“Van Zyl was always the same ...

thoughtful, witty, clever, and impatient to get

things done, friendly, and charming.
He knew his friends and he kept them.

He told a brilliant story. He was a fleet-footed

raconteur, enormously entertaining.
His intellect was piercing, challenging and
respectful...”

Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert

IN MEMORIAM
Tributes have flowed in following the
death of van Zyl Slabbert. Read some of
them below, or click on “Tributes”.

See a compilation and some of the photos

from the memorial services below, or click
on “Photos”.

See the slideshow shown at the memorial

services; click on “Slideshow”.

Videos of van Zyl’s younger years can be

seen on youtube. Uni of Stellenbosch
has also paid tribute in videos here.

Listen to the speakers: Minister Jeff

Radebe, Zohra Dawood, Michael Savage,
Wilmot James, Alex Boraine and Paul
Graham at the memorial service.
A tribute booklet was printed for the me-
morial services.

Van’s death was covered by newspapers

across the globe. Read some of them
below.

Share your tributes at

Van Zyl
memorial photos
See more photos taken at the memorials for Van Zyl Slabbert.
This is a compilation of a few of the photos from www.flickr.com/idasa.
Van Zyl
slideshow
At the memorial services, this slideshow played in the background, as a
tribute to the work that Van Zyl Slabbert achieved in his lifetime.
To see the full slideshow, click on the picture below.
Van Zyl
video & podcasts
Van Zyl
Tributes
T ributes have poured in following the death of V an Z yl S labbert pic: the witness

in M ay 2010. B elow are a few of the personal tributes that

have been sent to I dasa . I f you would like to share your message ,
The University of Stellenbosch has paid tribute in videos here.
go to our website at www . idasa . org

Videos of van Zyl’s younger years can be seen at www.youtube.com/idasa05.

He was always the same: thoughtful, witty, clever, and impatient to get things
done, friendly, and charming. He knew his friends and he kept them.
He told a brilliant story. He was a fleet-footed raconteur, enormously entertaining.
His intellect was piercing, challenging and respectful.
The quality that gave stability to the dynamic personality that was Van Zyl Slabbert
was his integrity, loyalty and lack of pretension.
Make no mistake.
He could wipe the floor with those who contradicted his values or betrayed his
trust and sense of fairness.
Those at the receiving of his sarcasm or targeted by his witty sense of irony often
ran for cover. But Van was incapable of being nasty or mean over an intellectual
disagreement because of the theologian in him. He wanted to persuade, never
bully.
listen to the of tributes paid at his memorial. He had an unusual ability to distill complexity into an understandable proposition,
to take an entire body of literature to frame a problem and used his quite remark-
able intellect to proceed to answer the problem, confident but with the appropri-
ate dose of self-doubt too.
I once described Van Zyl as a visceral democrat. By that I meant that he carried jus-
tice, fairness and a drive towards equality in his bones. His brainpower governed
and refined his joyfully open temperament but he was not simply an intellectual
democrat. Justice was written in his genome code.
He played a major and largely unacknowledged role in our country’s yearning for
freedom and democracy. He put his comfort and his life in the service for justice.
Excommunication from the Afrikaner community is no small thing and he never
quite had that fate: still, he never enjoyed being made to feel that he was not a
proper Afrikaner.
For the things we loved about Van were in fact that very qualities that came from
his Afrikaner background: the lack of royal pretension, the respectfulness, the im-
patient earthiness of the frontiersman, the intellect put to the common good, the
loyalty to family and friends.
The world stopped on Friday May 14 2010. I will miss you Van Zyl.
Dr Wilmot James

Frederik was an inspiring and towering personality. One of the many solid, heart
warming South African politicians that I have come to learn, already during the
struggle years. He was not an easy act, but an honest and courageous one. And
I must say that when he explained to the delegation of Belgian parliamentarians
in 1992 the difficulties at the Greater Johannesburg Council with getting taxation,
service delivery, spacial politics, the call for dignity and all that stuff more right,
it opened a microcosm of all the difficulties that South Africa would have to go
through. He helped outsiders understand both passions and problems at the inside.
When I wrote his portrait in a Flemish weekly, I titled it “the bridge builder”. As an
anti-apartheid activist from Belgium, I was an outsider. But – as I keep on repeating
– so privileged to have had the chance to learn from Frederik, from you and many,
many others. My condolences go to family, and the huge network of friends.
Jan Vanheukelom, Kessel-lo
I was very sad to hear about van Zyl’s death. I am of the generation of journalists
who well remember the unique interventions made by him, in particular.
I sometimes wonder if there would have been elections in 1994 without van Zyl
and Idasa.
Last year I was asked by a Dutch television company I have done quite a lot of
work for to set up a documentary in which he would be a main player, along with
Breyten and two ANC artists/poets to mark the 20 years since that particular meet-
ing in Victoria Falls.
Despite the incredibly short time given me to set it up, I managed to arrange it,
mainly through van Zyl’s delight that it would be made, and his energy to bully
Breyten to delay his trip back to Paris, but then one of the key ANC personalities
pulled out at the last minute, so the documentary was not made.
I was asked again last month to see if I could set it up again later this year. And now,
alas, the main driver of that initiative is gone. And without him there isn’t anyone I
can remember who was at the Victoria Falls meeting then who could drive accurate
memories of that story within its context, and with its complexities, analysis, and
humour too.
And of course, I, as a technician with a microphone, also remember van Zyl’s rich,
compelling voice, strong enough to ensure we changed our world, and musical
enough to engage any listerner prepared to hear.
This is the second or third important historical documentary which has been in-
formally on my diary for a while and which will now not be made because one or
more of the main players has died.
I will think of him at the memorial and think of IDASA, as I know what he and it
meant in South Africa’s history.
Best regards to you all.
Peta Thornycroft
It was November of 2004. I was late and in a panic. The tarmac at Johannesburg’s
O.R. Tambo international airport was soaked because of foul weather and our
flight was backed up in the landing queue. Immigration was a nightmare. “Visa?
How long are you staying? Where are you staying? What are you here for? How
much money do you have? You must leave in 14 days!” Rubber-Stamp thud like a
baton stick on and run.
Never one to miss a thing, he nabbed me as I walked stealthily into the room
thinking I could sneak in unnoticed. Thud. Thud. Thud. The last drops of rain
from my umbrella fell on the carpet. “Welcome Bella. Take a seat”, or something
convivial like that. During the meeting’s tea break he headed towards me. I was
still cowering in my pity corner as I thought he was the sort of man to hand out
a delayed form of discipline. I was certain I was going to get a lecture on meeting
etiquette. But not Van Zyl. His warm hand outstretched, he gave me a greeting
that will go down as one of the warmest and sincerest I have ever had.
I hope I never forget the comfort of that firm grip. I would later learn it belonged
to an ace rugby player, someone who could have taken the game professionally,
but luckily for me, chose a different path. With that handshake came the biggest
smile, reaching all the way to his eyes, and twinkling out of them.
He was wearing a white and brown cotton shirt of the pan-African tradition, the
neat fabric of the hemline of the sleeves just grazing his rough elbows. The idea
stuck. Since then my male friends get one regularly from me.
Van Zyl was generous of spirit. My country was going through difficult times. “It’s
going to get worse before it gets better. But don’t doubt it. It will definitely get
better. Zimbabwe will be the amazing country it should be”, he said with such
prescient confidence, I frankly thought some of his nuts and bolts were coming
undone.
In the years to follow, he would be a constant source of encouragement. A kind
man, of the way your maternal grandmother is when you are having a hard time
with something she knows you can accomplish. A phone call would come through
to me every so often. “I am just checking on you, no pressure”, his voice would
boom, not with authoritarianism, but to give you a big boost. I could always tell
there was a smile on the other side, trying to ease my pain.
He was a role model in autonomy, Van Zyl. If an institution or organization did not
work for him, he wasn’t afraid to step out of it, and create something of his own.
He believed in human agency and worked tirelessly for it. He would craft a niche;
find a place where his exuberance and intellect could always thrive, and where his
ideas would rapidly take shape. Idasa is a poignant example.
He tools were optimism and a positive spirit that all would turn out right. I
never quite figured where his reserves of relentless hope came from when the
rest of us were slipping into deep caves of distress and despair. Once he had my
email address, the reading instructions followed. “This might inspire you,” was
the simple message.
Occasionally a text message would come through, “Hang in there, don’t give up,
” especially in 2006 when we were on trail for our belief in a society where the
airwaves belong to all of us, not just a select few. The Radio Voice of the People
case was arduous. Some friends chose to distance themselves from us because
we were seen as “too controversial…too confrontational”. Others spoke with
their body language, or just became distant. Rather than play hide and seek,
Van Zyl compiled a docket for me of case material on how South Africa ensured
the devolution of the airwaves.
In the years that I was born, Dr Frederick van Zyl Slabbert was already leader of
the opposition in the South African parliament of mid-1975. A decade later he
was working as far afield as Dakar, Senegal, paving the way for South Africa’s
talks about a transition to a plural and democratic state.
“Slabbert gave me all his wisdom, ” says Davie Malungisa, Executive Director of
IDAZIM, a think tank that we set up as quickly as Slabbert has said the name. “I
think what Zimbabwe needs right now is an IDAZIM, an independent place for
dialogue and capacity building to play the role that Idasa did during our own
transition,” he’d said with a sweep of his hands.
And that was another of his abundant gifts – ideas. They would spew from his
mind with his characteristically burly lucidity.
Dr Frederick Van Zyl Slabbert’s death on May 14, is not only a loss to his fam-
ily, his friends and the society of South Africa. It is a loss to those of us in Africa
who, through his selfless and unpaid contribution learned from him and keep
alive our beliefs in the possibility of attaining in our life time: Open, Tolerant,
Just and Equitable societies.
As the founding African board member for the Open Society Institute’s southern
Africa foundation, he brought to our soils Karl Popper’s philosophy and expand-
ed the depth and breadth of the work of the Soros Foundation’s OSI footprint
across the African continent. And so, as we fly our personal flags at half-mast
in honour of Van Zyl, we no doubt feel a deep personal loss. Our ache is dulled
a little by the knowledge that bighearted as he was, Slabbert gave to our world
his dues, and so much, much more.
Isabella Matambanadzo, Harare, Zimbabwe.
I speak on behalf of Disabled People South Africa (DPSA) – a civil society organisa-
tion formed by, and representing South Africa’s disabled people’s human and de-
velopmental rights – when saying we convey our condolences to the family, friends,
colleagues, and associates of the late Dr Frederik van Zyl Slabbert.
His contributions to the strengthening of our country’s democratic culture within
which our citizens and civil society formations has been immense. DPSA will ensure
that his efforts at building a truly democratic South Africa are fortified further and
consolidated through reinforcing the role of disabled citizens in South Africa, the
continent and world at large.
Dr. van Zyl Slabbert will be remembered for his multifaceted contributions –
through direct politics, economic participation, addressing our populations daily
challenges, and the ensuring individuals’ rights to free association – in our coun-
try’s political lanscape.
Thank you,
Motsoakgomo I. “Papi” Nkoli
Condolences and that of the entiere embassy with the passing of Van Zyl Slabbert. I
met him years ago several times. Truly a great man, who leaves us too early.
Peter Mollema. Deputy Head of Mission, Netherlands Embassy
It is with great sadness that I learned of the death of van Zyl and write to extend
my deepest sympathy to you and all his colleagues in Idasa. The tributes to van Zyl
have been wonderful and I do hope these help his family and friends to ease the
pain of loss, even a little, at this very sad time.
With warm regards
Di Oliver
The range of voices I have met in the last few days who knew him or of him, and
sing praises of him; are many. I had no opportunity to meet him personally and yet,
somehow, I feel that I have. I have colleagues at OSISA who recall that he devel-
oped that institution from nothing; and of course looking back in history, I recall
that I covered a lot meetings as both a political writer and a correspondent for the
Associated Press, during the transition periods (the 80s and early 90s) between
President Kaunda and the delegations from South Africa led by Dr Slabbert or
certainly gatherings associated with progressive groups within the SA establish-
ment. The founding member of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD),
Akashambatwa Mbikusita Lewanika, upon learning that I had joined Idasa in 2002
had only one question for me: “How is Van Zyl Slabbert?”. Those moments repre-
sent some of the most important years of my life growing up in the face of histori-
cal events in southern Africa.
Its not easy for those of us who joined Idasa late in the day to comprehend the the
full impact of this tragic event but we live in the shadow of the greatness of this
incomparable intellectual who has passed and left us this indelible footprint called
Idasa. May his soul rest in peace.
Kondwani Chirambo
Van Zyl
in the news pic: the witness
On behalf of the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Stellenbosch
University, I wish to convey our condolences to Dr van Zyl Slabbert’s family and all
his close associates. We honour his intellectual energy and integrity, as well as his
contribution to the struggle to build a deeply democratic South Africa. T his is a collection of news
Cherryl Walker and online stories following
the death and memorials for
I am sorry that I cannot be there to honour a remarkable man. He
showed by personal example how possible it is to rise above petty
cultural ties and engage the bigger questions. We will miss him and I F rederik V an Z yl
am sad that he will not be here to guide Southern Africa through some
very difficult times ahead. S labbert in M ay 2010.
Tony Reeler
T here was worldwide
coverage , in print and on -
At the Club of Madrid (www.clubmadrid.org) we are deeply saddened by the
line , of the outpouring of
passing by of Frederik van Zyl Slabbert on May 14, 2010 in Johannesburg.
Van Zyl made enormous contributions to South Africa showing an unyielding support for V an zyl and the
sadness at his death .
commitment and dedication with the values of Democracy and the critical
importance of promoting dialogue in consensus building.
Within the outlook of the organisations dedicated to strength Democracy
worldwide, the Club of Madrid has always admired the brilliant path of IDASA,
under the vision of your founder.
Both organisations have consolidated a tight link over the years, and we are
pretty sure his legacy will remain in your work for a long time.
On this very sad moment, as Secretary General of the Club of Madrid allow me
to express my sincerest condolences and, through you to the staff of IDASA.
Our thoughts are with you at this difficult time.
With my deepest sympathy,
Carlos Westerndorp

I met Van in 1975. I was active in the PFP and we met at meetings, campaigns and
congresses. For years we had a chat every few years. The last time I saw him he
was well except for getting gout. I then had two years of health troubles. I was
hoping to make contact again as I had done in the past. I did not know he had had
a serious health setback.The news of his death came as a great shock. I could not
believe it. He was so strong, fit and young.
John Joslin, Smart Green Prosperity

