Word: klerk
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...Klerk told us of his "vision" for the Bantustans (remote lands allocated to implement a separate self-governing program for Black ethnic groups to show that apartheid allowed races their "individual freedom") as countries similar to France and Germany. In reality, Bantustans were poverty-stricken regions that provided the apartheid government a legitimate reason to uproot people from their homes...
...Klerk went on to claim that, as Minister of Education, he was a "reformer" of the education system and believed that a separate system of education benefited diverse ethnic groups by teaching schoolchildren in their own language. He quoted statistics of pass rates to prove that only 50 percent of Blacks passed when taught in a language other than their own language...
...Black schools, the lack of school books and the living conditions of Black homes and of the township environment. I could not help but wonder what benefit was given to me by being forced to learn Afrikaans, a language not of my ethnicity nor from my culture. Perhaps de Klerk should have tried to explain his reasoning on June 16, 1976, when unarmed schoolchildren were shot and killed as they demonstrated against the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction...
...Klerk denies ever knowing about security police that committed gross violations of human rights nor of the hit squads and the torture camp of Vlakplaas--a state-funded center for covert operations. He maintains that the men involved in these atrocities, including Colonel Eugene de Kok, who headed up the police death squad, were mavericks who carried out these dastardly deeds of their own volition. Although de Klerk does not dispute the evidence that gross violations of human rights were committed by elements of the security forces, he claims that he cannot be held responsible...
...Andre du Toit, a professor of political studies in South Africa, has written, de Klerk's Cabinet, as late as June 1990, accepted the "need-to-know" principle for security operations, though they also claimed that ministers should accept full accountability for "special projects." Unsurprisingly, this blatant contradiction resulted in some agents keeping their superiors in the dark about certain activities...