officially banned by the South African government from 1960 to 1990. As apartheid collapsed, the ANC’s leader, Nelson Mandela, was elected President of South Africa in 1994 and established a democratic government.]

Partly South Africa was in trouble in terms of violence inside, internal uprisings, but also in terms of the economy. The economy was in real bad trouble. It was virtually bankrupt by the late ‘80s. The internal resistance of the UDF [United Democratic Front] and the trade unions made it clear that they cannot be controlled. You could not put five million people in jail. You could not keep them separate anymore. They were unstoppable, and they were making the country ungovernable. [The United Democratic Front was a multiracial anti-apartheid coalition.]

I always said and I still say it now in stuff I write that the internal resistance, the UDF and COSATU [Congress of South African Trade Unions], the trade union federation, should get more credit for forcing the apartheid government to the negotiating table than the African National Congress in exile or Umkhonto we Sizwe, their military wing. The real heroes were the UDF and COSATU, the trade unionists, and they also suffered more in terms of torture and detention. When you lived in exile, you lived in exile.

So that was the one—it was becoming very hard. So there was pressure from business, saying, “Well, let’s change something so it would be better to make business, to do business in this society.” That pressure also came from Afrikaner business, and government and Afrikaans business were always very close together, because the Afrikaners had now, from the 1960s, ‘70s on, become members of the middle class. They’d become quite prosperous. By the ‘80s they were really established as—in the economy, where they weren’t before. They were the poorer white cousins in the country.

[Afrikaners are the descendants of Dutch settlers who came to Africa’s Cape of Good Hope in 1652. During the Anglo-Boer Wars that spanned the 19th and 20th centuries, the Afrikaners were overtaken by the British Empire and agreed to live under British rule.]

So Afrikaner nationalism had a socialist background and as they—post 1948 when they took over the white government and took over the civil service and they had a massive program of helping—pulling themselves up from their bootstraps, you know, through the Afrikaner Broederbond and all kinds of organizations—a very smart model of empowering an ethnic group, whatever their motivations. But it really worked. So by the ‘60s they—‘70s especially, they were now middleclass people and they were enjoying the good life. And now this newfound good life was being threatened, so there was that pressure.

[The Afrikaner Broederbond, or Afrikaner Brotherhood in English, was a South African secret society composed of Afrikaans-speaking, Protestant, white men over the age of 25 that was established in 1918.]

So you throw all these things together and that creates a certain atmosphere. Now you throw in two other things. The one is that President P.W. Botha has a stroke and he’s incapacitated, so suddenly the known, strong leader is gone. And they choose another guy, and what does he do? It can’t be more business as usual. So there was the—the scene was set for de Klerk to do something and the pressure on him was immense.

[Pieter Willem Botha (1916 – 2006) served as the prime minister of South Africa from 1978 to 1984 and as president from 1984 to 1989. He was a strong proponent of apartheid. In 1989, he suffered a stroke and was forced to step down from the presidency and the leadership of the ruling National Party.]

And the final piece of the puzzle was the fall of the Berlin Wall. Initially Afrikaner nationalism used the communist threat as a reason why apartheid was important, because the liberation movement, the African National Congress, and the Communist Party were communists and terrorists and they would impose a communist, Marxist system, and South Africa would become a satellite of Moscow. And a lot of otherwise sober, decent people fell for this argument fueled by the intelligence services and embroidered upon by especially the military. You know, we called it the Rooi Gevaar, the Red Danger, and people generally feared it. I mean, young—decent young white men went and died in Angola and elsewhere because they thought they were fighting the godless communists.

But when international communism started disintegrating in ’88, ’89 and the Berlin Wall fell, no more argument like that.

Now you throw all this in this pot, and a bit of guts, a bit of good decision making from de Klerk, and that’s what happened on the 2nd of February, 1990. I don’t think he—if he knew what that would trigger, how that would develop, that he wouldn’t have done quite so much. He would’ve held back a little bit. But the minute Nelson Mandela walked from jail, there was no stopping the process. It unleashed a kind of a gentle but assertive people’s power in the country and a massive expectation all over the world of a settlement, because you know, when the National Party and their security forces realized in the mid, late ‘80s that they’re not gonna win this war, maybe a deal should be done, at exactly the same time the ANC realized that they can’t win this war. And they can wait until this country is completely destroyed, or they can make a deal. I had those conversations with ANC people at that time, ’85, ’86 in Lusaka [Zambia] and elsewhere.

[The National Party, founded in 1914, ruled South Africa from 1948 to 1994. Its following included mostly Dutch-descended Afrikaners and English-speaking whites. The National Party was long dedicated to policies of apartheid and white supremacy. By the early 1990s, the party had moved toward sharing power with South Africa’s black majority.]

So it all just conspired and got together in February 1990, and then went out of control for de Klerk. He didn’t get the constitution he wanted. He wanted a white veto. He wanted minority rights to be protected. He wanted white rights to be protected. He wanted white schools in white neighborhoods and stuff. And mercifully history just walked all over—it was like a locomotive that just ran, and what we got was what we had to get.

