Have the South African government/politicians not properly apologized for apartheid?

[grude]

I’ve always been curious as a foreigner how a country like South Africa which had official legally enshrined racism so severe for example it was a given that families would not be allowed to live in the same areas should they appear to be biracial or another race a scant few decades ago hasn’t loudly disowned the former policies. You’d expect official apologies out the wazoo, expect the still living politicians and officials that formulated and carried out these policies to apologize unconditionally to the nation. They don’t though, it seems like no one wants to mention the issue and if someone does apologize it is half hearted bullshit that comes out more like anger they had to stop.

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As former leader of apartheid South African and the National Party, Mr De Klerk has always tempered his apologies for apartheid with protestations that he had never condoned human rights violations and they happened without leaders’ knowledge – for instance during his TRC testimony in 1997.

His recent interview with CNN suggests he still believes apartheid could have worked – it was just the implementation that was a bit off. He says of apartheid’s bantustan policy, “…saying that ethnic unity with one culture with one language everyone can be happy and can fulfil their democratic aspirations in an own state, that is not repugnant.”

This overlooks the fact that bantustans were created to disenfranchise black people within South Africa, thereby denying their most basic human rights. From this flowed forced removals, pass laws and the need for a massive security apparatus to suppress the movements expressing the people’s opposition to the policy, which the apartheid government was determined to ignore.

As a former leader of white South Africa, De Klerk is in a position to own the fact that apartheid was a crime against humanity and that as supreme leader he bore ultimate responsibility for all its evils. Having done so, he can offer a sincere apology. The apologies he does offer generally take the form of, “of course I’m sorry, but…”.

But I am looking at this from the outside, was curious what others think.

[Hello_Again]

Truth and Reconciliation Commission

[ctnguy]

There have been some apologies from individual Nationalist cabinet ministers - e.g. Pik Botha and Adriaan Vlok. FW de Klerk did give an apology to the TRC, although it was not exactly unqualified, and of course his recent statements you have pointed out.

Frankly, many of the Nat leaders simply were not apologetic, and still believed that they hd been in the right. PW Botha, in particular, was notoriously recalcitrant and refused to even testify before the TRC.

PW and FW were the only former heads of government still alive by 1994. The National Party rebranded itself under a new name and new leadership in 1997 in an effort to disassociate from the apartheid era, so an apology would have been politically awkward - not that this excuses it in any way. The “New National Party” is dead now, anyway, its members mostly split between the ANC and the Democratic Alliance (the largest opposition party). The last leader of the NNP sort-of-apologised when the party dissolved.

[ctnguy]

Sorry to double-post: To answer the OP’s title question, I would say that there has not been a proper apology. Other than FW, there is no-one left who is really in a position to offer a quasi-official apology.

[MrDibble]

Naaah, they haven’t. Don’t really expect anything at this late a stage, either. And that’s OK - we don’t need an apology from them, it was much more important that they do what they did - step down.