Deputy minister of police Cassel Mathale weighed in on former president’s FW De Klerk’s invite to the opening of parliament after his comments on apartheid.
Early February in an interview with the national broadcaster SABC, the former president said he was “not fully agreeing” with the presenter who asked him to confirm that apartheid, the legalised discrimination against non-white people, was a crime against humanity
Mr De Klerk went on to acknowledge that it was a crime, and to apologise profusely for his role in it, but he insisted that apartheid was responsible for relatively few deaths and that it should not be put in the same category of “genocide” or “crimes against humanity”
Mathale quoted resolutions that regarded apartheid as crime against humanity and further re affirmed the United Nation’s resolution that apartheid was a crime against humanity “ It’s regrettable that the De Klerk foundation in a course of explaining themselves found it fit to suggest that the people who died in South Afgrica are insignificant”.
“How many people were supposed to die before the De Klerk foundation to acknowledge that the UN’s resolution was correct.”
Mathale further said the statement by De Klerk is an insult to the international community and Black people of South Africa who suffered the killings of their relatives.
“I know some may say this is the wrong platform but In this community there are many people who were persecuted during the apartheid era”.
