Frederik Willem de Klerk

So fast-forward from 1994 to May of last year and the White House.

This was a part of the Trump term where the president was still trying to make good on his campaign promises before giving up entirely in favor of prosecuting an Iran war.

But at the time, last May of 2025, President Trump was doing something he suggested he would do on the campaign trail, and that's say something publicly about anti-white racism, which is widespread, in some cases codified, including in the United States, and in a lot of ways, the only institutional racism that's still allowed in the Western world.

And Trump had suggested as he was running for president that he would be the one person brave enough to say something about that on the grounds that all racism is wrong, not because it's bad to hurt one group, but because it's bad to hurt any group.

It's a universal principle.

It applies to everybody.

There's nothing this parliament can do.

With or without you, people are going to occupy land.

Gerhardt claims it was the weather changing that got it caught by the Vela satellites.

A year before Dieter Gerhardt spoke, on March 24th, 1993, South Africa's president, F.W. de Klerk, told Parliament that the country had built six nuclear weapons with a seventh under construction and had dismantled all of them.

South Africa remains the only country known to have built its own nuclear weapons and then voluntarily dismantled all of them.

De Klerk said nothing about the Vela incident and nothing about Israel.

According to a technical retrospective of the South African program by Robert Kelley, a former IAEA inspector, inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that South Africa could not have built a bomb until November of 1979, two months after the flash, because it did not yet have enough highly enriched uranium.

The IAEA also reported that all of South Africa's possible bombs were accounted for.

They spoke to the managers futhu na yoo Ferwuth.

And uh do you know that ooh uh FW de Klerk, o babake was the minister of mines.

FW de Klerk.

Eh

O babaka FW de Klerk?

Nje.

He was there.

Ooh d- FW de Klerk was there on a Sunday after the mine collapsed

doesn't surprise me.

And FW De Klerk are all out of Katoa.

Yeah.

I wasn't aware of the FW De Klerk connection, but I know that... that Paul Kruger is believed to have had some indigenous connection to it.

So did a guy by the name of Trianift, by the way.

He was the leader of the conservative party at some point.

South Africa was changing.

FW De Klerk had come in.

He, he, promised us that we were moving back into the world i think the cricketers were starting to play in the in the first world cup where john t did that incredible dive people forgotten about but that pulled the the nation together and it was a eye-opener when i worked there because i realized the power of broadcasting the absolute power that uh the the the visual media has over people who write.

And it's something that stayed with me.

Of course, he was in prison for treason and a bunch of stuff, but he would be released, and the ANC, the legislation that declared communist-aligned organizations as illegal organizations would be repealed, and so they could come back, and we're gonna start negotiating for a new democratic South Africa.

And President de Klerk, who made that decision, said at the time that his decision was largely shaped by the fact that the Cold War was over and that communism had lost and that capitalism had won or liberalism had won.

And, you know, sort of the end of history thing.

But what's remarkable, something that is not as well known, is between the fall of the wall, the Berlin Wall in November 1989, and the announcement that we're going to start negotiating for a new South Africa on the 2nd of February 1990, within those basically two months, two and a half months, the Secretary General of the Communist Party in South Africa published a paper.

And this banker, Mr.

Butcher, I believe from New York City, had a very big impact economically.

I think those in power at the time knew President de Klerk and his cabinet.

They were very concerned about the sort of economic prospects.

It's about people coming together.

You know, F.W. de Klerk was the head of the National Party at the time.

And, you know, it took him to have this vision that we need to change.

What we have here is not sustainable.

People just stay d-focused on one singular outcome or their ego or feeling that just their way is the right way.

And so you don't get to a peaceful resolution like the South Africans were to, able to achieve.

You know, it's interesting that you mention F.W. de Klerk because he is often left out of that story.

But he, he had to make a change of heart in order to have that peaceful transition.

If those people can be removed there, and then, uh, there's no trouble.

Following President de Klerk's pledge that those guilty of what he called mindless killings would be brought to justice, police reinforcements arrived at the hostel.

The orders were to prevent the Zulus from leaving, to interrogate, and if necessary, to arrest suspects.

[crowd chanting] Inside, the Zulus chanted and resisted defiantly.

Lawyers were called in to mediate.

This operation is taking place two days after the massacre in the township.

The assumption here is that President de Klerk thought yesterday's police response, the confiscation of a handful of traditional weapons, too weak.

[crowd chanting]

And Besson is going in and out of Libya all the time, ostensibly for the purpose of these commercial business transactions.

So South Africa, de Klerk, just shortly before he hands over, you know, loses the April elections, gets demarched by the British and Americans because he's not keeping – they're worried that there's going to be leakage from the South African side into Europe.

to the Libyans.

And then that Dimash is repeated again in early 1995 to the government of national unity, but obviously the Mandela-dominated government of national unity.