Idasa pays tribute to van Zyl Slabbert
By Moira Levy, Idasa Media Manager, 14 May 2010
www.idasa.org
One of South Africa’s most visionary political leaders, political analyst Frederik Van
Zyl Slabbert, died on Friday 14 May. He had been admitted to Johannesburg’s Mil-
park Hospital where he passed away.
The man who spent decades committed to non-racialism and to building democra-
cy in South Africa is possibly best remembered for the role he played in addressing
the polarisation between black and white South Africans, especially under apart-
heid.
In pursuit of this task he founded in 1987 what was then known as the Institute for
a Democratic Alternative in South Africa, now known as African democracy insti-
tute, Idasa.
Van Zyl, as he was fondly known, represented a living embodiment of active citi-
zenship as a South African and an African public intellectual. He made enormous
contributions to democracy globally through, among others, founding our institu-
tion and being a critical part of the South African transition to democracy. His life
was rooted in the values of social justice which guided his participation on an on-
going basis in considering what democracy is and how it should be lived by citizens
of South Africa and other countries.
At Idasa’s 20th anniversary celebration, the organisation’s director Paul Graham,
paid tribute to Van Zyl Slabbert for the clear vision that he provided the organi-
sation over the years. Graham said the speeches, articles and insights provided
during those early years by Van Zyl Slabbert helped push the organisation, and the
country, to think about the democracy we strive for and the manner in which we
strive for it.
Born in Pretoria on March 2, 1940, Van Zyl Slabbert grew up in what is now Polok-
wane, and studied for 18 months at the Dutch Reformed Church’s theological
seminary at Stellenbosch University before deciding on an academic career in
sociology. He completed a BA Honours at the university in 1962, and was awarded
a doctorate in 1967. From 1964 to 1973 he lectured in sociology at Stellenbosch,
Rhodes and the University of Cape Town. In 1973 he was appointed head of the
department of sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand. The following
year, standing for the Progressive Party, he won the Rondebosch parliamentary
seat from the United Party. In time he became the leader of the party, which later
became known as the Progressive Federal Party and was the official opposition.
In the 1980s, when South Africa was in turmoil, and against a backdrop of mount-
ing violence and repression, Van Zyl Slabbert, with fellow MP Dr Alex Boraine,
made the courageous decision in 1986 to resign as members of parliament. This
was their protest against the bankruptcy of whites-only
government and the politics of exclusion and repression. It expressed a widely-
felt frustration with piecemeal National Party-dominated reform efforts and ex-
pressed the innovative thinking and foresight that was to become associated with
Van Zyl Slabbert and his style of politics for the next decades of his engagement
with nation-building in our country.
Back then, he and Boraine also broke with the 40-year traditions of whites-only
rule and travelled throughout the country and abroad to consult a wide cross-
section of political leaders, including O. R. Tambo, then president of the banned
ANC. They solicited support for the conclusion they were coming to -- that they
could play a more effective role in the struggle to end apartheid from outside par-
liament, by bringing together South Africans from across the racial, political and
economic divides to explore the idea of a democratic alternative.
The result was Idasa, which opened its first office in Port Elizabeth on 1November
1986. Its aim, as the organisation saw it at the end of the 1980s, was to encour-
age South Africans of all races to find a common space where they could meet
and together explore a non-racial and democratic alternative, and assist a peace-
ful transition to democracy, while fostering and strengthening a culture of democ-
racy. This seemed unthinkable at the time, and indeed immediately drew harsh
criticism from many quarters -- from the state, vitriolic anger; from the mass
democratic movement and many of its allies, scorn and cynicism about Idasa’s
faith in negotiations in the face of the state’s onslaught.
One of the first, and the most dramatic, initiatives that Van Zyl Slabbert will be
remembered for was the conference Idasa held in Dakar, Senegal, in July 1987,
which brought together white South Africans, mostly Afrikaners, and their coun-
terparts in exile. This was the first open and public meeting between members of
the banned ANC and members of South Africa’s white political establishment.
Despite the outrage from the apartheid authorities at the time, the visit sparked
immense interest among ordinary South Africans – reportbacks drew large
crowds and those who travelled to Dakar came back profoundly changed by the
experience. For them it cracked open a façade of ignorance and fear that had
characterised the white Afrikaner laager.
The visit to Dakar became known as the second Great Trek of Afrikaners into the political
unknown. The group of mostly Afrikaners was seen by most white South Africans at the time
as representing a lunatic fringe. However that trek started a process of self-analysis and
introspection that contributed to creating an irreversible momentum.
It showed Van Zyl Slabbert even then to be a thinker well before his time. What was unthink-
able at the time eventually became the inevitable; within a few years the politics of negotia-
tion started taking shape.
The climate of open discussion and self-criticism which characterised the 1990s and made a
negotiated settlement in South Africa a reality, can be attributed to the bold steps taken by
people like Van Zyl Slabbert who got South Africans across the political divide to re-evaluate
their future.
After the advent of democracy in South Africa in 1994, Van Zyl Slabbert turned to business
and became chairperson of Caxton Publishers, Adcorp Holdings and Metro Cash ‘n Carry, as
well as holding various
directorships. He also co-founded Khula, a black investment trust.
In 2002 then-president Thabo Mbeki appointed him to head a team investigating a new
electoral system for the country. Its recommendation, a more accountable mix of constitu-
ency-based and proportional
representation, was quietly shelved by the government.
Slabbert became chancellor of his alma mater, Stellenbosch, in 2008, but at the end of that
year suffered a heart attack, and had a pacemaker installed. The following year he quit the
Stellenbosch post, along with his company directorships, to spend more time with his wife
and family.
He authored a number of books, including a semi-autobiographical analysis of tricameral
politics, The Last White Parliament.
He leaves his wife Jane and two adult children, Tania and Riko, from a previous marriage.
Zuma calls Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert a principled patriot
Source: Business Report, 14 May 2010
http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=552&fSetId=662&fArticleId=5470305
President Jacob Zuma said the late apartheid-era opposition leader Frederik Van
Zyl Slabbert would be remembered as a principled patriot who served his coun-
try diligently.
“Dr Van Zyl Slabbert played a prominent role in the struggle against apartheid.
His conventional Afrikaner upbringing did not prevent him from recognising the
folly of the apartheid system,” said a statement from Zuma’s office, on Van Zyl
Slabbert’s death on Friday morning.
He had been an outspoken critic of minority rule and would be remembered for
his courage and foresight in leading a group of white South Africans to Dakar,
Senegal in 1987 for talks with the then banned African National Congress.
“That proved a critical moment on the path towards a negotiated settlement,”
continued Zuma.
“His visionary leadership lives on in our efforts to build and strengthen democ-
racy. He will be remembered as a principled and patriotic South African, who
served his country diligently,” said Zuma, extending condolences to his family. -
Sapa 
The ANC mourns van Zyl Slabbert
Source: News24.com 14 May 2010
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Politics/ANC-mourns-Van-Zyl-Slabbert-20100514
Johannesburg – Former politician, academic and businessman Frederik Van Zyl
Slabbert would be sorely missed by all South Africans, the ANC said on Friday after
his death in Johannesburg.
“The ANC deeply mourns the passing of legendary politician and business leader
Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert,” said spokesperson Brian Sokutu.
“As leader of the Progressive Federal Party, not only did he make an indelible mark
in shaping opposition politics against apartheid in South Africa, but he fought for
constitutional democracy to be realised.
“He will also be remembered as one of those white South Africans who facilitated
contact with the African National Congress at the time it was banned inside the
country,” said Sokutu.
Slabbert died at home with his family after an illness.
The Institute for Democracy in South Africa, which he co-founded in 1986 with
Truth and Reconcilation Commissioner Alex Boraine, said he was a visionary and
represented a “living embodiment of active citizenship as a South African and an
African public intellectual”.
“His life was rooted in the values of social justice which guided his participation on
an ongoing basis in considering what democracy is and how it should be lived by
citizens of South Africa and other countries,” the centre said.
“This visionary son of Africa will be deeply missed.”
- SAPA -
Zuma calls Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert a principled patriot
Source: Business Report, 14 May 2010
http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=552&fSetId=662&fArticleId=5470305
President Jacob Zuma said the late apartheid-era opposition leader Frederik Van
Zyl Slabbert would be remembered as a principled patriot who served his coun-
try diligently.
“Dr Van Zyl Slabbert played a prominent role in the struggle against apartheid.
His conventional Afrikaner upbringing did not prevent him from recognising the
folly of the apartheid system,” said a statement from Zuma’s office, on Van Zyl
Slabbert’s death on Friday morning.
He had been an outspoken critic of minority rule and would be remembered for
his courage and foresight in leading a group of white South Africans to Dakar,
Senegal in 1987 for talks with the then banned African National Congress.
“That proved a critical moment on the path towards a negotiated settlement,”
continued Zuma.
“His visionary leadership lives on in our efforts to build and strengthen democ-
racy. He will be remembered as a principled and patriotic South African, who
served his country diligently,” said Zuma, extending condolences to his family. -
Sapa 

The ANC mourns van Zyl Slabbert
Source: News24.com 14 May 2010
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Politics/ANC-mourns-Van-Zyl-Slabbert-20100514
Johannesburg – Former politician, academic and businessman Frederik Van Zyl
Slabbert would be sorely missed by all South Africans, the ANC said on Friday after
his death in Johannesburg.
“The ANC deeply mourns the passing of legendary politician and business leader
Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert,” said spokesperson Brian Sokutu.
“As leader of the Progressive Federal Party, not only did he make an indelible mark
in shaping opposition politics against apartheid in South Africa, but he fought for
constitutional democracy to be realised.
“He will also be remembered as one of those white South Africans who facilitated
contact with the African National Congress at the time it was banned inside the
country,” said Sokutu.
Slabbert died at home with his family after an illness.
The Institute for Democracy in South Africa, which he co-founded in 1986 with
Truth and Reconcilation Commissioner Alex Boraine, said he was a visionary and
represented a “living embodiment of active citizenship as a South African and an
African public intellectual”.
“His life was rooted in the values of social justice which guided his participation on
an ongoing basis in considering what democracy is and how it should be lived by
citizens of South Africa and other countries,” the centre said.
“This visionary son of Africa will be deeply missed.”
- SAPA -
Max du Preez - from The Passion for Reason: Essays in Honour of an
Afrikaner African
I first saw Van in 1971. I was a confused, screwed-up kaalvoet Boerseun from the
Free State trying to learn something about the great world out there by studying
at the University of Stellenbosch (with hindsight, it almost sounds like a contradic-
tion). Van and Rocky Gagiano, young lecturers then, were having a political discus-
sion with Piet Vorster, the son of the prime minister (and a student at the time),
and a few of his friends in Tollies, the student pub. It was an uneven contest, even
though Piet was quite a bright guy. Van was just in another league; I was fascinated
by this rugged, good-looking Boer, with his quick mind and wry sense of humour.
Back in my home town of Kroonstad, I had been told that lefty whites had dirty
long hair, earrings and limp wrists, so this was confusing. If you had told me then
that, sixteen years later, I would stand with Van and others in the kitchen of the
President of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, singing ‘Sarie Marais’, I would have
seriously doubted your sanity.
At the end of 1973, I started working as a journalist at Die Burger, then still the of-
ficial mouthpiece of the National Party, and the year after I became a member of
the first editorial team of Die Burger’s northern sister, Beeld. That was the year Van
won the Rondebosch seat for the then Progressive Party and went to Parliament.
I remember as if it was yesterday how my father, a staunch Free State Nat, told me
then that he thought Slabbert had wasted his entire future by joining the Progs.
‘He could have been the Prime Minister of South Africa within a few years if he had
stayed with his own people,’ my father said, ‘hy is die slimste man in die politiek en
’n gebore leier’ (he is the cleverest man in our politics and a born leader).
I was now working for a newspaper group that saw Van Zyl Slabbert as an enemy of
the Afrikaner people, and as someone who was soft on the reds and the blacks. To
young Afrikaners like me, and young journalists like me, staying inside the main-
stream of Afrikaner nationalism to carve out a good career was a very seductive
prospect. But at the same time, most of us were always uncomfortably aware that
there was once a promising young Afrikaner like us who had decided to abandon
the comfort of the inner circle and had chosen rather to campaign for democracy
and human rights.
I next saw Van when I became part of the Naspers newspapers’ parliamentary team
in 1978 and he was a driving force behind the opposition to the National Party. But
by the end of that parliamentary session, having witnessed the moral bankruptcy
and dangerous politics of John Vorster and his henchmen, I had lost my stomach
for National Party propaganda. I was duly ‘banished to the colonies’ by my editors; I
was sent to cover Namibia, where the independence process had just started.
My designs of rapid progress through the ranks of the Afrikaans newspapers were
now falling apart very quickly as I was confronted by the realities of apartheid and
of the apartheid state’s destabilising military policies in neighbouring states. It was
my turn to abandon the comfort of the bosom of the volk: in 1984, I walked over
to the ‘other side’ and became the political correspondent of the Sunday Times
and Business Day – which meant my path again crossed Van’s in Parliament. (As it
turned out, it wasn’t the ‘other side’ at all, just the other side of the same side …)
This time, my employers and colleagues didn’t think it inappropriate for me to
be seen talking to the leader of the official opposition, and my friendship with
Van started. For many years, there was always an undertone of resentment in my
relationship with him: I knew I wasn’t stupid, I knew I was a good journalist and I
was working hard, yet I never had Van’s uncanny ability to see through the clutter,
to grasp the bigger picture of the political developments around us. In the three
decades I have spent reporting on the politics of our region, I have never met any-
one who could analyse trends as quickly and as clearly as Van Zyl Slabbert. He had
a bullshit detector like few others.
In later years, my political views and analysis often differed from Van’s, but I never
doubted the wisdom of his dramatic decision in 1986 to resign from the white
Parliament. In fact, I think most political analysts, including Van himself, have
underestimated the impact of that decision on the thinking of both the ruling Nats
at the time and the political leadership of black South Africans. The damage to the
legitimacy and credibility of the white-dominated Parliament was fatal. And that
was a good thing.
Van told me of his decision to quit several days before the event. It was a hot
story, a significant story. I was the political correspondent of the biggest newspa-
per in the country, and yet I could not even tell my girlfriend what I knew before it
actually happened. Van’s resignation speech was one of his best. I still remember
clearly seeing the utter shock in the eyes of PW Botha and his men when, at the
end of the speech, Van declared he was leaving Parliament.
When Van asked me to be a part of the Dakar initiative of 1987, I did not hesitate,
although I knew very well that taking part in such a high-profile political event
would make my job as a political correspondent for a mainstream newspaper com-
pletely untenable.
Van explained to me that he believed such a symbolic act, establishment Afrikan-
ers travelling to West Africa and meeting the leadership of the banned liberation
movement, would help break the impasse in the deadly politics of repression and
resistance of the late 1980s. It would be risky, he said, but unless something went
badly wrong it would probably have the effect of telling both sides of the conflict
that a negotiated settlement would not only be desirable, but would not be so
hard to achieve. Of course he was right. And despite everything said afterwards by
the ANC, the white establishment or the government and its security apparatus,
this was all Van had in mind, all he wanted to achieve.
Within months of our return from Dakar, despite the hysterical reaction, the domi-
nant white attitude had shifted towards negotiation politics, and students, business
leaders, academics and writers started having meetings with the ANC in neighbour-
ing states. Less than eight months after Dakar, the head of the National Intelligence
Service, Niël Barnard, had his first meeting with Nelson Mandela in jail, and shortly
afterwards he and other senior spooks had a series of clandestine meetings with
Thabo Mbeki, Jacob Zuma and others in Europe.
The Dakar safari was a brave and visionary thing to do. It also changed the views
of the ANC leadership, despite the statements later made by Mbeki and others
that the whole thing was a controlled exercise from their side. I was there; I know
that was not true. The one ANC delegate who did admit to a change of heart about
white South Africans and Afrikaners after Dakar was Kader Asmal. In August 2003,
he told a meeting of the National Business Initiative that before Dakar the only
Afrikaners he had met were security policemen and immigration officials.
After the Dakar meeting, most of us went on to visit Ghana and Burkina Faso
as guests of their presidents – that was when we sang ‘Sarie Marais’ to Thomas
Sankara and his Cabinet, who had just treated us to a rendition of some of their
folk and liberation songs. It was while we were in Ouagadougou that we received
the first faxes of South African newspaper coverage and comment on our trip.
It was truly depressing. We were sitting around the hotel pool talking about this
when Van and Beyers Naudé challenged me: if you are so disillusioned about South
African, and especially Afrikaans journalism, why don’t you do something about it?
The result of that conversation was the founding, a year later, of Vrye Weekblad,
the first anti-apartheid newspaper in Afrikaans. Chairman of the board: Van Zyl
Slabbert. We were a wild, hard-living bunch of media terrorists and we must have
embarrassed Van many times with our antics. And yet Van remained the one figure
we could count on for support and advice (and occasionally money) right to the
end.
Helen Suzman was wrong about him: when it really counted, Van Zyl Slabbert did
have staying power.
Van and many of us who went to Dakar came back with the message to everyone
who wanted to listen: the ANC are pragmatic, reasonable people the white estab-
lishment could do business with....
There are very few South African politicians in history who could retire with their
credibility and self-respect intact. Van Zyl Slabbert is one of them.