Max du Preez is a South African journalist, author and documentary filmmaker. He was an anti-apartheid journalist who worked to expose government repression.

Born in 1951, Max du Preez grew up in Kroonstad, South Africa. Unlike many Afrikaners, descendants of Dutch colonial settlers who largely supported the apartheid government, his parents were open-minded toward integration of whites and non-whites.

After attending Stellenbosch University, an Afrikaner institution, du Preez began a career in journalism writing for Afrikaans and English language newspapers supportive of the apartheid government. Du Preez quickly became disenchanted by the South African media’s blatant political bias and abandoned his work in the mainstream media.

Du Preez became involved with anti-apartheid movements like the United Democratic Front. In 1988, he founded Vrye Weekblad, the first Afrikaans-language, anti-apartheid newspaper that offered alternative policy perspectives from mainstream media and was critical of the government. The government attempted to stifle the paper financially and legally by levying exorbitant registration fees and charging it with various infractions. In 1990, a member of the Civil Cooperation Bureau, a pro-apartheid group, bombed Vrye Weekblad’s headquarters. Vrye Weekblad survived, however, until 1994 when the government’s financial pressure finally forced its closure. Ironically, apartheid collapsed and South Africa transitioned to democracy later that same year.

During the transition, du Preez covered the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission on television, publicizing the body’s efforts to ease tension and promote a unified, post-apartheid South Africa.

Today, Du Preez remains a prominent South African columnist and media personality. He has received several awards including the Nat Nakasa Award for Courageous Journalism and been named the Yale Globalist International Journalist.

South Africa is a nation of almost 53 million on the southern tip of Africa. The nation has a unique multicultural character and is approximately 80 percent African and 10 percent European, with the remaining 10 percent being of mixed race or Asian heritage. These broad racial categories include a multitude of ethnic and linguistic groups.

Although it has the largest economy on the continent, much of the nation remains in poverty and there is great economic disparity. Historically, the mining industry has played a key role in South Africa’s economy and it continues to remain an important industry today, alongside manufacturing, tourism, and financial services.

South Africa was first settled by non-natives in 1652, when the Dutch established an outpost in what would later become Cape Town. Soon after, British, French, and German settlers came to the area. The descendants of the original Dutch settlers became known as Afrikaners. Conflicts over land and power arose between the settling groups as well as between the settlers and the native people of the region. In 1910, Britain formally created the Union of South Africa as a self-governing dominion within the British Empire.

Throughout South Africa’s history, non-whites were subjected to widespread discrimination. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the government passed a series of laws institutionalizing discrimination and segregation. In the 1948 elections, the National Party, which served as a platform for Afrikaner nationalism, gained power. The National Party program was centered on the system of racial segregation known as apartheid. Supporters of apartheid argued that South Africa was made up of four distinct racial groups: white, black, “Coloured” or mixed-race, and Indian.

The white minority oppressed the African majority and other non-white groups. Black Africans were particularly disadvantaged in terms of education, housing, income, and health. Blacks were denied citizenship and not permitted to use the services and facilities accessible by the white minority. Many blacks were forced to relocate when their neighborhoods were declared “white.” A series of laws enacted in the 1950s further codified and expanded racial segregation. In part, the National Party justified its policies by branding its opponents as communists.

The African National Congress (ANC) was founded in 1912 to advocate for the rights of black South Africans. As apartheid expanded, the ANC and other groups used both nonviolent and violent actions to combat the government. The ANC and other groups were oppressed by the government, and many of their senior leaders were banned or imprisoned. Nelson Mandela, a prominent ANC leader, was imprisoned from 1962 to 1990.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the anti-apartheid movement gained strength. Foreign governments and the international community isolated South Africa. International sanctions damaged the economy and helped erode domestic support for apartheid. Meanwhile, the end of the Cold War weakened the government’s claim that yielding power would lead to a communist takeover.

In 1990, the government of South Africa took its first steps toward ending apartheid when it ended a ban on certain political organizations including the ANC. Nelson Mandela and other opposition leaders were released from prison and apartheid legislation was repealed. F.W. de Klerk, President from 1989-1994, helped to broker this transition of South Africa from the apartheid-era to a multi-racial democracy. In 1993, de Klerk and Mandela received the Nobel Peace Prize for their work.

In 1994, South Africa held its first election that allowed all adults to vote, regardless of race. The ANC gained power and Nelson Mandela was elected president. South Africa enacted a liberal, democratic constitution, backed by a strong and independent judiciary. While the ANC has remained the strongest party, elections are vigorously contested and democratic safeguards are respected. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigated abuses and crimes committed during the apartheid era.

Freedom House’s 2013 Freedom in the World report categorized South Africa as “free” with an overall freedom rating of two, with one being the most free and seven being the least. The country also received ratings of two in political rights and civil liberties. However, in the 2013 Freedom of the Press report, the nation was categorized as “party free” due to government restrictions on the press and the prevalence of civil cases brought against journalists for libel.