Frederik Willem de Klerk was a South African politician who served as state president of South Africa from 1989 to 1994 and as deputy president from 1994 to 1996. As South Africa's last head of state from the era of white-minority rule, he and his government dismantled the apartheid system and introduced universal suffrage. Ideologically a social conservative and an economic liberal, he led the National Party (NP) from 1989 to 1997.
1994 in South Africa saw the transition from South Africa's National Party government who had ruled the country since 1948 and had advocated the apartheid system for most of its history, to the African National Congress (ANC) who had been outlawed in South Africa since the 1950s for its opposition to apartheid. The ANC won a majority in the first multiracial election held under universal suffrage. Previously, only white people were allowed to vote. There were some incidents of violence in the Bantustans leading up to the elections as some leaders of the Bantusans opposed participation in the elections, while other citizens wanted to vote and become part of South Africa. There were also bombings aimed at both the African National Congress and the National Party and politically-motivated murders of leaders of the opposing ANC and Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).
The following lists events that happened during 1991 in South Africa.
The deputy presidentof South Africa is the deputy to the president, of the Republic of South Africa and is a member of the National Assembly and the Cabinet.
The Africa Liberal Network is an organization composed of 47 political parties from 29 countries in Africa. It is an associated organisation of Liberal International, the political family to which liberal democratic parties belong. The ALN serves to promote liberal objectives and principles throughout the continent.
Article 19 is a British international human rights organisation that works to defend and promote freedom of expression and freedom of information worldwide. It was founded in 1987. The organisation takes its name from Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; the right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.
A referendum on ending apartheid was held in South Africa on 17 March 1992. The referendum was limited to white South African voters, who were asked whether or not they supported the negotiated reforms begun by State President F. W. de Klerk two years earlier, in which he proposed to end the apartheid system that had been implemented since 1948. The result of the election was a large victory for the "yes" side, which ultimately resulted in apartheid being lifted. Universal suffrage was introduced two years later.
On 13 September 1989, 30 000 Capetonians from a diverse cross-section of the city marched in support of peace and the end of apartheid. The event, led by Mayor Gordon Oliver, Archbishop Tutu, Rev Frank Chikane, Moulana Farid Esack, Allan Boesak, and other religious leaders, was held in defiance of the State of Emergency. The march resulted in concessions from the apartheid cabinet headed by FW de Klerk, following years of violent clashes between anti-apartheid protestors and the police, and was the first such event to include elected world government functionaries. It was considered the "last illegal march" at the time, and went ahead without a major confrontation. The size of the protest, despite the open defiance, and the restrained response from the police signalled the beginning of the transition to democracy.
The apartheid system in South Africa was ended through a series of bilateral and multi-party negotiations between 1990 and 1993. The negotiations culminated in the passage of a new interim Constitution in 1993, a precursor to the Constitution of 1996; and in South Africa's first non-racial elections in 1994, won by the African National Congress (ANC) liberation movement.
The State Security Council (SSC) was formed in South Africa in 1972 to advise the government on the country's national policy and strategy concerning security, its implementation and determining security priorities. Its role changed through the prime ministerships of John Vorster and PW Botha, being little used during the former's and during the latter's, controlling all aspects of South African public's lives by becoming the Cabinet. During those years he would implement a Total National Strategy, Total Counter-revolutionary Strategy and finally in the mid-eighties, established the National Security Management System (NSMS). After FW de Klerk's rise to the role of State President, the Cabinet would eventually regain control of the management of the country. After the 1994 elections a committee called National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee was formed to advise the South African president on security and intelligence as well as its implementation.
Marike de Klerk was the First Lady of South Africa, as the wife of State President Frederik Willem de Klerk, from 1989–1994. She was also a politician of the former governing National Party in her own right. De Klerk was murdered in her Cape Town home in 2001.
Johann Christiaan Kriegler is a retired South African judge who served in the Constitutional Court of South Africa from February 1995 to November 2002. Formerly a practising silk in Johannesburg, he joined the bench as a judge of the Transvaal Provincial Division in 1984. He was also the first chairperson of the post-apartheid Independent Electoral Commission and Electoral Commission of South Africa.
Pierre Francois de Vos is a South African constitutional law scholar.
Mudene "Dene" Smuts was a South African politician. She was a member of Parliament for the Democratic Alliance, serving in various capacities, including as Shadow Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development.
Timothy Modise is a South African veteran journalist, broadcaster, public speaker and philanthropist. Boasting over thirty years in broadcast media and journalism, Modise has worked for various radio and TV stations of the SABC, M-Net, Primedia, BBC and Power FM across different formats from music, current affairs and talk shows. He was inducted in the Radio Hall of Fame in 2011.
The Interim Constitution was the fundamental law of South Africa from during the first non-racial general election on 27 April 1994 until it was superseded by the final constitution on 4 February 1997. As a transitional constitution it required the newly elected Parliament to also serve as a constituent assembly to adopt a final constitution. It made provision for a major restructuring of government as a consequence of the abolition of apartheid. It also introduced an entrenched bill of rights against which legislation and government action could be tested, and created the Constitutional Court with broad powers of judicial review.
On 2 February 1990, the State President of South Africa F. W. de Klerk delivered a speech at the opening of the 1990 session of the Parliament of South Africa in Cape Town in which he announced sweeping reforms that marked the beginning of the negotiated transition from apartheid to constitutional democracy. The reforms promised in the speech included the unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC) and other anti-apartheid organisations, the release of political prisoners including Nelson Mandela, the end of the state of emergency, and a moratorium on the death penalty.
The Institute for Democratic Alternatives in South Africa (IDASA) later known as the Institute for Democracy in South Africa was a South African-based think-tank organisation that was formed in 1986 by Frederik van Zyl Slabbert and Alex Boraine. Its initial focus from 1987 was creating an environment for white South Africans to talk to the banned liberation movement in-exile, the African National Congress (ANC) prior to its unbanning in 1990 by the President F. W. de Klerk. After the South African election in 1994, its focus was on ensuing the establishment of democratic institutions in the country, political transparency and good governance. Caught up in a funding crisis after the 2008 global financial crisis, closed in 2013.
Theuns Eloff is a South African, who is the ex-Executive Director of the FW de Klerk Foundation, an ex-Rector and an ex-Reconciler.
Adv. Geline Alfred Fuko is a Tanzanian lawyer, (Attorney) and human rights activist who is a graduate of the Joint European Master in Comparative Local Development This is an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master's programme at the University of Trento Italy, Financed by the European Union Commission Geline is a 2022 Draper Hills fellow at Stanford University with the Centre on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Freeman Spogli Institute. She has helped to promote democracy in Tanzania in organisations such as Tangible Initiatives For Local Development Tanzania (TIFLD) She was instrumental in designing and managing the first and the only Online Public Database on constitutional resources. In 2016, she was granted a Mandela Washington Fellowship. Her achievements were specifically highlighted by President Obama at the YALI Presidential Summit in Washington, D.C. on 3 August 2016.
