Photo: Did President FW De Klerk have his first wife, Marike, murdered?
[Another interesting story about FW De Klerk that I recall was the mysterious murder of his first wife. He was only married to 2 women. But his first wife, Marike, was his partner through most of his life and through all his political life. He divorced her after he had handed over South Africa to the Black Communists of the ANC. He then married Elita Georgiades, who had been the wife of a Greek shipping tycoon. Marike was a politically active woman and also an author. She was also quite a "racially aware" woman, you might say, and she had expressed various anti-White views, for example on the Coloureds. She published two books. She died in a very brutal murder. I recall at the time, that there was talk that she was intending, or busy working on a "tell all" type of book and that this is why she was murdered. There may be a basis to believe in this idea because even Wikipedia mentions that in one of her books, an entire chapter was censored by FW De Klerk. So I don't know what was in the censored chapter, and it would indeed be interesting to know if any of this info ever came out. But her murder was unexpectedly brutal and there are questions about it. Jan]
Here are some points of interest:-
FW De Klerk had two marriages before his death.
Marike Willemse was his ex-wife before he married Elita Georgiadis. Klerk and Elita were together for more than four decades.
His ex-wife was South Africa’s first lady, and a well-known female politician served as a governor for the National Party.
According to her Wikipedia biography, Marike was assassinated on December 3, 2001, at her Dolphin Beach residence in Blouberg, Cape Town.
Before Marike’s death, De Klerk and Marike are separated. In 1996, they filed for divorce and were officially separated.
In 1999, shortly after his divorce, he married his present wife, Elita Georgiadis, who is now a widow.
Source: https://www.wiki.ng/en/wiki/who-is-fw-de-klerk-wife-elita-georgiades-everything-we-know-719548
In this excerpt from wikipedia, it is clear that Marike was a hardcore woman who stood her ground. She does not seem in any way, to have been a Liberal:-
During her husband’s presidency, Marike was the leader of the National Party’s women’s wing.[8] She also founded the Women’s Outreach Foundation (WOF), an organisation that focused on the upliftment of rural women.[9] In 1990 de Klerk called for women to play a more active role in the political process.[9] In 1993, she was awarded the Woman for Peace Award in Geneva, Switzerland for promoting the well being and development of rural women.
In 1994, de Klerk and her entourage travelled to the United States for a tour of new educational projects in Los Angeles designed to interest African-Americans in science.[10]
The WOF was frequently in the news in the 1990s for criticising corruption among ANC leaders. The war of words between the ruling party and the former first lady escalated when the party dismissed her as "a bitter person unable to come to terms with the fact that she is an ex-first lady of this country."[1]
In 1998, de Klerk published her autobiography, A Journey Through Summer and Winter,[11] in which she explored her marriage of 39 years with FW de Klerk. The book later earned some notoriety after it emerged that FW had censored a chapter that deals with her heartbreak after discovering her husband’s affair with Elita Georgiades.[12][13] Later de Klerk published A Place Where the Sun Shines Again where she offered guidance to women facing divorce later in life.
This is the wikipedia description of her murder:
Murder
On 3 December 2001, de Klerk was murdered at her Dolphin Beach apartment in Blouberg, Cape Town. It was originally reported that the former first lady had taken her own life.[14]
Her killer, 21-year-old Luyanda Mboniswa, worked as a security guard in the luxury secure complex where de Klerk was living. Mboniswa violently gripped de Klerk’s neck, breaking several bones in her throat and causing a blood vessel to burst in her eye. A steak knife was found embedded in her back and she also suffered several wounds to the head.[1] Mboniswa was acquitted of a rape charge but a pathologist was not able to rule out penetration.[15]
Her ex-husband had, at the time of the discovery of her body, been in Stockholm for a celebration on the centennial of the Nobel Peace Prize, and quickly returned to South Africa to issue a statement saying "I have learned with great shock and sorrow of the circumstances of the tragic death of my former wife Marike." Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, by then divorced from her husband Nelson, made a speech at the former First Lady’s funeral in Pretoria, saying; "As a woman, I identify with the exhaustion of her emotional resources in helping to shape her husband’s career."[16][17] She had chosen to attend de Klerk’s funeral rather than the funeral of ANC stalwart Joe Modise.[citation needed]
De Klerk bequeathed her R2 million estate and properties to her children.[18]
Luyanda Mboniswa was convicted of de Klerk’s murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.[19]