‘He wore his alienation on his sleeve’
Source: Mark Gevisser, Mail & Guardian, 21 May 2010
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-05-20-he-wore-his-alienation-on-sleeve African support for apartheid. Slabbert himself believed this to be true, but the
I first met Frederik van Zyl Slabbert in 1977 when I was 12, on a holiday our two
families took together. My father, David Gevisser, had been one of the campaign
managers to engineer the “Prog” victory that put Slabbert and five others into
Parliament next to Helen Suzman, and had become an ardent supporter of his
political aspirations.
Like my father, and like almost everyone else who would meet “Van” during his
extraordinary life, I was immediately smitten. I had never met anyone like him:
he seemed both glamorous and earthy, both intense and irreverent, both easily
approachable and fiercely intellectual. He solicited my opinions on something
political, possibly the Soweto Uprising; I remember my conversations with him
and his wife, Mana, on that holiday as being the first seriously “adult” ones I ever
had. I remember thinking, on the drive home, that I would go to the trenches
for him (some trenches: door-to-door canvassing in a Bryanston by-election) and
that I wanted to be like him when I grew up: passionate, principled, engaged.
When he became the leader of the Progressive Federal Party (PFP) two years
later, I put a poster of him up in my room. I abandoned the “Progs” when I found
the student left at university; three years later, when Slabbert stormed out of the
“grotesque ritual of irrelevance” that was the white Parliament, I cheered. And
as I watched him lead those vital encounters between white South Africans and
ANC leaders, I felt a deep relief. His relationship with Thabo Mbeki in particular
seemed to hold, in its affection and creativity, an answer to South Africa’s prob-
lems. I thought then -- somewhat naively -- that Slabbert would be South Africa’s
transitional leader and that this would save us from civil war.
One of Slabbert’s great antagonists at the time was newspaper editor Ken Owen,
who wrote recently that by quitting, the former PFP leader gave up the chance
to become one of the architects of the South African Constitution. The historian
Hermann Giliomee agrees: “There was a golden opportunity for an Afrikaner
politician, unsullied by apartheid, to join FW de Klerk in trying to find a way out.”
But Slabbert had already accepted that there was only one possible way out:
straightforward majority rule. As Jurgen Kogl puts it: “He rejected out of hand
that he was the last white hope. ‘The last white hope to do what?’ he would ask.
‘To preserve white power by modernising apartheid? To fight for the qualified
franchise?’ If that was to be his role, he wanted no part of it.”
I have written elsewhere that Slabbert was “seduced” by a highly instrumental-
ist Mbeki as part of the latter’s strategy to shatter the monolith of white South
process actually went both ways: one cannot overestimate the role he played --
both personally and as a convener -- in leading the ANC away from the battlefield.
He brought South Africa that much closer to a negotiated settlement -- even if it
meant, in the process, quitting his post as an elected representative of the white
minority and thus excluding himself from the formal structures of power. Far from
being an act of hubris and impetuosity, which is how many white liberals saw it,
this was a sacrifice of principle and immense generosity.
Slabbert remained outside until his death and many -- including the man him-
self -- believe he was denied an active role in post-apartheid politics because he
refused to be a yes-man to Mbeki, from whom he became estranged. Heribert
Adam and Kogila Moodley write that “it seems a great pity than an extraordinary
political talent has been wasted and has remained unrecognised”; both David
Welsh and Breyten Breytenbach have written that this was tragic, “not only for
Van Zyl personally”, as Welsh puts it, “but also for the country”.
Certainly, some of Slabbert’s later writings were harsh: he described Mbeki’s 1999
ascendancy as having been won by means of “patronage, favouritism, cunning
and manipulation”, and wrote that “when I look towards the future, I am fearful
of the long darkness that may await us all”. But despite his disappoinment at not
having been called to serve in any significant way, it was my sense of him that
he understood this to be a consequence of his independence and his integrity.
He loathed the “patronage, favouritism, cunning and manipulation” of the new
order as much as he did that of the old and although he was an ambitious man
who wanted to play his part, he wore his alienation from the new power elite as a
badge of pride. Despite his decade in Parliament he was, in the end, simply not a
politician.
Instead, he did a whole lot of things within what we call “civil society”. He set
up the Institute for a Democratic South Africa (Idasa) and godfathered both the
non-governmental sector and the alternative media in this country; he became
a businessman; he engaged with Afrikaner culture; he wrote books. South Africa
might have lost him as a “player” -- in the sense that his fellow Stellenbosch aca-
demic Willie Esterhuyse was or Marthinus van Schalkwyk is -- but he deepened
the world, around these “players”, that guarantees our democracy. I do not know
if, in his last years, Slabbert was able to take comfort in this. But as we mourn
him, I hope that we can.
Slabbert: Skerp van intellek en ruim van gees
Source: Die Beeld, 14 May 2010
http://www.beeld.com/Opinie/HoofArtikels/Slabbert-Skerp-van-intellek-en-ruim-van-gees-20100516
Hoekom het Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert nooit ’n veel groter rol in die SA politiek
gespeel nie? Dit is die een vraag wat altyd oor hom gevra is, reg tot sy afsterwe
verlede Vrydag. En nog lank gevra sal word.
Dié wat hom geken het, het geweet en die res het aangevoel: Hier was ’n buitenge-
wone Suid-Afrikaner met voortreflike talente. Vir ’n politikus het hy alles gehad: ’n
vlymskerp verstand, hartlikheid, ’n aantreklike voorkoms en ’n pretensielose cha-
risma.
Toe hy in die amptelike opposisie was, het sy aanhangers gesê “as Slabbert maar net
president kon wees”. In die post-1994-era het hulle en die vele ander wat intussen
bygekom het gereeld die versugting uitgespreek dat Slabbert ’n veel prominenter rol
in die nuwe Suid-Afrika speel.
Dit is begryplik, behalwe dat dit afbreuk doen aan die groot rol wat hy wel gespeel
het. Hy het die apartheidstelsel konsekwent, meedoënloos en met hiperlogika aan-
geval, oor ’n hele politieke loopbaan heen.
Dis gepas om hier te vra: Sou die Afrikaners nie vroeër die onwerkbaarheid daarvan
ingesien het as hulle groter blootstelling gehad het aan Slabbert se insigte nie?
Die Afrikaner-instellings van destyds, Afrikaanse koerante inkluis, was verkeerd om
Slabbert en sy idees weg te hou van hul mense en hom te demoniseer.
Slabbert se rol in die tydperk tussen sy uittrede uit die parlement en die ontknoping
van SA se politiek in die vroeë 1990’s is selfs belangriker as toe hy ’n opposisie leier
was.
As medeleier van Idasa en as die instelling Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert het hy ’n
gewigtige bydrae gelewer om die akker voor te berei vir die veranderinge wat in
1990 begin het.
Met sy epiese safari na Dakar in 1987 was Slabbert die eerste Afrikaner van statuur
wat vir die Afrikaners gesê het: Kyk, hier is die ANC en hy is nie ’n duiwel met horings
nie. Sonder die uiteindelike aanvaarding daarvan sou SA se onderhandelde skikking
nie sommer gebeur het nie.
Beeld salueer dié goeie man met sy skerp verstand, sy ruim gees en sy mooi geaard-
heid. Wat onbeskaamd Afrikaner was met ’n intense liefde vir sy taal.
Slabbert had true mark of a historic leader
Source: Xolela Mangcu, Business Day, 27 May 2010
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=110105
AS A little boy I never liked doing household chores such as tending the garden or
anything that demanded physical exertion. However, there was one chore I always
looked forward to every day after school — my mother sending me to buy the
Daily Dispatch in town. The town was a hopscotch away from our township but, to
my mother’s eternal frustration, a trip that should take half an hour would invari-
ably end up taking hours. I would be found on the side of the road reading the
paper out loud to myself or to the older boys in our township. I don’t think there is
a publication that had a greater effect on my young mind than the Dispatch, which
was then edited by the legendary Donald Woods.
The Dispatch also introduced me to Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert. I followed opposi-
tion politics with a fascination that gave way to radicalism only in my teenage
years. I remember finding Colin Eglin rather dour, compared with the debonair,
charismatic new leader of the Progressive Federal Party, Van Zyl Slabbert.
I was always intrigued by the idea that the white community was divided over
apartheid. It was in the Dispatch that I read about divisions between the verligtes
and verkramptes in the National Party — a conceptual division, I am told, that
owes its origins to FW de Klerk’s older brother, Wimpie. A decade elapsed before
Slabbert realised the futility of operating within the constraints of the apartheid
parliament.
I followed his career as an extraparliamentary institution builder, which resulted
in the formation of the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for SA (Idasa). This
was a time when some of us were beginning to get out of the trenches of political
struggle and entertaining the idea of working with think-tanks such as Idasa, the
Institute for Multiparty Democracy, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Develop-
ment Bank of Southern Africa.
By the late 1980s, we were establishing a beachhead presence in the system, no
doubt a departure from the long-held principle of noncollaboration with the sys-
tem. Slabbert chaired the metropolitan chamber during one of the most exhilarat-
ing and precarious moments of our transition.
The chamber was the first real experiment in collective governance, a micro-scale
precursor to the government of national unity. If this could be achieved in a city
the size of Johannesburg, then it ought to be possible for the country. The cham-
ber consisted of representatives of disparate bodies such as the Transvaal Pro-

vincial Administration, white ratepayers’ associations, civic organisations and the
African National Congress. Slabbert held the body together in what Mark Swilling
described as “a glorious experiment in participatory governance”.
I also admired Slabbert’s devotion to ideas. In the 1970s, he was regarded as one
of SA’s top sociologists. For his sins, he became a functionalist — one of those so-
ciologists who believe a political system is made up of constituent elements, which
can be made to work together if everyone can be socialised in the same value
system. As opposed to Marxists, functionalists emphasise cohesion over conflict as
the motor of change.
I finally got to know Slabbert personally after I asked him to speak about his last
book, The Other Side of History, which deals with the contradictions of racial iden-
tity and belonging in contemporary SA.
After the talk, we went out to a restaurant in Melville, where I tried to keep up
with him as we downed a couple of bottles of wine. He was just one of the great-
est story-tellers I have ever met, with intimate details of the behind-the-scenes
drama of the transition. And he told it all with the most remarkable humour. You
always laughed around him.
The last time I saw him was in Goree, Senegal, where he was once again regaling
us with stories well into the night. No, the last time I actually saw him was at one
of the malls in Johannesburg. He was a distance away. I thought of running after
him but thought “maybe next time”. As it turns out, there would be no next time.
The South African political landscape was all the better for him. That’s the true
mark of a historic leader.
- Mangcu is convener of the Platform for Public Deliberation at the University of
Johannesburg.
Slabbert saw the big picture in SA’s future and worked towards it
Source: Rory Riordan, The Herald, 27 May 2010
http://www.theherald.co.za/opinion/article.aspx?id=567169
THERE is a received wisdom about Frederik van Zyl Slabbert’s contribution to
South Africa’s politics, and it runs something like this:
An enormously gifted person, he was a splendid member of parliament. As a
Leader of the Opposition, he oversaw the rapid rise in numbers and influence of
the PFP. Pity he spoilt it all by storming out of parliament so damagingly (1974 to
1986).
His contribution through Idasa, the Open Society Foundation, and the Dakar and
other such initiatives were “nice-to- haves” – useful, but the real show of the
time (1986 to 1990) was the two muskoxen (the NP and the ANC/UDF) headbut-
ting each other until they could take the pain no more – then February 2, 1990
and on.
Codesa was great, but would have been better if Slabbert had not been sidelined
from it. From 1990 on he did a few minor good things (the Joburg Metropolitan
Chamber, etc) before fading off to business and another life.
Lots of people believe the above – but I’m not one of them. Let me give you an-
other appraisal, then choose for yourself.
Slabbert’s 12 years in parliament should not be judged by his contribution (or
damage) to the PFP – that was incidental. His real achievement in parliament was
to get those verligte Nats, who knew the great apartheid project was doomed
and collapsing, to begin to consider other options to endless violent repression of
black revolt and to become willing to risk going on the route of negotiations.
This he did by being in parliament, by his speeches there, and by his personal cha-
risma and credibility in that arena, and, most particularly, by being an Afrikaner,
an unashamed member of the tribe. His period in parliament was as fundamental
as was his leaving of it.
The NP vilified and abused Slabbert – but some NP MPs, those who could see
that the tricameral parliament could not take South Africa further and who se-
cretly agreed with Slabbert’s trenchant criticism of it, became willing to consider
also his proposal for negotiations, but they did not know where to begin. And if
they did reach out, would the ANC respond? Nobody knew. The risks were too
great to try.
With his credibility in place with those verligte NPs, Slabbert left parliament
abruptly and brutally – thereby establishing his credentials with the ANC/UDF. He
became the most prominent politician with credibility with both muskoxen.
Then Dakar. There had already been a few mini-Dakars, but nothing had come of
them. They lacked a person of Slabbert’s stature as organiser.
Dakar started a flood of meetings. The word started going around – these ANC guys
are OK, we can talk to them, we can cut deals with them.
Dakar was not a speech in parliament on the need for negotiations – there had been
hundreds of those, and nothing was moving – it was negotiations, and it worked.
We now had the feasibility study and the pilot project behind us, and our chip was on
the board of the snakes and ladders game of political negotiations.
From Dakar on, it was downhill. The ANC would negotiate, and the state would not
prosecute participants. The risks were behind us. Slabbert had taken the risks and
his personal credibility had made it work. Sure Slabbert was not at Codesa. It did not
need him.
Codesa gave us the 20th century’s finest election and its finest constitution. It had
what it needed, obviously, but it couldn’t have got into place without Slabbert’s ini-
tiatives – that was much more important.
You can see Slabbert as a brilliant man, a fine parliamentarian who nearly wrecked
a political party and parliament also, and who then got into side- shows until finally
becoming irrelevant and fading away.
Or you can see him as a political genius (as Max du Preez says, “Van was in another
category”), who saw the road ahead miles before we did and who took huge risks
with great courage to muck the details into place in the huge framework of the jour-
ney from oppression to democracy.
Slabbert knew the solution to our 1980s resistance/repression cycle was negotiations
– almost everyone else did too. But the rest of us didn’t have a clue how to get the
NP to begin.
He did. He saw the big picture, and strode out, at such risk, to muck in the details.
And he succeeded, and we have a constitutional democracy today.
Thank you, Van Zyl. For what you did for South Africa, for our self-respect and for the
extraordinary pleasure and honour of having known you. For all those years, when
everything was so fluid and so uncertain, we all hung on – “what was Van Zyl’s opin-
ion?” We then read it, and became certain.
Now somehow our country doesn’t seem quite as safe without you. You will be sorely
missed.
Van Zyl Slabbert hailed on all sides
Source: The Witness, 15 May 2010
http://www.witness.co.za/index.php?showcontent&global[_id]=40709
JOHANNESBURG — “A mobile political library”, “a living embodiment of active citi-
zenship” and a “person who left South Africa better than what it was” — these were
some of the tributes to former politician, businessman and academic Frederik van Zyl
Slabbert, who died in Johannesburg yesterday.
After being treated at Johannesburg’s Milpark Hospital for an illness, the man who led
the Progressive Federal Party (PFP) opposition during apartheid, died with his family
at his side.
He was 70 years old.
“He died peacefully, with his family,” his daughter Tania told Sapa.
In a moving tribute to his “dear friend”, Inkatha Freedom Party chief whip Koos van
der Merwe described him as a parliamentarian par excellence, while the opposition
Democratic Alliance, a descendant of the PFP, said he presented a non-racial alterna-
tive “with determination and principle”.
“He devoted his life to the development of a just South Africa, and he left our country
a far better place than before,” said DA leader Helen Zille.
PFP co-founder Colin Eglin said Van Zyl Slabbert will be remembered with “great
respect for his integrity, his keen intellect, his warm personality, and his deep concern
for the people, the society and the country of which he was so much a part”.
President Jacob Zuma called him a “principled patriot” and an outspoken critic of
minority rule.
He arranged pre-democracy talks with the ANC and the ruling National Party, and ANC
spokesman Brian Sokutu said: “As leader of the Progressive Federal Party, not only did
he make an indelible mark in shaping opposition politics against apartheid in South
Africa, but he fought for constitutional democracy to be realised.”
The office of the ANC chief whip in Parliament said he will be remembered for the role
he played in the historic meeting between Afrikaners and the ANC representatives in
exile, which helped open up channels of communication between the party and the
white community that had been bombarded with the apartheid government’s anti-
ANC propaganda.
The ANC had regarded him as a voice of reason in “an ocean of ruthlessness repres-
sion” and felt that he had resisted apartheid when it was not fashionable or person-
ally rewarding to do so.

