F. W. de Klerk summary

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F. W. de Klerk, (born March 18, 1936, Johannesburg, S.Af.—died Nov. 11, 2021, Cape Town), President of South Africa (1989–94). He brought the apartheid system to an end and negotiated a transition to majority rule. Replacing P.W. Botha as leader of the National Party and president, de Klerk quickly moved to release all important political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela, and to lift the ban on the African National Congress. He and Mandela jointly received the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize. Following the country’s first universal suffrage elections in 1994, Mandela became president and de Klerk was appointed second deputy president. He retired from politics in 1997.

National Party Summary

National Party (NP), South African political party, founded in 1914, which ruled the country from 1948 to 1994. Its following included most of the Dutch-descended Afrikaners and many English-speaking whites. The National Party was long dedicated to policies of apartheid and white supremacy, but by

Nelson Mandela Summary

Nelson Mandela was a Black nationalist and the first Black president of South Africa (1994–99). His negotiations in the early 1990s with South African Pres. F.W. de Klerk helped end the country’s apartheid system of racial segregation and ushered in a peaceful transition to majority rule. Mandela

Nobel Prize Summary

Nobel Prize, any of the prizes (five in number until 1969, when a sixth was added) that are awarded annually from a fund bequeathed for that purpose by the Swedish inventor and industrialist Alfred Nobel. The Nobel Prizes are widely regarded as the most prestigious awards given for intellectual

Britannica Remembers Nelson Mandela Summary

Encyclopædia Britannica’s first biography of Nelson Mandela appeared in 1965, published in the Britannica Book of the Year prepared by Britannica’s London office: That Book of the Year, which described the events of 1964, also noted Mandela’s sentencing in its article on South Africa: In 1965