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Last Apartheid-Era President Of South Africa De Klerk Dies At 85

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

(Worthy News) – Frederik Willem de Klerk – the last president of a segregated South Africa, who freed Nelson Mandela – has died aged 85, sources confirm.

De Klerk negotiated the end of Mandela’s long imprisonment.

Mandela eventually became the first Black president after ‘apartheid,’ the South African system for segregation, officially ended.

In recent years however new deadly conflicts have emerged between members of the Black majority and white minority, many of whom are farmers.

FW de Klerk, as he was also known, was head of state between September 1989 and May 1994.

In 1990 the then-president announced he was releasing anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela, leading to multi-party polls in 1994.

Both men became symbols of reconciliation in post-apartheid South Africa.

The Nobel Peace Prize 1993 was even awarded jointly to Nelson Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk “for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime. And for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa.”