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World Service,02 Feb 2017,9 mins

The End of Apartheid

Witness History

Available for over a year

On February 2nd 1990, the South African president FW de Klerk surprised the world by announcing in parliament that he was dismantling apartheid - the system of institutionalised racial segregation which had denied black South Africans their basic rights for forty years, including the right to vote. Louise Hidalgo has been talking to Adriaan Vlok, FW de Klerk's law and order minister, about that day and about coming to terms with the crimes committed in apartheid's name. Picture: Anti-apartheid protestors demonstrate in Cape Town on the same day that President de Klerk announced the lifting of the ban on the ANC and the release of all political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela (Credit: RASHID LOMBARD/AFP/Getty Images)

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