Former South African President De Klerk Hospitalized Former President F. W. de Klerk, who shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela for moving South Africa from apartheid to multiracial democracy, is to be hospitalized on Tuesday to have a pacemaker installed, his personal foundation announced. Mr. de Klerk, 77, returned from a trip to Europe on Saturday and the next day suffered the latest in a series of dizzy spells. “He has had several such spells in recent weeks, and his specialist recommended the immediate installation of a pacemaker,” the statement said. Mr. de Klerk was expected to enter a Cape Town hospital later Tuesday, undergo the operation and be released as early as Wednesday. “It is a routine procedure,” Dave Steward, the executive director of the F.W. de Klerk Foundation, told Agence France-Presse. “He will spend the night in hospital.” One of the reasons Mr. de Klerk returned from a working trip to Europe was to be closer to home while his former negotiating partner, Mr. Mandela, 94, was in critical condition with a lung infection in a hospital in the capital, Pretoria. Mr. de Klerk, as head of the former ruling National Party, ordered the release of Mr. Mandela from 27 years’ imprisonment and legalized the anti-apartheid African National Congress in 1990. He then embarked on several years of negotiations with the A.N.C. that resulted in Mr. Mandela’s election in 1994 as the country’s first black president. Mr. de Klerk served as deputy president under Mr. Mandela. Mr. de Klerk has had other health scares. In 2006, he had two cancerous nodes removed from his colon, quickly followed by his own bout with a serious lung infection.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Jul 2013 21:51:41 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015