President Cyril Ramaphosa paid tribute to the late former State President, F W de Klerk, saying “even as he expressed his doubts about some parts of the Constitution, he was prepared to acknowledge that it provided a foundation for a South Africa in which the rights and freedoms of all its people would be guaranteed.”
Ramaphosa delivered the eulogy on Sunday during the official memorial service for the country’s last apartheid president.
He was referring to De Klerk’s statements on the day that the new Constitution was adopted and De Klerk saying that the new Constitution “creates the channels through which all South Africans can assert themselves in a democratic.”
Ramaphosa said in making this statement, one that stood in stark contrast to the political ideology on which he had been raised and for which he had stood, De Klerk was acknowledging both his fears about change and the extent to which the new democratic Constitution answered those fears.
“Even as he spoke about equal rights for all, he and his party wanted minority rights, cultural rights and the language of Afrikaans to be protected.”
“Even as he expressed his doubts about some parts of the Constitution, he was prepared to acknowledge that it provided a foundation for a South Africa in which the rights and freedoms of all its people would be guaranteed,” Ramaphosa said.
De Klerk died on 11 November at the age of 85.
