Obituary: Frederik van Zyl Slabbert

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 intelligent, charismatic and politically incorrect Frederik van Zyl Slabbert are reminders 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 assembly in 1974 as an MP for the liberal Progressive Party (PP) in a Cape Town constituency, 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 because 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 resolution 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 parliament 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 – technically an act of treason under apartheid law – infuriated Botha, who went apoplectic 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 founded 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 together 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 marriage.