TONY LEON: De Klerk and the Gorbachev paradox
Both were committed party men who inaugurated reforms that would sweep them from power
The comparisons between FW de Klerk, the last white president of SA and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, are striking beyond their roles as “midwives from tyranny to a new politics”. This is what British politician and veteran anti-apartheid campaigner Peter Hain writes in his obituary for De Klerk, who died aged 85 in November 2019, politically twinning him to Gorbachev.
Two years before that I had my final public conversation with De Klerk in Cape Town before a well-heeled international audience gathered under the collonaded grandeur of Cape Town’s Mount Nelson Hotel. During that conversation with a relaxed and animated De Klerk I decided to up the ante by asking him whether in addition to a similar hairline, he suffered from the “Mikhail Gorbachev paradox”. ..
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