The Independent Democrats called him a true patriot and said all South Africans owed
him a debt of gratitude for the principled stance he took in all the positions he occu-
pied throughout his life, while United Democratic Movement leader Bantu Holomisa
said the country had been deprived of an intellectual and moral leader.
The African Christian Democratic Party called him a “remarkable man”.
The Institute for Democracy in South Africa, which he co-founded in 1986 , with Truth
and Reconciliation Commissioner Alex Boraine, said he was a visionary and represent-
ed a “living embodiment of active citizenship as a South African and an African public
intellectual”.
A memorial service will be held next Saturday. ‘
Apartheid fighter Frederik van Zyl Slabbert dies
Source: BBC News, May 2010
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8683015.stm
South Africa’s governing African National Congress has paid tribute to the apartheid-
era politician Frederik van Zyl Slabbert who has died aged 70.
Mr Slabbert was best known for his efforts in the late 1980s to open up dialogue be-
tween Afrikaners and the then-exiled ANC. He was one of the few members of South
Africa’s white-dominated parliament to oppose apartheid.
The ANC said he had made an “indelible mark” in fighting white minority rule.
Mr Slabbert was apparently only persuaded to stand for office after a hard night’s
drinking. But having been elected in 1974, he became leader of the Progressive Federal
Party.
In 1985, he travelled to Zambia for talks with the still-banned ANC in an unsuccessful
bid to get the government to negotiate with all political groups.
The following year, much to his colleagues’ surprise, he quit politics saying he refused
to be “in the slipstream of the government’s repression and incompetence”.
Mr Slabbert then formed the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa -
which aimed to bring resistance groups and influential white figures together.
Much to the government’s fury in 1987, he lead a group of 60 influential white South
Africans to Senegal where they held talks with an ANC delegation. work for him, he wasn’t afraid to step out of it, and create something of his own.
On meeting Van Zyl
Source: Isabella Matambanadzo, 17 May 2010
http://www.idasa.org.za/Output_Details.asp?RID=2111&oplang=en&OTID=4&PID=11
It was November of 2004. I was late and in a panic. The tarmac at Johannesburg’s
O.R. Tambo international airport was soaked because of foul weather and our flight
was backed up in the landing queue. Immigration was a nightmare. “Visa? How
long are you staying? Where are you staying? What are you here for? How much
money do you have? You must leave in 14 days!” Rubber-Stamp thud like a baton
stick on and run.
Never one to miss a thing, he nabbed me as I walked stealthily into the room think-
ing I could sneak in unnoticed. Thud. Thud. Thud. The last drops of rain
from my umbrella fell on the carpet. “Welcome Bella. Take a seat”, or something
convivial like that. During the meeting’s tea break he headed towards me. I was
still cowering in my pity corner as I thought he was the sort of man to hand out
a delayed form of discipline. I was certain I was going to get a lecture on meeting
etiquette. But not Van Zyl. His warm hand outstretched, he gave me a greeting that
will go down as one of the warmest and sincerest I have ever had.
I hope I never forget the comfort of that firm grip. I would later learn it belonged to
an ace rugby player, someone who could have taken the game professionally, but
luckily for me, chose a different path. With that handshake came the biggest smile,
reaching all the way to his eyes, and twinkling out of them.
He was wearing a white and brown cotton shirt of the pan-African tradition, the
neat fabric of the hemline of the sleeves just grazing his rough elbows. The idea
stuck. Since then my male friends get one regularly from me.
Van Zyl was generous of spirit. My country was going through difficult times. “It’s
going to get worse before it gets better. But don’t doubt it. It will definitely get bet-
ter. Zimbabwe will be the amazing country it should be”, he said with such presci-
ent confidence, I frankly thought some of his nuts and bolts were coming undone.
In the years to follow, he would be a constant source of encouragement. A kind
man, of the way your maternal grandmother is when you are having a hard time
with something she knows you can accomplish. A phone call would come through
to me every so often. “I am just checking on you, no pressure”, his voice would
boom, not with authoritarianism, but to give you a big boost. I could always tell
there was a smile on the other side, trying to ease my pain.
He was a role model in autonomy, Van Zyl. If an institution or organization did not
He believed in human agency and worked tirelessly for it. He would craft a niche;
find a place where his exuberance and intellect could always thrive, and where his
ideas would rapidly take shape. Idasa is a poignant example.
He tools were optimism and a positive spirit that all would turn out right. I never
quite figured where his reserves of relentless hope came from when the rest of us
were slipping into deep caves of distress and despair. Once he had my email ad-
dress, the reading instructions followed. “This might inspire you,” was the simple
message.
Occasionally a text message would come through, “Hang in there, don’t give up,
” especially in 2006 when we were on trail for our belief in a society where the
airwaves belong to all of us, not just a select few. The Radio Voice of the People
case was arduous. Some friends chose to distance themselves from us because
we were seen as “too controversial…too confrontational”. Others spoke with their
body language, or just became distant. Rather than play hide and seek, Van Zyl
compiled a docket for me of case material on how South Africa ensured the devo-
lution of the airwaves.
In the years that I was born, Dr Frederick van Zyl Slabbert was already leader of
the opposition in the South African parliament of mid-1975. A decade later he
was working as far afield as Dakar, Senegal, paving the way for South Africa’s talks
about a transition to a plural and democratic state.
“Slabbert gave me all his wisdom, ” says Davie Malungisa, Executive Director of
IDAZIM, a think tank that we set up as quickly as Slabbert has said the name. “I
think what Zimbabwe needs right now is an IDAZIM, an independent place for dia-
logue and capacity building to play the role that Idasa did during our own transi-
tion,” he’d said with a sweep of his hands.
And that was another of his abundant gifts – ideas. They would spew from his
mind with his characteristically burly lucidity.
Dr Frederick Van Zyl Slabbert’s death on May 14, is not only a loss to his family,
his friends and the society of South Africa. It is a loss to those of us in Africa who,
through his selfless and unpaid contribution learned from him and keep alive our
beliefs in the possibility of attaining in our life time: Open, Tolerant, Just and Equi-
table societies.
As the founding African board member for the Open Society Institute’s southern
Africa foundation, he brought to our soils Karl Popper’s philosophy and expanded
the depth and breadth of the work of the Soros Foundation’s OSI footprint across
the African continent. And so, as we fly our personal flags at half-mast in honour
of Van Zyl, we no doubt feel a deep personal loss. Our ache is dulled a little by the
knowledge that bighearted as he was, Slabbert gave to our world his dues, and so
much, much more.
Isabella Matambanadzo, Harare, Zimbabwe.
17 May 2010
Tributes pour in for VZSlabbert
Source: The Voice of the Cape, 14 May 2010
http://www.vocfm.co.za/index.php?&section=news&category=sanews&article=52985
“A mobile political library”, “a living embodiment of active citizenship” and a
“person who left South Africa better than what it was” -- these were some of the
tributes to former politician, businessman and academic Frederik van Zyl Slabbert
who died in Johannesburg on Friday. After being treated at Johannesburg’s Milpark
Hospital for an illness, the former Progressive Federal Party opposition leader dur-
ing apartheid, died with his family at his side at the age of 70.
“He died peacefully, with his family,” his daughter Tania told Sapa. In a moving
tribute to his “dear friend”, Inkatha Freedom Party chief whip Koos van der Merwe
described him as a parliamentarian par excellence while the opposition DA, a de-
scendant of the PFP said he had presented a non-racial alternative “with determi-
nation and principle”.
“He devoted his life to the development of a just South Africa, and he left our coun-
try a far better place than before,” said DA leader Helen Zille. PFP co-founder Colin
Eglin said Van Zyl Slabbert would be remembered with “great respect for his integ-
rity, his keen intellect, his warm personality, and his deep concern for the people,
the society and the country of which he was so much a part”.
President Jacob Zuma called him a “principled patriot” and an outspoken critic
of minority rule. The ANC, with which he arranged pre-democracy talks with the
ruling National Party, said he had made an indelible mark in shaping opposition
politics against apartheid. “As leader of the Progressive Federal Party, not only did
he make an indelible mark in shaping opposition politics against apartheid in South
Africa, but he fought for constitutional democracy to be realised,” said ANC spokes-
man Brian Sokutu.
The office of the ANC chief whip in Parliament said he would be remembered for
the role he played in the historic meeting between Afrikaner South Africans and
the ANC representatives in exile, which helped open up channels of communica-
tions between the party and the white community, which had been bombarded
with the apartheid government’s anti-ANC propaganda.
The ANC had regarded him as a voice of reason in “an ocean of ruthlessness repres-
sion” and felt that he had resisted apartheid when it was not fashionable or per-
sonally rewarding to do so. The Independent Democrats called him a true patriot
and said all South Africans owed him a debt of gratitude for the principled stance
he took in all the positions he occupied throughout his life, while United Demo-
cratic Movement leader Bantu Holomisa said the country had been deprived of
an intellectual and moral leader.
The African Christian Democratic Party called him a “remarkable man”. The Insti-
tute for Democracy in South Africa, which he co-founded in 1986 with Truth and
Reconciliation Commissioner Alex Boraine as the Institute for a Democratic Aler-
native for South Africa, said he was a visionary and represented a “living embodi-
ment of active citizenship as a South African and an African public intellectual”. A
memorial service, at a venue to be announced, will be held next Saturday.
Van Zyl Slabbert remembered
News24.com and Business Report, 26 May 2010
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Van-Zyl-Slabbert-remembered-20100526
Cape Town - MPs from all sides of the National Assembly on Wednesday paid
tribute to former politician, academic and businessman Frederik van Zyl Slab-
bert, who died at the age of 70 on May 14.
ANC chief whip Mathole Motshekga set the tone in moving a motion noting,
among other things, that Slabbert travelled to Lusaka in Zambia 1985 for talks
with the external wing of the ANC.
It acknowledged too that, with Inkatha Freedom Party president Mangosuthu
Buthelezi, he launched the National Convention Movement in an unsuccessful
attempt to put pressure on the then SA government to negotiate with all political
groups.
The motion further recognised Slabbert’s contribution towards shaping the
South African political landscape, and conveyed heartfelt condolences to the
Slabbert family, his relatives and friends.
Speakers from all parties lauded Slabbert for his tireless efforts in trying to bring
a peaceful negotiated settlement in South Africa.
He was a true patriot and would be remembered as a progressive voice for
change during the dying days of apartheid, they said.
- SAPA
Frederick van Zyl Slabbert - Former Opposition leader dies
Source: Financial Mail, BD Online, 14 May 2010
http://www.fm.co.za/Article.aspx?id=109030
Former opposition leader and political analyst Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert has died.
He is perhaps best remembered for his pioneering work in opening up dialogue
between Afrikaners and the exiled African National Congress. He was once viewed
as one of South Africa’s most gifted public figures
Slabbert, 70, once viewed as one of South Africa’s most gifted public figures, had
been admitted to Johannesburg’s Milpark Hospital and was reportedly being
treated for liver and other problems.
Perhaps best remembered for his pioneering work in opening up dialogue between
Afrikaners and the exiled African National Congress, he had a conventional Afri-
kaner upbringing.
The ANC’s statement on Friday said “Van Zyl Slabbert will be remembered for the
role he played in the historic meeting between Afrikaner South Africans and the
ANC representatives in exile, which spurred the advancement towards the demo-
cratic South Africa. The meeting further helped to open up channels of commu-
nication between the ANC and the white community, which was for a long time
bombarded with apartheid regime’s anti-ANC propaganda.
Commenting on that meeting, ANC President Oliver Tambo remarked at the time
that “an organisation that is opposed to the apartheid system we regard as on our
side.”
“For a long time, Van Zyl Slabbert served as one of the few outstanding voices of
reason amidst an ocean of ruthlessness repression, subjugation and resistance to
non-racialism.
“He was amongst the few white South Africans who resisted apartheid when it was
not fashionable or personally rewarding to do so. Like Helen Suzman, he sought to
use his role within Parliamentary opposition, as an MP for the Progressive Federal
Party, as a platform to reject and fight apartheid.
“He later resigned from Parliament in protest against the apartheid regime’s inabil-
ity to address the country’s problems. He did so not only to send an unequivocal
message to the regime about the wrongness of its oppressive policies, but also to
enable himself an opportunity to join extra parliamentary forces of change to ac-
celerate the process towards the demise of the apartheid demon. He argued at the
time that staying on in that institution would merely serve to lend it legitimacy.
“Recognising the historic importance of this decisive break with the apartheid
system, by an Afrikaner, the leadership of the ANC made bold to salute him as ’a
new Voortrekker’.
The ANC added “Van Zyl Slabbert would be missed for his intellectual and con-
structive analysis on the political challenges of the day, which enriched our politi-
cal discourse and contributed in strengthening our constitutional democracy. This
is indeed the quality present-day academics, opposition politicians and commen-
tators should emulate.
“We are certain that the rich legacy that Van Zyl Slabbert leaves this country shall
be appreciated by generations for many years to come.”
He leaves his wife Jane and two adult children, Tania and Riko, from a previous
marriage.
 
Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, white anti-apartheid leader, dies at 70
Source: Washington Post, 14 May 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/14/AR2010051405409.html
Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, 70, who helped South Africa chart a peaceful way out of
apartheid by leading fellow whites into talks with exiled black leaders, died May 14
at his home in Johannesburg after being treated for a liver-related complication,
Reuters reported.
Mr. Slabbert was a rugby-playing son of conservative Afrikaners, the descendants
of early Dutch settlers known for their commitment to apartheid. But as a political
figure, he symbolized the emergence of a new breed of Afrikaner: urbane, articu-
late and committed to racial equality.
He was also charming and telegenic, a creature of the modern age at a time when
Arikanerdom was fracturing over many questions; the ultimate question was how
to deal with modernity: resist it, ignore it, subvert it or try to lead it.
Mr. Slabbert tried to lead, leaving behind an early career as a sociologist in aca-
demia to enter politics. He represented the Progressive Federal Party, a precursor
to the current opposition Democratic Alliance, in parliament during the apartheid
years. He resigned as party leader and left parliament in 1985, during a crackdown
on black activists, saying the whites-only legislature was no longer relevant. Helen
Suzman -- who had promoted him as the new face of Arikanerdom and a way of
making her all-white, English-dominated progressive party more inclusive and
influential -- was angry and saddened when he walked away from parliamentary
politics.
Soon afterward, Mr. Slabbert and rights advocate Alex Boraine formed the Institute
for a Democratic Alternative in South Africa, known as Idasa, to organize meetings
between whites and blacks in apartheid South Africa. The group is now the Insti-
tute for Democracy in Africa.
In 1987, Mr. Slabbert led a delegation of white South Africans to Senegal to meet
the African National Congress -- which was banned in South Africa at the time but
is now the country’s governing party. The white government labeled Mr. Slabbert’s
group traitors.
In a statement Friday, South African President Jacob Zuma said Mr. Slabbert
showed “courage and foresight” by going to Senegal.
In his definitive book on South Africa’s transformation, journalist Allister Sparks
 Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert: An Obituary
says the Senegal meetings proved that South African factions had enough com-
mon ground to find a peaceful solution to their country’s crisis. Source: Politicsweb, 14 May 2010
www.politicsweb.co.za

The Democratic Alliance said that Mr. Slabbert played a “leading role in opposing
JOHANNESBURG (Sapa) - Former opposition leader and political analyst Frederik
apartheid and facilitating South Africa’s transition to democracy.”
Van Zyl Slabbert died at home in Johannesburg on Friday morning, his daughter
Tania said.
Frederik van Zyl Slabbert was born March 2, 1940, in Pretoria. He received multi-
ple degrees from South Africa’s University of Stellenbosch.
“He died peacefully, with his family,” she told Sapa. “We are okay,” she added.
Slabbert, 70, once viewed as one of South Africa’s most gifted public figures, had
His marriage to Marie Jordaan ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife, Jane
been admitted to Johannesburg’s Milpark Hospital and was reportedly being
Stephens, whom he married in 1984; and two children from his first marriage.
treated for liver and other problems.
His books included “The Last White Parliament: The Struggle for South Africa by
the Leader of the White Opposition” (1986) and “Tough Choices: Reflections of an
Perhaps best remembered for his pioneering work in opening up dialogue between
Afrikaner Africa” (2000).
Afrikaners and the exiled African National Congress, he had a conventional Afrikan-
er upbringing. He was born in Pretoria on March 2, 1940, and spent his formative
“He went against the grain, broke ranks but established new alliances and friend-
years in Pietersburg, now Polokwane, in what is now Limpopo, where he captained
ships that transcended the old divisions,” said Njabulo Ndebele, Idasa’s chairman.
his school’s first cricket and rugby teams. He studied for 18 months at the Dutch
“He was a remarkable South African who had a sharp and sensitive intelligence
Reformed Church theological seminary at Stellenbosch University before decid-
and a tremendous sense of humor.”
ing sociology was his proper calling. He completed a BA Honours at the university
 
in 1962, and was awarded a doctorate in 1967. From 1964 to 1973 he lectured in
sociology at Stellenbosch, Rhodes and the University of Cape Town.

During this period his interest in the position of the coloured people of the West-
ern Cape led him into confrontation with the National Party, and he joined a multi-
racial discussion group named Synthesis which sought to promote black-white
dialogue.

In 1973 he was appointed head of the department of sociology at the University of

the Witwatersrand.

The following year, standing for the Progressive Party (PP), hewon the Rondebosch
parliamentary seat from the United Party. He maintained afterwards he had been
persuaded to stand only after a hard night’s drinking with PP members. In 1979 he
accepted the leadership of the party -- by then known as the Progressive Federal
Party -- and of the official opposition in Parliament, and led the PFP to substantial
gains in the 1981 general election.

In 1985 he travelled to Lusaka for talks with the external wing of the ANC and, with
Inkatha’s Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, launched the National Convention Move-
ment in an unsuccessful attempt to pressure the government to negotiate with all
political groups.
By this time Slabbert, who was said by one acquaintance to have a “non-existent
boredom threshold” was becoming increasingly disillusioned with the tricameral

Parliament, which in his view was a hopelessly flawed constitutional experiment.
In February 1986 he publicly announced his resignation from Parliament and the
leadership of the PFP, which he had informed of his decision only an hour earlier.
Fellow front-bencher Helen Suzman labelled it betrayal, but he strongly defended
his move, saying he refused to be “in the slipstream of the government’s repres-
sion and incompetence”.
His desertion of the PFP sparked criticism that while he had the brains for a politi-
cian, he lacked the balls. “Ja,” he responded with a wry smile. “The trouble with
this country is you have too many politicians with balls but no brains.”
In July 1986 Slabbert, with another former PFP MP Alex Boraine, formed the Insti-
tute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa (Idasa).
He became a director of Idasa, and undertook an intricate process of shuttle
diplomacy aimed at bringing resistance groups together with influential figures in
the white establishment in South Africa. In July 1987, to the government’s fury, he
took a group of about 60 influential white South Africans, most of them Afrikaners,
to Dakar, Senegal, for talks with an ANC delegation.
In the 1990s he branched out into business, becoming chairman of Caxton Publish-
ers, Adcorp Holdings and Metro Cash ‘n Carry, as well as holding various director-
ships. He also in 1990 co-founded Khula, a black investment trust.
In 2002 then-president Thabo Mbeki appointed him to head a team investigating
a new electoral system for the country. Its recommendation, a more accountable
mix of constituency-based and proportional representation, was quietly shelved by
the government. Slabbert accepted the position of chancellor of his alma mater,
Stellenbosch, in 2008, but at the end of that year suffered a heart attack, and had a
pacemaker installed.
The following year he quit the Stellenbosch post, along with his company director-
ships, in order, he said, to spend more time with his wife and family.
He authored a number of books, including a semi-autobiographical analysis of
tricameral politics The Last White Parliament, which appeared in 1985.
In May that year he wrote that his fear was not that there would not be eventual
consensus on the principles of a new democratic constitution for South Africa.
“Far more disturbing are the expectations that people have of what a democracy
can deliver, and which research shows it is incapable of doing. “This in the South
African context is the real burden of democracy.”
He leaves his wife Jane and two adult children, Tania and Riko, from a previous
marriage.
SA mourns death of former politician
Eyewitness News: Cathy Mohlahlana |14 May 2010
http://www.ewn.co.za/articleprog.aspx?id=39624
Tributes are pouring in for former politician Frederick van zyl Slabbert who passed
away on Friday morning.
Van zyl Slabbert died at the age of 70 following a long illness.
The political analyst played a crucial role in the country’s transition to democracy.
He also co-founded the Institute for Democracy in South Africa at the end of 1986
to help explore new ways of addressing polarisation between black and white South
Africans.
Idasa’s Paul Graham said he would be sorely missed: “He also played a very mean
game of snooker. No one in the organisation was able to match him.”
President Jacob Zuma said van zyl Slabbert was a patriot who served his country
with vigor. The president extended his condolences to relatives of the former politi-
cian and academic. Zuma’s spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said the president re-
membered van zyl Slabbert fondly. UDM leader Bantu Holomisa said he was a great
example for all South Africans.
“The country has been deprived of another intellectual and moral leader.”
Dren Nupen, who was a colleague and close friend, said she was devastated.
“He was an incredible human being. He was empathetic, he had a great sense of
humour and he had a great ability to attract people to him.”
Tributes flood in for Van Zyl Slabbert
Source: The Mercury, 14 May 2010
http://www.themercury.co.za/?fSectionId=&fArticleId=nw2010051413074892
8C407039
Tributes flowed in on Friday for former politician, academic and businessman Fred-
erik Van Zyl Slabbert following his death in Johannesburg.
The opposition DA, a descendant of the Progressive Federal Party, which he once
led, said he presented a non-racial alternative “with determination and principle”.
“He devoted his life to the development of a just South Africa, and he left our
country a far better place than before,” said DA leader Helen Zille.
The Independent Democrats called him a true patriot and said all South Africans
owed him a debt of gratitude for the principled stance he took in all the positions
he occupied throughout his life.
The ANC said he had made an indelible mark in shaping opposition politics against
apartheid. “He will also be remembered as one of those white South Africans who
facilitated contact with the African National Congress at the time it was banned
inside the country,” said ANC spokesman Brian Sokutu.
In 1985 he travelled to Lusaka for talks with the external wing of the ANC and, with
IFP president Mangosuthu Buthelezi, launched the National Convention Movement
in an unsuccessful attempt to pressurise the government into negotiating with all
political groups.
In 1987 he led a delegation of influential white business people to Dakar, Senegal,
for talks with the then banned ANC.
The Institute for Democracy in South Africa, which he co-founded in 1986 with
Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner Alex Boraine, said he was a visionary and
represented a “living embodiment of active citizenship as a South African and an
African public intellectual”.
“His life was rooted in the values of social justice which guided his participation on
an ongoing basis in considering what democracy is and how it should be lived by
citizens of South Africa and other countries,” the centre said.
United Democratic Movement leader Bantu Holomisa said the country had been
deprived of an intellectual and moral leader.
“His progressive contribution during the transition must have played a big role in
stilling the doubts of those who thought our country would not succeed in reach-
ing a peaceful democratic settlement,” he said.
PFP co-founder Colin Eglin said Van Zyl Slabbert would be remembered with “great
respect for his integrity, his keen intellect, his warm personality, and his deep con-
cern for the people, the society and the country of which he was so much a part”.
- Sapa
 
Debt of Gratitude to Slabbert and Duncan
Source: Judith February, Cape Times, 19 May 2010
http://www.idasa.org.za
Perhaps it is a reflection of the kind of society in which we live that the murder of
a somewhat shady character eclipses the death of a South African woman of sub-
stance. Sheena Duncan, founding chair of the Black Sash Trust passed away recently.
Unfortunately however it was the sordid murder of Lolly Jackson which hogged the
headlines endlessly.
Sheena Duncan was in all respects an activist and a tireless fighter for human rights
during the apartheid era. Over the years of her involvement with the Black Sash,
Duncan would become well-known and highly respected as she sought to assist
hundreds of people whose lives were cruelly affected by the apartheid pass laws.
Duncan’s role in leading the Black Sash in its pacifist vigils along road-sides in rain or
shine in protest against repressive laws will also be remembered. Her commitment
to a just society still underpins the work of the Black Sash today as it continues her
work to ‘make human rights real’. Her passing allows a moment to reflect on the
role of an ordinary South African woman who, when she might have turned a blind
eye to injustice, chose not to. It is Duncan’s ordinariness which makes her life’s work
extraordinary. It may be clichéd to say it but she was, after all, a middle class white
woman who lived in a community largely indifferent to the plight of the oppressed.
Taking a risk was a choice few were prepared to make.
The Sowetan editorial’s words were apt, ‘“Our sorrows and fears lifted a little when-
ever her ample figure hove into view. She took up the cudgels and fought tirelessly…
against members of her own race who enslaved us.”
South Africa today is a very different place to the one in which pass laws existed and
black people were treated as imposters on the land. Yet, in so many ways, the deep
structural inequalities, the poverty and exclusion of many have created rifts within
this society which either did not exist before or deepened existing ones. Duncan’s
life – that of choosing to fight for injustice everywhere even for no profit or reward-
challenges all of us as citizens to redouble our efforts against corruption, venality,
injustice and inequality.
This last week also saw the passing of van Zyl Slabbert, former Progressive Federal
Party Member of Parliament, Afrikaner, African and intellectual. Slabbert, who with
Alex Boraine was the founder of the Institute for a Democratic Alternative in South
Africa (today known as ‘idasa’). Slabbert was a fellow member of the Independent
Panel on the assessment of Parliament, set up by then Speaker Baleka Mbete in 2008
and chaired by former ANC MP, Pregs Govender. He will be remembered by those
of us who served on the Panel for his razor sharp understanding of power, the
workings of Parliament and his intricate knowledge of various systems of account-
ability. His was a great mind with a sharp eye for detail. The work of our panel was
enriched because of his insights. For whatever the criticisms of his political life, in
1986 when he made the decision to abandon the last white Parliament, it was a
decision based on principle and patriotism, as the Presidency’s statement rightly
put it. It was a decision which created a momentum in the white body politic from
which it never recovered. His attempts to bring Afrikaners and the ANC into dia-
logue in Dakar, Senegal in 1987 was in many ways a turning point in the stalemate
that had become the turbulent 80s. It was one part of the jig-saw which brought
down an apartheid regime.
In the lives of Sheena Duncan and Van Zyl Slabbert we reflect on the countless
other men and women who contributed to dismantling apartheid and pinning their
colours to the mast when it mattered. Such individual and corporate acts brought
down the repressive apartheid regime.
Recently, at a meeting of a very powerful western donor which pours millions of
rands in development aid into South Africa primarily via government projects we
were told that it is govenrment ‘systems’ which need to be improved in South
Africa. For while civil society is important, working with citizens is not intrinsic to
improving systems. This approach must surely be misguided? For systems can only
work if citizens are empowered to access them and are able to articulate what it is
they really need from their elected representatives. But the approach is also naïve
given our past. It was people who managed to dismantle the apartheid system,
after all.
The lives of Duncan and Slabbert, one an ordinary South African woman, turned
activist, the other a privileged Afrikaner turned politician, illustrate beyond doubt
that it is people who change systems not the other way around.
We owe Duncan and Slabbert a debt of gratitude for showing us how.
 
