Jonathan wrong on de Klerk’s divorce

President Goodluck Jonathan was wrong on his last Sunday’s claim that the Marike, wife of Former South African President FW de Klerk divorced him because he ended apartheid.

He made the claim during the Thanksgiving service in his honour at the Anglican Church in Abuja.

Jonathan said he hoped his wife, Patience will not divorce him for conceding defeat in the presidential election to General Mohammadu Buhari.

However, according to Wikipedia Marike in 1998 after 38 years of marriage divorced Klerk following the discovery of his affair with Elita Georgiades, then the wife of Tony Georgiades, a Greek shipping tycoon who had allegedly given de Klerk and the NP financial support.

“Soon after his divorce, de Klerk and Georgiades were married. His divorce and remarriage scandalised conservative South African opinion, especially among the Calvinist Afrikaners. In 1999, his autobiography, The Last Trek – A New Beginning, was published. De Klerk successfully had a chapter from Marike’s biography, A Place Where the Sun Shines Again, dealing with his infidelity.

Marike’s obituary in Telegraph of Dec 6 2001 after her murder is reproduced below:

MARIKE DE KLERK, who has been murdered aged 64, was the dignified and influential former wife of F W de Klerk, South Africa’s last white president who shrugged off deep-seated Afrikaner tenets and initiated the transition to black majority rule in 1994.

For most of her life, Marike de Klerk fulfilled the role of a dedicated wife to a man of destiny, helping him through a volatile political career as enlightened Afrikaners began to question the philosophy of apartheid, and eventually standing by his side as he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela.

Within a short few years, Marike de Klerk’s life was in ruins: her husband left her for another woman; then she became engaged to a younger man who turned out to be a bankrupt – he suffered a nervous breakdown days before they were due to be married and subsequently disappeared.

Marike Willemse was born in Pretoria in 1937 into what was considered a privileged Afrikaner home. Her father, Wilhelm Willemse, was a distinguished academic and writer. As Professor of Social Pathology and Psychology at Pretoria University, he ensured that his children were raised in a “verligte” (enlightened) atmosphere and imbued with the spirit to respect and help others.

Marike’s own academic star never shone too brightly and she was studying for a degree in Commerce at the University of Potchefstroom when she met and fell in love with a young law student, Frederik de Klerk.

The student romance developed into a young marriage which she later described as “seeming to have been made in heaven”. De Klerk was the scion of a long line of Afrikaner politicians. His brother, Willem, was to become a brave, liberal newspaper editor who helped to form what is now the Democratic Party.

Frederik de Klerk, while considering himself “enlightened”, did not at first share his brother’s liberal leanings. He set up a law practice while working his way through the ranks of the then all-powerful National Party (NP). Marike supported his political ambitions believing, as she later wrote, that he had the capabilities to change the apartheid structure from within.

In his early days as an MP, a junior minister and then cabinet minister in the governments of John Vorster and P W Botha, F W de Klerk showed few signs of reformist zeal. If anything, he was regarded as a hardline right-winger.

Marike de Klerk remained loyal and loving, although her compassion had led her into supporting social work among South Africa’s black women whose plight, culturally rather than politically, horrified her. When F W de Klerk became South Africa’s state president in 1989, he appeared to move his government swiftly to the reformist centre, a switch which many close friends attributed in some measure to the influence of his wife.

In his first major speech, he startled his critics by calling for a non-racial South Africa and negotiations on the country’s future. In 1990, he lifted the ban on the African National Congress and other previously banned political organisations, and released Nelson Mandela.

Marike de Klerk expressed her “pride and joy” at being married to the man who had brought an end to apartheid and opened the way for a democratic nation based on a constitution which respected all human rights. She revelled in the world acclaim the peaceful transition brought to her husband and shared the country’s adulation of Nelson Mandela as South Africa’s first black leader