MANDELA’s is not the only halo tarnished by time. I was gratified that Finance Week writer Paul Periera recently took a well-deserved dip at that monstrous little hypocrite and traitor, F W de Klerk. I must admit to a personal interest here, since certain of the 23 senior SADF officers virtually cashiered by FW in 1992 on unspecified charges were close personal friends. I know very well how this man’s mean and mendacious, but typical, action ruined the careers and lives of men infinitely more worthy than he: a shocking injustice and one never rectified. For the benefit of APN’s overseas readers, I reproduce Periera’s excellent piece in full:

FOR many in the Afrikaans community, former President F W de Klerk’s affair with Elita Georgiadis after a marriage of 39 years is not only unacceptable behaviour, but also consistent with what they think he has done to his allies, his colleagues, his soldiers and his people. That is a matter of opinion. But certainly De Klerk has let a lot of people down in his time. Remarkable, though, has been his ability to avoid responsibility sticking to him.

That De Klerk is a fox in sheep’s clothing has no better illustration than his treatment of senior security force personnel whom he purged in 1992. He insinuated that they were guilty of any manner of crimes, including murder, but afforded them no chance to defend themselves. Their plight is still seen by many to have been the result of a back stab by the officer who reported to De Klerk on their activities, Lt-Gen Pierre Steyn.

Only now are the details of what really happened beginning to emerge - and they point to overhasty and perhaps unjustified action by De Klerk. But that Steyn has had to carry the can for the 1992 purge instead of De Klerk is reminiscent of the troubles others have faced for the latter’s decisions. Thus former President PW Botha is roundly thought of as a reactionary, partly due to his August 1985 Rubicon speech.

Yet the original text of that speech was far more reformist than its eventual version and its watering down a result of De Klerk’s objections in Cabinet to its measure of reform. Former Justice Minister Kobie Coetzee is often criticised in Afrikaans circles for failing to accept an SACP offer during constitutional talks for a general amnesty to be applied equally to all sides in the conflict in the manner agreed to during Zimbabwe and Namibia’s transitions. Coetzee insisted rather on a mechanism to establish what people had done first before absolving them of legal consequence.

Former Bophuthatswana dictator Lucas Mangope believes that Pik Botha is to blame for the military intervention that unseated him; and Inkatha blames Meyer for selling out on federalism. They could usefully look to De Klerk as the target of their wrath. But it is De Klerk’s handling of allegations that his soldiers were undermining the transition to democracy that is the most revealing.

In late 1992, Judge Richard Goldstone’s investigations stumbled across a covert military structure - the Directorate of Covert Collection (DCC) - which they thought was perhaps involved in "third force" operations of stoking violence to undermine the ANC. The DCC claimed rather that it was simply gathering intelligence on arms smuggling (a claim the Goldstone Commission would later accept).

The raid on DCC, and the subsequent local and international uproar that followed, came at a bad time for De Klerk, the very end of a year in which he lost his nerve. It had started off well enough. Codesa talks were progressing well for the NP and others who claimed to want a federal state with safeguards for minority rights. Then came the March all-White referendum, establishing De Klerk’s international reformist credentials without doubt and consolidating what was already a sizeable Black support base for him in SA. The ANC went on the offensive.

First, it deadlocked talks in Codesa and walked out of them. It was, said Cyril Ramaphosa, "an opportunity we cannot allow to pass to spearhead a massive coalition to force the regime out of power." The following month’s Boipatong massacre of township residents by IFP-supporting hostel dwellers gave it the excuse to break off all negotiations and heighten the propaganda war against the NP and De Klerk in particular, blaming him and his security forces of orchestrating the killings.