Parties praise Slabbert
Source: Kim Hawkey, Times live, 15 May 2010
http://www.timeslive.co.za/Politics/article451626.ece/Parties-praise-Slabbert
Tributes have been pouring in for former politician, academic and businessman
Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert since his death on Friday at the age of 70.
Slabbert, probably best known for his opposition politics during the apartheid era,
died in Johannesburg after a recent illness.
President Jacob Zuma was one of the first to send his condolences to Slabbert’s
family on Friday. He described Slabbert as a “visionary leader” who made a valuable
contribution in South Africa’s transition to democracy.
Political parties, including the Independent Democrats, the United Democratic
Movement and the Democratic Alliance praised Slabbert, describing him as a “true
patriot”, an “intellectual and moral leader” and a “truly great South African”.
The ANC commended Slabbert for his “indelible mark in shaping opposition politics
against apartheid”.
Professor Njabulo Ndebele, chairman of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa,
which was co-founded by Slabbert in 1986, said he had known Slabbert since 1996.
“He was one of the most remarkable South Africans our country was blessed to
have. He had a sharp and sensitive intellect, with a tremendous sense of humanity.
He always struck me as a person of conviction and courage that was not self-con-
scious. His courage was the essence of himself,” Ndebele said on Friday.
Slabbert leaves behind his wife, Jane Stephens, his two adult children Riko and Tania
Slabbert, and several grandchildren

Frederik V. Z. Slabbert - Apartheid’s white foe, 70
Source: Philly.com, 16 May 2010
http://www.philly.com/philly/obituaries/20100516_Frederik_V__Z__Slabbert___Apartheid_s_
white_foe__70.html
Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert, 70, who helped South Africa chart a peaceful way out
of apartheid by leading fellow whites into talks with exiled black leaders, died
Friday.
The Institute for Democracy in Africa, known as Idasa, announced his death.
In the announcement, the think tank that Mr. Van Zyl Slabbert founded to organ-
ize meetings between whites and blacks in apartheid South Africa called him a
“visionary son of Africa.”
Mr. Van Zyl Slabbert was the rugby-playing son of conservative Afrikaners, the
descendants of early Dutch settlers known for their commitment to apartheid.
In 1987, he led a group of white South Africans to Senegal to meet the African
National Congress, which was banned in South Africa at the time but now is the
governing party. The white government called his group traitorous.
He represented the liberal Progressive Federal Party, a predecessor to the cur-
rent opposition Democratic Alliance, in parliament during the apartheid years. He
resigned as party leader and left parliament in 1985, during a crackdown on black
activists, saying the whites-only legislature was no longer relevant.
In 1986, he and Alex Boraine formed Idasa. - AP
Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert; Afrikaner fought apartheid
Source: Donna Bryson, Associated Press, May 15, 2010
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/obituaries/articles/2010/05/15/frederik_van_zyl_slabbert_
afrikaner_fought_apartheid/
JOHANNESBURG — Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert, who helped South Africa chart a
peaceful way out of apartheid by leading fellow whites into talks with exiled black
leaders, died yesterday. He was 70.
The Institute for Democracy in Africa, known as Idasa, announced his death.
In the announcement, the think tank that Mr. Van Zyl Slabbert founded to organize
meetings between whites and blacks in apartheid South Africa called him a “vi-
sionary son of Africa.’’
Mr. Van Zyl Slabbert had been hospitalized recently with an undisclosed illness.
Njabulo Ndebele, Idasa’s board chairman, said he did not know the cause of death.
Mr. Van Zyl Slabbert was the rugby-playing son of conservative Afrikaners, the de-
scendants of early Dutch settlers known for their commitment to apartheid.
“He went against the grain, broke ranks, but established new alliances and friend-
ships that transcended the old divisions,’’ Ndebele said. “He was a remarkable
South African who had a sharp and sensitive intelligence and a tremendous sense
of humor.’’
The office of Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president, released a
tribute calling Mr. Van Zyl Slabbert “a leader who had the vision and foresight to
recognize that our national interest was to be found in our common humanity.’’
In 1987, Mr. Van Zyl Slabbert led a delegation of white South Africans to Senegal to
meet the African National Congress, which was banned in South Africa at the time,
but now is the governing party.
The white government labeled Mr. Van Zyl Slabbert’s group traitors. In a statement
yesterday, President Jacob Zuma said Mr. Van Zyl Slabbert showed “courage and
foresight’’ by going to Senegal.
In his definitive book on South Africa’s transformation, journalist Allister Sparks
says the Senegal meetings proved that South African factions had enough common
ground to find a peaceful solution to their country’s crisis.
The opposition Democratic Alliance said that Mr. Van Zyl Slabbert played a “lead-
ing role in opposing apartheid and facilitating South Africa’s transition to democ-
racy.’’
Mr. Van Zyl Slabbert represented the liberal Progressive Federal Party, a prede-
cessor to the Democratic Alliance, in Parliament during the apartheid years. He
resigned as party leader and left Parliament in 1985 during a crackdown on black
activists, saying the whites-only Legislature was no longer relevant.
In 1986, he and Alex Boraine formed Idasa, which then stood for the Institute for
a Democratic Alternative in South Africa.
Today, Idasa lobbies to strengthen democracy across the continent.
Mr. Van Zyl Slabbert leaves his wife, Jane; and his children Tania and Riko
 
Activist who helped bury apartheid dies
Source: Business24-7, AP, 15 May 2010
http://www.business24-7.ae/news/africa/activist-who-helped-bury-apartheid-
dies-2010-05-15-1.244276
Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert, who helped South Africa chart a peaceful way out of
apartheid by leading fellow whites into talks with exiled black leaders, died on
Friday. He was 70.
The Institute for Democracy in Africa (Idasa) announced his death. In the an-
nouncement, the think tank Van Zyl Slabbert founded to organise meetings
between whites and blacks in apartheid South Africa called him a “visionary son
of Africa”.
Van Zyl Slabbert had been hospitalised recently with an undisclosed illness. Njab-
ulo Ndebele, Idasa’s board chairman, said he did not know the cause of death.
Van Zyl Slabbert was the son of conservative Afrikaners, descendants of Dutch
settlers known for their commitment to apartheid.
“He went against the grain, broke ranks, but established new alliances and friend-
ships that transcended the old divisions. He was a remarkable South African
who had a sharp and sensitive intelligence and a tremendous sense of humour,”
Ndebele said.
Tributes from across the spectrum for ‘patriot’ Van Zyl Slabbert
Source: The Star, 15 May 2010
http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5471074
“A mobile political library”, “a living embodiment of active citizenship” and a “per-
son who left South Africa better than what it was” - these were some of the trib-
utes to former politician, businessman and academic Frederik van Zyl Slabbert who
died in Joburg yesterday.
After being treated at Johannesburg’s Milpark Hospital for an illness, the former
Progressive Federal Party opposition leader died with his family at his side at the
age of 70. “He died peacefully with his family,” his daughter Tania said.
In a moving tribute to his “dear friend”, IFP chief whip Koos van der Merwe de-
scribed him as a parliamentarian par excellence while the opposition DA, a de-
scendant of the PFP, said he had presented a non-racial alternative “with determi-
nation and principle”.
“He devoted his life to the development of a just South Africa, and he left our
country a far better place than before,” said DA leader Helen Zille.
PFP co-founder Colin Eglin said Van Zyl Slabbert would be remembered with “great
respect for his integrity, his keen intellect, his warm personality, and his deep con-
cern for the people, the society and the country of which he was so much a part”.
President Jacob Zuma called him a “principled patriot” and an outspoken critic of
minority rule.
The ANC, with which he arranged pre-democracy talks with the ruling NP, said he
had made an indelible mark in shaping opposition politics.
“As leader of the Progressive Federal Party, not only did he make an indelible mark
in shaping opposition politics against apartheid in South Africa, but he fought for
constitutional democracy to be realised,” said ANC spokesman Brian Sokutu.
The office of the ANC chief whip in Parliament said he would be remembered for
the role he played in the historic meeting between Afrikaner South Africans and
the ANC representatives in exile.
The ANC had regarded him as a voice of reason in “an ocean of ruthless repres-
sion” and felt that he had resisted apartheid when it was not fashionable or per-
sonally rewarding to do so.
The Independent Democrats called him a true patriot and said all South Africans
owed him a debt of gratitude for the principled stance he took in all the positions
he occupied throughout his life, while United Democratic Movement leader Bantu
Holomisa said the country had been deprived of an intellectual and moral leader.
The African Christian Democratic Party called him a “remarkable man”.
The Institute for Democracy in South Africa, which he co-founded in 1986 with
Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner Alex Boraine as the Institute for a Demo-
cratic Alternative for South Africa, said he was a visionary.
A memorial service will be held next Saturday. - Sapa
 
 
Van Zyl Slabbert ‘the greatest president South Africa was never even
able to consider
Source: Bianca Silva. West Cape News, 26 May 2010
http://westcapenews.com/?p=1550
A ‘visionary’, a ‘fallen great tree’ and a ‘courageous man’ were some of the de-
scriptions of the late Dr Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert at a memorial held at the Insti-
tute for Democracy in Africa’s (IDASA) Cape Town offices today. Slabbert, who died
on May 14 at age 70 after a prolonged illness, led the liberal Progressive Federal
Party (PFP) from 1979 to 1986, was best remembered for his contribution to de-
mocracy and a non-racialised society following his arranging groundbreaking talks
between the then exiled African National Congress (ANC) and the National Party in
Senegal in 1985.
Memorial keynote speaker, Justice Minister Jeff Radebe, who addressed a packed
venue of about 100 people, among them top academics, politicians, civil society
leaders and businesspeople, described Slabbert as a “South African patriot” and
“visionary”, who worked against hypocrisy as he “upheld, in word and deed, the
truth to be self-evident that all men were created equal”.
Radebe commended Slabbert’s “innovative thinking”, saying Slabbert, by example,
showed that every South African had a role play in the aftermath of the “second
Great Trek of Afrikaaners into the great unknown” which led to a post-1994 demo-
cratic state.
“The nation is forever indebted to him for his tireless and selfless work. His spirit
will continue to inspire us to raise the bar.”
DA MP and shadow minister of higher education, Wilmot James, referred to Slab-
bert affectionately as “Van”, and spoke of Slabbert’s outstanding academic career
as a sociology Professor who lectured at four different South African universities,
and was Chancellor of Stellenbosh University in 2008.
Slabbert was an “engaging academic”, with an “enquiring mind that was unstoppa-
ble,” said James. “He wore his justice on his sleeve and clutched it in his heart.”
University of Cape Town Professor Michael Savage described Slabbert as a great
fallen tree, under which many people had taken shelter and would now miss the
shade of what James haddescribed as the “greatest president South Africa was
never even able to consider”.
His work in NGO’s and civil society, such as his temporary position as Founding
Chair of the Open Society Foundation for South Africa, was amongst some of the
things that were often not noted, as Slabbert conducted much of his work for so-
cial justice out of the public eye.
Co-founder of IDASA and close friend of Slabbert’s, Dr Alex Boraine, reminded the
audience how Slabbert left Parliament after 12 years as MP for the official opposi-
tion to the National Party, a move which was a “protest against the bankruptcy of
whites-only democracy”.
Although “cynical of fame”, as he “believed it was illusionary”, Boraine said Slab-
bert was nevertheless warm and loving to his friends and family.
He said while Slabbert never took himself too seriously, he upheld the utmost
integrity, advocated clean and efficient government and understood that strug-
gles created progress.
“Tot siens my maat, peace be with you,” he said, before challenging those left
behind to step up and take Slabbert’s place.
Following the memorial service, James went to Parliament to attend a motion to
be raised during a condolence debate, that Cabinet should be elected through
both direct and proportionate representation according to the findings of the
Elections Task Team (ETT), which were dismissed in 2003. – West Cape News
 
Rogue politician gets heartfelt goodbye
Source: Nathan Adams, Edited by Danya Philips, Eyewitness News, 26 May 2010
http://www.eyewitnessnews.co.za/articleprog.aspx?id=40446
Former opposition politician and political analyst Frederik van zyl Slabbert has
been hailed as a civil rights leader.
Colleagues and friends held a memorial for Van zyl Slabbert at democracy watch-
dog Idasa’s offices in Cape Town on Wednesday.
He died two weeks ago at the age of 70.
Van zyl Slabbert co-founded Idasa after he resigned from Parliament in 1986.
To his close friends and colleagues, van zyl Slabbert was more than a rogue politi-
cian and academic.
Justice and Constitutional Development Minister Jeff Radebe said it seemed
like only yesterday when he was released from prison and van zyl Slabbert ap-
proached him to speak at an Idasa conference.
Radebe lauded van zyl Slabbert’s contribution to fostering negotiations that
brought a peaceful end to Apartheid.
Co-founder of Idasa Alex Boraine said van zyl Slabber was one of a kind – a char-
ismatic academic who fought bravely for equality and justice for all South Afri-
cans at a time when it was not popular to do so.
His friends said they would miss his characteristic chuckle, his passion for debate
and his unique insight.
Van-Zyl-Slabbert--Afrikaner-revolutionary 
Source: TimesLive, 15 May 2010
http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/article451040.ece/Obituary---Frederik-
Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert, who has died at the age of 70, was a charismatic catalyst
of change at several crucial moments in South Africa’s recent history.
He will probably be best remembered as the opposition leader who quit in 1986
because he doubted the relevance of an all-white parliament in a country whose
majority population was black, and for his initiative a year later to lead a largely
Afrikaner delegation for unprecedented talks with the ANC in Dakar, Senegal.
Until September he was also chancellor of the University of Stellenbosch, where he
had studied and taught before entering politics in 1974.
The Progressive Federal Party had asked him to stand in the Rondebosch constitu-
ency against the United Party and, although bored with academic life by then,
he later said he only agreed because he was assured he would not win. When he
did, the response from PFP supporters was euphoric. Prog stalwart Helen Suzman
enthused that he was a “star acquisition”. He had “more than his fair share of cha-
risma and a very good brain”. And, of at least equal importance to a party trying to
attract the Afrikaans vote, he was Afrikaans and had the accent to prove it.
Most Afrikaners regarded him as a traitor and gave him a rough ride. He experi-
enced “the full weight of conservative Afrikaner nationalist hatred and vilification”,
he later wrote. In 1979 he became the leader of what was then the official opposi-
tion, and more of a hate figure than ever among those on the government benches
in parliament. One of his less edifying experiences was visiting casino king Sol Ker-
zner to ask for a donation. Kerzner, he remembered, sat “surrounded by his flun-
kies and said: ‘Why must I give money away to a party that talks to f***ing com-
munists?’ I got up and left.” When businessman Tony Bloom, who had arranged
the meeting, urged him to press his request, Slabbert retorted that he wouldn’t ask
Kerzner “for five cents to go to a railway toilet”. Ten years later, as he sardonically
observed, Kerzner paid for Mbeki’s 50th birthday celebrations.
By 1986 Slabbert had decided that parliament was a waste of time. The opposi-
tion were “passive spectators” of a game in which the only two sides that mattered
were the government and the ANC. Many in the PFP felt he had betrayed them.
Suzman was furious and didn’t speak to him for years. Then editor of the Sunday
Times Ken Owen penned a lacerating piece, which summed up the feelings of
many opposition voters, calling him an “Afrikaner glamour boy” who “whored with
the English vote”.

