The Last Trek--A New Beginning: The Autobiography (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

On April 27, 1994, millions of South Africans stood in mile-long queues for hours to cast their votes in the country's first democratic election. F.W. de Klerk, the last apartheid president, must have known his party would lose and that he was effectively handing the power of the volk to the African National Congress and its leader, Nelson Mandela. De Klerk's motivation for writing The Last Trek appears to be to show this surrender of power as the act of the country's "great reformer." The book is also an attempt to reassure the volk that this is not the end for them--merely a fresh challenge.

De Klerk was brought up as an Afrikaner nationalist and his view of the world was shaped by racism. He unapologetically tells how, as a young man, he was impressed with Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd's plans to create separate black homelands and was relieved when Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment. Throughout the time he was a nationalist parliament member, minister, and later president, de Klerk insists, he did not know about his government's reign of terror and its attendant massacres and death squads. (Though he was a "compassionate reformer" and lawyer, it seems unbelievable that he did not try harder to find out if the allegations were true.) He does apologize for apartheid crimes--but urges they should be seen in context of the cold war and his political background, as well as in comparison with other nations: a weak apology, indeed. The Last Trek offers interesting insights into de Klerk's mind, but its most interesting material may well be its description of how his relationship with Mandela deteriorated, leading to the collapse of the coalition government--an event that angered de Klerk's colleagues because it caused a rift in the party and eroded international confidence in multiracial government.

From Publishers Weekly

Although this memoir contains far more political blow-by-blow than personal revelation, it will reward close reading. De Klerk, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela in 1993, puts himself forward as a sincere but initially unimaginative fellow, a man who imbibed Afrikaner nationalism and couldn't even conceive of a South Africa without apartheid, which he presents as a product of his times. But most readers will quickly gather that de Klerk is spinning an alternate history: he claims that the apartheid government spent big sums to do justice to all South Africans, argues that sanctions delayed change more than hastened it and downplays police responsibility for the watershed Soweto riots. As a cabinet minister during the 1980s, de Klerk was not encouraged to question the security forces and even now distances himself from the murder and torture committed on his watch. As for the far-reaching reforms he proposed in 1990, including the release of Nelson Mandela and the unbanning of the African National Congress, de Klerk writes that they grew not from a conversion experience but from sober analysis. He wrings little drama from this magnificent, calculated gamble. In the book's second half, devoted to the ensuing negotiations about the shape of post-apartheid South Africa, de Klerk presents a highly negative portrait of Nelson Mandela, who criticized de Klerk regularly for the government contribution to the violence, even at the Nobel ceremony. De Klerk does convey that the saintly Mandela has his petty side, and that the ANC's revolutionary rhetoric has not served it well. But he will convince few with his contention that neither side during South Africa's epic conflict held moral superiority. He serves his legacy best when articulating his goals of better government and economic growth, and his hope that party politics will be based on values, not race. Photos.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 412 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press (March 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312223102
• ISBN-13: 978-0312223106
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,003,803 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a lesson in courage,honesty and human yearning for survival, June 8, 1999

By A Customer

In The Last Trek,F.W de Klerk's treatment of his relationship with Nelson Mandela serves as an eye opener to all humanity.This places the book in a class of its own;honest,unequivocal,educative and deeply touching.In SPIRIT OF THE DEEP ,my new yet to be published book in celebration of Nelson Mandela and the South African people,I payed tribute to De klerk for having the huge courage to finally destroy the evil system of apartheid.The Last Trek gives us good insight into the very heart, mind and experience of this rainbow son of God.This moving book takes us on a journey of discovery into the courageous and no mean process of finally accepting the great wrong done to the South African people through apartheid.However you see the book ,The Last Trek ,is indeed,a lesson in courage,honesty and human yearning for survival and fulfilment.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars BRILLIANT, BUT TOO PRO-DE KLERK AND ANTI-MANDELA., September 3, 1999

By A Customer

This is an interesting, and most impressive, autobiography. Its weakness is that it is so anti-Mandela and pro-De Klerk. Mandala's role in the making of the new South Africa is marginalized and De Klerk's role is accentuated.

De Klerk makes clear that South Africa "avoided [a] racial cataclysm" by means of a great compromise: (a) whites kept economic power and got a court system to protect their rights and (b) blacks, or the ANC in alliance with Inkata, got political power. All segments of South African society, Indian, colored, blacks, and whites, are now, in 1999, however, according to De Klerk, disillusioned with the new dispensation of power. Indians and coloreds had more power under the ancien regime, blacks expected but did not get an improvement in their conditions, and whites have not been able to adjust to their "disempowerment."

On the other hand, at least white rule, and the injustice and discrimination inherent in the ancien regime, passed into history. De Klerk shows how South Africa became a multi-racial democracy and believes that he, and not Mandela, was the primary actor in this turn of events. However, he refuses to take responsibility for the arrest, torture, or murder of more than 20,000 black South Africans. He claims that he cannot be guilty for covert actions "of which we [in the cabinet] were not informed."

De Klerk and Mandala are like Gorbachev and Yeltsin. The new Russia is unthinkable without either. However, as De Klerk's book shows, neither he nor Mandala controlled events. The "river of history was in full flood. It was sweeping us all along in its course." What De Klerk and Mandala did, for their respective racial groups, was to reach a great compromise.

De Klerk's book is brilliant in its elucidation, often in details, of the making of that compromise. We even learn that the De Klerk family concealed their biracial, that is, their white and Indian, genealogy.

Mandela was going to win. But F. W. De Klerk's autobiography is a winner in twentieth century autobiography.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredibly honest and informative, August 16, 1999

By	[e-mail] (Kansas, USA) - See all my reviews

Very seldom is such pure honesty displayed by a Statesman and politician. Mr De Klerk has not been affected by his high office or historic role in the creation of a New South Africa. I feel profoundly saddened by the way his opponents have treated him. History will judge the true heroes of diplomacy in South Africa and around the world. I only hope his message is not lost on a blinkered community who tends to judge leaders according to their popularity and not their commitment to change, whatever the personal cost.