Slabbert and fellow MP Alex Boraine, who resigned a week later, then started Idasa,
the Institute for a Democratic Alternative in SA, to promote dialogue with the extra-
parliamentary opposition. They quickly arranged for a bunch of Afrikaner intellectu-
als to meet ANC leaders in Dakar. Slabbert fell completely for Thabo Mbeki’s charm
and they enjoyed what he termed a “comfortable” relationship until the eve of
Mbeki’s appointment as deputy president. It ended very abruptly when Mbeki asked
Slabbert what he would do if he were to become deputy president. “I would appoint
a number of committees of experts in key areas to constantly remind me of how
much I have to learn and how ignorant I am,” answered Slabbert. Mbeki barely spoke
to him again. Slabbert’s disillusionment with him was sealed after recommendations
he had been asked by Mbeki to draw up on electoral reform were ignored. Slabbert
called it “a disgusting and eminently forgettable experience”.
In 1993 he was driving back from Swaziland, where his wife Jane’s parents had a
farm, when he heard on the car radio that he had been appointed chairman of the
SABC. A panel of judges had recommended Professor Njabulo Ndebele, with him as
deputy, but President FW de Klerk had persuaded them to give it to Slabbert in-
stead. There was an uproar. Fatima Meer told him that, as a white Afrikaner male,
he was not acceptable, “the kind of logic”, he retorted, “that informs ethnic cleans-
ing”. He allowed himself to be persuaded to stay a few weeks to get the board up
and running, but got out as soon as he realised that neither Mandela nor De Klerk
was remotely interested in an independent board. All they wanted was “power and
control”. He quickly handed over to the ANC’s preferred candidate Ivy Matsepe-Cas-
aburri.
In 1991 Slabbert was asked to head the new Central Witwatersrand Metropolitan
Chamber, whose purpose was to improve the quality of services for the people of
Soweto by establishing new non-racial, democratic structures. Such was his cred-
ibility that an impressive variety of parties, including the ANC and National Party,
bought in to the chamber. Perhaps its biggest achievement by the time it closed shop
in 1994 was to end the rent boycott. Slabbert said he saw first-hand how “sound, lo-
cal democratic practice is linked to immediate problems concerning the daily quality
of life - water, sewerage, electricity ... “
He predicted that the new South Africa would “survive or go under in its cities. The
political powder kegs lie in our cities”.
Slabbert’s analytical skill and ability to cut to the chase in language everybody could
understand made him a favourite of both local and foreign reporters trying to grasp
developments in both the old and new South Africa.
He was not always right, however. He told Irish author and academic Padraig
O’Malley in an October 1993 interview: “Well, I’m still prepared to put my head
on a block there won’t be elections on April 27 (1994).”
In 1991 he started Khula Investment Trust, one of the first black-majority-owned
companies in the new South Africa. In 2005 he became chairman of Caxton,
Adcorp Holdings and Metro Cash and Carry. His experience in business taught
him that it was possible to succeed and be honest. But it wasn’t easy and there
weren’t too many examples, he said.
Slabbert’s parents divorced when he was a toddler. His father pretty much van-
ished from his life until he was 16 and his mother, an alcoholic, had to give him
and his twin sister up when they were seven. They grew up in a hostel at Pieters-
burg Hoërskool, where they became head boy and head girl and captained the
school sports teams, in his case the first cricket and rugby teams.
He graduated cum laude at Stellenbosch in his bachelor’s and his master’s degrees
in sociology, before going on to earn a PhD. He lectured there, at Rhodes and at
the University of the Witwatersrand before being appointed a professor at Wits in
1973.
He is survived by his second wife, Jane, and two adult children, Tania and Riko,
from his first marriage.
Van Zyl, Treurnicht’s daughter and the black man
Source: Koos van der Merwe, IFP Chief Whip, on Politicsweb, 16 May 2010
http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/
page71654?oid=176316&sn=Detail
It was with great sadness that I have learned that my dear friend Frederik Van Zyl
Slabbert passed away earlier today. I served many years in Parliament with Fred-
erik Van Zyl Slabbert. He was a Parliamentarian par excellence and I remember
how once, in a mere three minute speech, he practically annihilated PW Botha. He
feared no one and was prepared to go to prison for his views.
His contributions to achieving a democratic society were not only fearlessly fought
in Parliament. When he realised that the struggle for democracy was in fact out-
side Parliament, he did not hesitate for a moment, but resigned from Parliament
and founded Idasa as an instrument to continue the struggle.
Van Zyl Slabbert led the Dakar group in defiance of PW Botha’s warnings.
What amazed me about Van Zyl Slabbert was the depth of his political knowledge
and his wisdom. He knew and understood the policies of each political party bet-
ter than they did themselves.
On one occasion, at a Seminar in Colonial Williamsburg in the USA, I represented
the Conservative Party and was confronted with questions I could not answer.
I asked to be excused for a few minutes and went to van Van Zyl Slabbert and
asked him how I, as a Conservative MP should answer. He immediately gave
me the right answers because he fully understood the views and beliefs of the
Conservatives. And for that matter, each and every political party. He was in fact
a mobile political library.
When the late Dr Treurnicht’s daughter approached Van Zyl Slabbert for assis-
tance to move to the USA to marry a black man, Van Zyl Slabbert did not use that
information against Treurnicht. At that stage, it was unthinkable for a white Con-
servative to marry a black man. News of Treurnicht’s daughter marrying a black
man would have led to the end of Treurnicht’s political career.
Van Zyl Slabbert confidentially told me the story but it never made the headlines.
What an honourable man!
His part in the struggle for Afrikaans at Stellenbosch was indeed an eye opener.
Where were the Verkramptes? The old Conservatives of which I was a member?
Nowhere. The fight for Afrikaans was led by the “liberal jingoes” such as Van Zyl
Slabbert, Hermann Giliomee and Breyten Breytenbach.
I have lost a dear friend, one whom I could phone, as I have often done, to ask
for guidance and wisdom in trying to better understand the intricacies of our
hugely diverse society.
I also never once saw him angry.
Mooi loop, Van Zyl. Koos gaan jou mis.
Statement issued by Koos van der Merwe, MP, Inkatha Freedom Party chief whip,
May 14 2010
 
 
Afrikaner who paved the way for the new South Africa by quitting
parliament in dramatic fashion in the mid-1980s
Obituary: Frederik van Zyl Slabbert
Source: FRED BRIDGLAND, the Scotsman, 17 May 2010
www.scotsman.com
Born: 2 March 1940, in Pretoria, South Africa.
Died: 14 May, 2010, in Johannesburg, aged 70.
THE recent death, in a gruesome murder, of South African neo-Nazi leader Eugene
Terre-Blanche reminded the world how much hatred and prejudice there was
among whites in the dark days of apartheid. But the subsequent deaths of Black
Sash leader Sheena Duncan, two weeks ago, and now of the extraordinarily intel-
ligent, charismatic and politically incorrect Frederik van Zyl Slabbert are remind-
ers also of how much white liberal opposition there was to racism; how far South
Africa has travelled since their heydays; and how much “good people” like them
were able to achieve.
Van Zyl Slabbert, who died aged 70 from a liver complaint believed to have been
related to his love of fine wines and other liquor, was mourned almost universally
across South Africa’s racial and political spectrum.
He was admired for his sharp intellect, his principles, which made him a critic of
both apartheid and post-apartheid governments, and as the man who paved the
way for the new South Africa by quitting parliament in dramatic fashion in the mid-
1980s.
Van Zyl Slabbert, as a young sociology professor, entered the old whites-only as-
sembly in 1974 as an MP for the liberal Progressive Party (PP) in a Cape Town con-
stituency, joining Helen Suzman – until then the sole liberal who had battled for 13
years single-handedly in parliament against apartheid.
Suzman regarded him as a star acquisition to the English-speaking PP not only be-
cause of his brain, but also because the party was trying to attract Afrikaners, and
he was an Afrikaner with the accent to prove it.
He liked in later years to tell how he had been dragooned into standing only after
a long night of heavy drinking with friends, and agreed because he was assured he
would not win.

Van Zyl Slabbert, a handsome man who loved to carouse, became leader of the
“Progs” in 1979 and grew the party’s representation to 26 seats. But in February
1986 he shocked loyalists and the country’s entire political class by resigning both
the leadership and his party membership and as an MP, saying that no resolu-
tion to South Africa’s crises was possible without the banned and exiled African
National Congress (ANC).
“The country had become stalemated between the white governing National
Party’s politics of repression and the ANC’s politics of revolt,” he said. “In parlia-
ment we (the opposition] had become simply passive spectators of a game in
which we could not participate. I knew I was wasting my time … parliament had
become irrelevant.”
Suzman was deeply embittered, describing Van Zyl Slabbert’s withdrawal as a
great betrayal. She did not speak to him for years. Liberal English commentators
described him as an “Afrikaner glamour boy” who had “whored with the English-
origin vote.”
National Party Afrikaners mocked Van Zyl Slabbert as a traitor who had the brains
for politics, but not the balls. “Ja,” he responded wryly. “The trouble with this
country is you have too many politicians with balls but no brains.”
Van Zyl Slabbert, charming, affable and telegenic, became identified outside
parliament with the kind of innovative thinking and foresight that would bring an
end to apartheid.
With his friend Alex Boraine, who also resigned as a “Prog” MP, he travelled
throughout the country and abroad to consult a wide cross-section of political
leaders, including Oliver Tambo, then president in exile of the banned ANC.
Van Zyl Slabbert had been refused permission from Nationalist president PW
Botha to visit the imprisoned Nelson Mandela. His meeting with Tambo – techni-
cally an act of treason under apartheid law – infuriated Botha, who went apo-
plectic in July 1987 when Van Zyl Slabbert organised a ground-breaking meeting
in Senegal between 60 prominent Afrikaner businessmen and the exiled ANC
leadership. Those who travelled to Senegal came back profoundly changed by the
experience: it had cracked the shell of ignorance and fear that had characterised
the white Afrikaner laager.
There followed several similar meetings in venues between Burkina Faso and the
then Soviet Union. The Afrikaner right-wing accused Van Zyl Slabbert of “crawling
to the ANC to arse-creep with future leaders,” while the ANC’s South African
Communist Party ally said he was “part of a Trojan Horse plot to dilute and confuse
the ‘Struggle’.”
While fulfilling short-term fellowships at Oxford University, Van Zyl Slabbert found-
ed with Boraine the Institute for a Democratic South Africa (Idasa). The aim of what
became the country’s most important independent think-tank was to bring togeth-
er people from across the racial, political and economic divides to explore ideas for
a democratic alternative to apartheid and achieve a peaceful transition to all-race
democracy.
Idasa survives Van Zyl Slabbert, playing a major role in South African civil life. One
of its major projects today is an investigation of the financing of the fight against
HIV/Aids which kills some 1,000 South Africans daily.
Van Zyl Slabbert was born into an Afrikaner family and brought up in Pietersburg,
near the Limpopo River, where he attended the all-white Afrikaans-speaking high
school, captaining the school and its cricket and rugby first teams. He resolutely
derided efforts by others to classify him in narrow ethnic terms, saying the first Van
Zyl Slabberts had set foot in Africa in 1670 and one had produced three children
with a black slave.
“I have a deep aversion to attempts to give ideological, value-laden content to
concepts of nationality, ethnicity or race,” he said. “Perhaps it is because I had an
overdose of this growing up in a predominantly rural Afrikaner environment.”
When he resigned from parliament, he was refused permission to visit his old
school. “You’re a disgrace to Pietersburg High School,” said the headmaster.
Van Zyl Slabbert insisted: “I am an African because I can trace my history here, and
I have a South African passport which states that I come from South Africa and am
a South African citizen. For most of my intelligent life, I have been aware of being
stereotyped as an Afrikaner. There is not much I can do about it.
“As Jean-Paul Sartre once said, ‘You are a Jew because I look at you.’ Even when I
have offended all the stereotypes of what an Afrikaner is, I am still told I remain ‘a
wayward, rebel, atypical Afrikaner’. So be it. Others will have to make peace with
me. I am at peace.”
Van Zyl Slabbert is survived by his wife, Jane, and two children from a previous mar-
riage.
 
Frederik van Zyl Slabbert
Source: The Telegraph, 16 May 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/7730924/Frederik-van-Zyl-Slab-
bert.html
Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, who died on May 14 aged 70, was one of the architects
of South Africa’s transition from apartheid and a noted writer on its politics and
sociology.
Charming, telegenic and invariably known as “Van”, he became an MP for the
liberal Progressive Federal Party (PFP) in 1974, and its leader only three years
later – serving as head of the official Opposition from 1979 until his sudden resig-
nation in 1986. When Slabbert and four others entered parliament, the redoubt-
able Mrs Helen Suzman was the only progressive; by the time he left there were
26, an increase which was seen as a personal victory for the still-youthful leader.
In his later years he built up a strong position as an independent observer of poli-
tics, based at the Institute for a Democratic Alternative in South Africa, known as
Idasa, which he co-founded in 1986 to organise meetings between whites and
blacks in apartheid South Africa. The group is now the Institute for Democracy in
Africa.
Frederik van Zyl Slabbert was born on March 2 1940, the son of conservative
Afrikaners, descendants of early Dutch settlers known for their commitment to
apartheid. Educated at Pietersberg High School, he studied at the University of
the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, before going on to Stellenbosch University,
the intellectual heartland of the Afrikaner nation, where he wrote his doctorate.
He played rugby for Stellenbosch, but later described the game as a social nar-
cotic which stopped South Africans from thinking about more serious matters. He
stayed on at Stellenbosch as a lecturer in Sociology (1964-68) and senior lecturer
(1970-71), his tenure interrupted in 1969 by a stint at Rhodes University, Gra-
hamstown. The political scales fell from his eyes in the 1960s, when he was sent
on mission work in the African township of Langa.
In 1972 Slabbert moved to the University of Cape Town, returning the following
year to the University of the Witwatersrand, where he spent a year as head of
the sociology department before going into politics. At 34, his move was some-
thing of an accident. Having been persuaded to stand as an MP, he joined the PFP
– a predecessor to the Democratic Alliance – on the day he accepted the nomina-
tion, and was surprised to win.
In August 1979 Colin Eglin stepped down as leader of the party, which by then
had 17 seats, and Slabbert beat the experienced Zach De Beer for the succession.
Helen Suzman voted against him, partly because she knew that he was a contend-
er for the post of vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town, and she was not
sure that he would stay in parliament.
Slabbert suddenly resigned in 1986, declaring himself disillusioned with the par-
liamentary process. His abrupt departure nearly wrecked the PFP but established
his credibility in the eyes of blacks. Mrs Suzman begged him to reconsider; she was
devastated and outraged, but the pair renewed their friendship at a conference in
Bermuda in 1989.
The overwhelmingly English-speaking PFP opposed racial discrimination and in-
sisted that South Africa’s political future must be negotiated by all concerned par-
ties. In September 1977 Slabbert contributed to an important series in The Daily
Telegraph, in which he wrote of withdrawal into the politics of siege as the only
alternative to negotiation.
Moderate and open-minded, by 1980 Slabbert had come to believe that the South
African President PW Botha had created better expectations of reform than any of
his predecessors. He was soon disappointed. In 1982 Slabbert promised that the
PFP’s criticism of the proposals for constitutional reform would be constructive,
but emphasised that they were fatally flawed because they made no provision for
black representation.
He described the government’s campaign in the 1983 referendum on the propos-
als as crude and emotive, and believed that the new constitution would increase
racial discrimination and ensure one-party dictatorship. Though Slabbert’s opposi-
tion on internal affairs was uncompromising, it was not until 1984 that he doubted
the President’s ability to conduct foreign affairs.
In August 1985 Slabbert’s career moved into a new phase when, with Chief Man-
gosuthu Buthelezi of the Inkatha Freedom Party, he formed the National Conven-
tion Movement in an unsuccessful attempt to force the government into negotiat-
ing with all political groups. Although the alliance was immediately condemned by
the banned African National Congress, Slabbert travelled to meet them in exile in
Lusaka. The absence of Oliver Tambo may have been intended as a snub, because
of Slabbert’s record as a moderate, but he spent nine hours with the ANC, and
emerged saying: “A path away from violence can be negotiated”.
After his resignation, while based at Idasa, he remained in regular contact with
the ANC in Zambia. In August 1987 he was one of some 50 prominent white South
Africans, mostly businessmen, who went to Dakar to meet an ANC delegation. The

secret meeting had been organised by Slabbert, using private funds donated to
Idasa from the United States, and by Mme Danielle Mitterrand, wife of the Presi-
dent of France, and Breyten Breytenbach, the distinguished Afrikaans poet, who
had been a friend since Slabbert visited him in prison in 1973. After the Dakar
meeting the ANC expressed willingness to hold more talks with a broader cross-
section of whites.
The government, which was inching its way towards contact with the ANC, did
not welcome the efforts of private groups. Nevertheless, in May 1988, Slabbert
met Thabo Mbeki in Frankfurt, and was in West Germany again in October for
talks with Soviet representatives and the ANC, which has since become the coun-
try’s governing party. The white government of the day denounced Slabbert’s
group as traitors.
After the transition to majority rule Slabbert consolidated his position as a re-
spected independent political observer and business consultant. He was appoint-
ed chairman of the Central Witwatersrand Metropolitan Chamber (1991-94),
a government quango set up to improve the administration of black and white
cities around Johannesburg. In 1993 he became the first chairman of George
Soros’s Open Society Foundation and, in 1994, co-chairman of the task group for
local government elections.
He maintained his academic links as visiting professor at several South African
universities and co-authored a book, Comrades in Business: Post-Liberation Poli-
tics in South Africa, which avoided hagiography.
Earlier he had written an autobiography and co-authored two other books on
South African politics.
Frederik van Zyl Slabbert’s first marriage, to Mana Jordan, was dissolved. In 1984
he married Jane Catherine Stephens, who survives him with a son and a daughter
of his first marriage.
Tributes flow in for van Zyl Slabbert
Source: News24.com, 14 May 2010
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Tributes-for-Van-Zyl-Slabbert-20100514
Johannesburg – Tributes flowed in on Friday for former politician, academic and
businessman Frederik van Zyl Slabbert following his death in Johannesburg.
The opposition DA, a descendant of the Progressive Federal Party, which he once
led, said he presented a non-racial alternative “with determination and principle”.
“He devoted his life to the development of a just South Africa, and he left our coun-
try a far better place than before,” said DA leader Helen Zille.
The Independent Democrats called him a true patriot and said all South Africans
owed him a debt of gratitude for the principled stance he took in all the positions
he occupied throughout his life.
Facilitated talks with ANC
The ANC said he had made an indelible mark in shaping opposition politics against
apartheid. “He will also be remembered as one of those white South Africans who
facilitated contact with the African National Congress at the time it was banned
inside the country,” said ANC spokesperson Brian Sokutu.
In 1985 he travelled to Lusaka for talks with the external wing of the ANC and, with
IFP president Mangosuthu Buthelezi, launched the National Convention Movement
in an unsuccessful attempt to pressurise the government into negotiating with all
political groups.
In 1987 he led a delegation of influential white business people to Dakar, Senegal,
for talks with the then banned ANC.
Visionary
The Institute for Democracy in South Africa, which he co-founded in 1986 with
Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner Alex Boraine, said he was a visionary and
represented a “living embodiment of active citizenship as a South African and an
African public intellectual”.
“His life was rooted in the values of social justice which guided his participation on
an ongoing basis in considering what democracy is and how it should be lived by
citizens of South Africa and other countries,” the centre said.
United Democratic Movement leader Bantu Holomisa said the country had been
deprived of an intellectual and moral leader.
“His progressive contribution during the transition must have played a big role in
stilling the doubts of those who thought our country would not succeed in reaching
a peaceful democratic settlement,” he said.
“A mobile political library”, “a living embodiment of active citizenship” and a
“person who left South Africa better than what it was” were some of the other
tributes.
Parliamentarian par excellence
In a moving tribute to his “dear friend”, Inkatha Freedom Party chief whip Koos
van der Merwe described him as a parliamentarian par excellence who had once
“annihilated” apartheid head of state PW Botha in a three-minute speech.
He also kept to himself information that the daughter of the old far Right-wing
Conservative Party’s leader Andries Treurnicht had asked him for help to move to
the United States to marry a black man.
“At that stage, it was unthinkable for a white Conservative to marry a black man.
News of Treurnicht’s daughter marrying a black man would have led to the end
of Treurnicht’s political career.
“Van Zyl Slabbert confidentially told me the story, but it never made the head-
lines. What an honourable man.”
He said Van Zyl Slabbert had known political parties “better than they knew
themselves” and was often approached for advice. He was considered a mobile
political library.
The Freedom Front Plus said: “Whether one agreed or disagreed with him, he
treated everyone in the same courteous manner and brought integrity into poli-
tics, which often today is lacking.”
RIP
Websites also carried tributes to him, with “Cape Town Fan” saying “You did well
for us” and “rb” writing “RIP Van Zyl. One of the few true South Africans. Unfor-
tunately a breed that is fast becoming extinct”.
However, some people commenting on the TimesLive website, took a different
view, with Ntebaleng writing: “He was a good man but truth is he lacked balls -
if a man decide to get in a fight he must fight to the end - he was easily getting
disilutioned (sic) - in politics you need men of steel”.
Camps Bay wrote: “I wish all pinkies were like him. RIP Comrade”.
PFP co-founder Colin Eglin said Van Zyl Slabbert would be remembered with
“great respect for his integrity, his keen intellect, his warm personality, and his
deep concern for the people, the society and the country of which he was so
much a part”.
- SAPA
Former Caxton Chairman dies
Source: Moneyweb.co.za, 14 May 2010
http://www.themediaonline.co.za/themedia/view/themedia/en/page1351?oid=49981&sn=Detail&pi
d=1
Former opposition leader and political analyst Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert died today,
at the age of 70. “I have just spoken to his PA and she confirmed it,” said University of
Cape Town academic Prof Mike Savage.
Slabbert once viewed as one of South Africa’s most gifted public figures, had been
admitted to Johannesburg’s Milpark Hospital and was reportedly being treated for
liver and other problems.
Perhaps best remembered for his pioneering work in opening up dialogue between
Afrikaners and the exiled African National Congress, he had a conventional Afrikaner
upbringing.
He was born in Pretoria on March 2 1940, and spent his formative years in Pieters-
burg, now Polokwane, in what is now Limpopo, where he captained his school’s first
cricket and rugby teams. He studied for 18 months at the Dutch Reformed Church
theological seminary at Stellenbosch University before deciding sociology was his
proper calling. He completed a BA Honours at the university in 1962, and was award-
ed a doctorate in 1967. From 1964 to 1973 he lectured in sociology at Stellenbosch,
Rhodes and the University of Cape Town.
During this period his interest in the position of the coloured people of the Western
Cape led him into confrontation with the National Party, and he joined a multi-racial
discussion group named Synthesis which sought to promote black-white dialogue.
In 1973 he was appointed head of the department of sociology at the University of
the Witwatersrand.
The following year, standing for the Progressive Party (PP), he won the Rondebosch
parliamentary seat from the United Party. He maintained afterwards he had been
persuaded to stand only after a hard night’s drinking with PP members. In 1979 he
accepted the leadership of the party -- by then known as the Progressive Federal
Party -- and of the official opposition in Parliament, and led the PFP to substantial
gains in the 1981 general election.
In 1985 he travelled to Lusaka for talks with the external wing of the ANC and, with
Inkatha’s Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, launched the National Convention Movement
in an unsuccessful attempt to pressure the government to negotiate with all political
groups. By this time Van Zyl Slabbert, who was said by one acquaintance to have a
“non-existent boredom threshold” was becoming increasingly disillusioned with the
tricameral Parliament, which in his view was a hopelessly flawed constitutional
experiment.
In February 1986 he publicly announced his resignation from Parliament and the
leadership of the PFP, which he had informed of his decision only an hour earlier.
Fellow front-bencher Helen Suzman labelled it betrayal, but he strongly defended
his move, saying he refused to be “in the slipstream of the government’s repres-
sion and incompetence”.
His desertion of the PFP sparked criticism that while he had the brains for a poli-
tician, he lacked the balls. “Ja,” he responded with a wry smile. “The trouble with
this country is you have too many politicians with balls but no brains.”
In July 1986 Van Zyl Slabbert, with another former PFP MP Alex Boraine, formed
the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa (Idasa). He became a
director of Idasa, and undertook an intricate process of shuttle diplomacy aimed
at bringing resistance groups together with influential figures in the white estab-
lishment in South Africa.
In July 1987, to the government’s fury, he took a group of about 60 influential
white South Africans, most of them Afrikaners, to Dakar, Senegal, for talks with
an ANC delegation.
In the 1990s he branched out into business, becoming chairman of Caxton
(JSE:CAT) Publishers, Adcorp Holdings (JSE:ADR) and Metro Cash ‘n Carry, as
well as holding various directorships. He also in 1990 co-founded Khula, a black
investment trust. In 2002 then-president Thabo Mbeki appointed him to head a
team investigating a new electoral system for the country. Its recommendation,
a more accountable mix of constituency-based and proportional representation,
was quietly shelved by the government.
Slabbert accepted the position of chancellor of his alma mater, Stellenbosch, in
2008, but at the end of that year suffered a heart attack, and had a pacemaker in-
stalled. The following year he quit the Stellenbosch post, along with his company
directorships, in order, he said, to spend more time with his wife and family. He
stepped down from his position at Caxton on February 16 2010. He authored a
number of books, including a semi-autobiographical analysis of tricameral politics
The Last White Parliament, which appeared in 1992. In May that year he wrote
that his fear was not that there would not be eventual consensus on the princi-
ples of a new democratic constitution for South Africa.
“Far more disturbing are the expectations that people have of what a democracy
can deliver, and which research shows it is incapable of doing.
“This in the South African context is the real burden of democracy.”
He leaves his wife Jane and two adult children, Tania and Riko, from a previous
marriage.
Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert: Politician and activist in the vanguard of
the struggle against apartheid
By Gavin Evans, Independent, 19 May 2010
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/frederik-van-zyl-slabbert-politician-and-activist-in-
the-vanguard-of-the-struggle-against-apartheid-1976324.html
Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert was one of the big beasts of apartheid-era politics, best-
known for abandoning parliament in 1986 to liaise with the exiled African National
Congress. He had burst on to the South African political scene 12 years earlier
when he pulled off an upset in the all-white general election by winning the Cape
constituency of Rondebosch for Helen Suzman’s Progressive Party, beating a segre-
gationist incumbent.
“Van”, as he was called by friends, had only joined the Progressives after his nomi-
nation but immediately established himself as leader-in-waiting. This former pro-
vincial rugby forward certainly looked the part: tall, broad and handsome with a
resonant baritone voice, he exuded the kind of rugged manliness that played well
in white South Africa, and his credentials were certainly impressive – an Afrikaner
university professor who had sailed through his cum laude academic career.
My first contact with him came three years later, when, as a 17-year-old, I cam-
paigned for his party, by then called the Progressive Federal Party (PFP). He im-
pressed me hugely as a magnetic figure who combined pragmatic intellectualism
with earthy machismo. His leadership helped to transform the PFP from a fringe
collective of English-speaking liberals to the official opposition.
Slabbert’s early years had their share of heartache. His parents divorced when he
was three, leaving him and his twin sister to live with their mother in Pretoria, and
then, at seven, with their uncle in Johannesburg, and finally with their grandpar-
ents on a farm in Pietersburg. Yet despite this chaos he seemed to excel at every-
thing he touched: head boy, captain of the rugby and cricket teams, top student.
He dreamt of becoming a minister in the segregationist Dutch Reformed Church
and went off to study at theology, sociology and Afrikaans at Stellenbosch Univer-
sity.
Exposure to alternative intellectual traditions, and to black churchgoers, prompted
a shift leftwards, although this liberalism should not be overstated. The Progres-
sive Party he embraced had the dubious policy of supporting a “qualified fran-
chise” for blacks. Slabbert, who became leader in 1978, later steered it towards
supporting a universal franchise within a federal system.
Their rather naïve aim was to win enough seats to secure a future power-broking
role. However, the military-dominated regime of P.W. Botha had ideas becoming
a nuclear power that used its security and intelligence services to bypass parlia-
ment and wipe out opposition. Assassinations, state-sponsored massacres and
mass-scale detention without trial became the norm. On the other side was the
sanctions campaign and armed struggle of the resurgent African National Con-
gress, and, at home, the United Democratic Front (UDF), a network of trades
unions and community organisations whose aim was to make the country ungov-
ernable.
In this climate, the white parliamentary opposition looked increasingly insipid,
although it took Slabbert a while to recognise this, and he made several quixotic
errors along the way. He tried to broaden their electoral base by attacking the
sanctions campaign and backing military conscription and requested a special
meeting with Botha, meekly pleading for a change in course (Botha secretly
recorded the meeting and embarrassed Slabbert by releasing the transcript). The
final stage came in 1985 when Slabbert founded the National Convention Move-
ment with Mangosuthu Buthelezi, whose Inkatha forces were being armed by
the military. The result was that this movement was still-born, forcing Slabbert to
reconsider.
Later that year he met with the ANC in Lusaka and in February 1986 resigned
as leader of the opposition and as an MP, saying that he “refused to be in the
slipstream of the government’s repression and incompetence”. Suzman accused
him of a “betrayal”; others said he lacked “balls”, to which he responded: “The
trouble with this country is that you have too many politicians with balls but no
brains.”
Slabbert and his friend, Dr Alex Boraine, who had joined him in abandoning
parliament, established the Institute of Democratic Alternatives in South Africa,
which played a significant role in bringing white opinion-makers into contact with
the leadership of the ANC and UDF. Hundreds of white businessmen, editors,
academics, politicians and military figures were in touch with the exile-based
movement in the late-1980s, easing the way towards negotiations.
It was during this period that I got to know Slabbert, regularly joining him in his
meetings and conferences. By then he was in his late 40s and his magnetism had
given away to a quieter gravitas.
My impression was that he was always intellectually and politically curious – and
open to new ideas – while remaining inscrutable in his dealing with power bro-
kers. He showed enormous patience and humility in frequently tedious meetings
with young radicals, and soon established himself as a trusted facilitator who was
particularly close to the future South African president Thabo Mbeki.
Slabbert recognised that this role had come to an end after the 1994 elections and
he withdrew from high-profile politics, concentrating instead on business, aca-
demic and charitable interests, including George Soros’s Open Society Foundation.
Last year he left his post as chancellor of Stellenbosch University following a heart
attack.
Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert, politician, academic and businessman: born Pretoria,
South Africa 2 March 1940; married firstly Mana Jordaan (marriage dissolved); one
son, one daughter), secondly Jane Stephens; died Johannesburg 14 May 2010.
 
Anti-Apartheid Activist Warned of Rich-Poor Gap
Source: Black Voice News, Special to the NNPA from the GIN –
http://www.blackvoicenews.com/news/news-wire/44457-anti-apartheid-activist-warned-of-rich-
poor-gap.html
(GIN) - Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert, a scholar, author and former member of the anti-
apartheid opposition, died this week at age 70 during treatment for liver and other
problems.
Before he died, he signaled the dangers of the growing gap between rich and poor.
“I do know from talking to ordinary people that there is a great deal of anger at the
conspicuous consumption of the new emerging elite,” the former leader said in a
press interview.
“The biggest gap at the moment is not between black and white, but between
black and black in terms of access to economic opportunities.”
Once the rugby-playing son of conservative Afrikaners, Slabbert turned towards
multi-racial politics in the late 70s and 80s, opening up dialogue between Afrikan-
ers and the exiled African National Congress.
Later, with rights advocate Alex Boraine, he helped formed the Institute for a Dem-
ocratic Alternative in South Africa, known as Idasa, to organize meetings between
whites and blacks in apartheid South Africa.
The group is now the Institute for Democracy in Africa.