We are right to credit FW de Klerk with having the guts to do what he did on 2 February 1990, reading the writing on the wall and also helping avert a racial conflagration. The tragedy is that he has never been able to face the fact that apartheid was fundamentally evil. In this context, his apologies ring hollow.

Like millions of South Africans, I wanted to watch President Ramaphosa give his State of the Nation Address.

I wondered how my sister, Thandi Modise, Speaker of the House of Assembly, would handle Julius Malema's threats to disrupt SONA.

Malema's first point of order, calling for the removal of FW de Klerk, took me by surprise.

I consider the anti-democratic behaviour of the EFF at SONA totally unacceptable and actually reprehensible.

Nevertheless, I have to admit that emotionally, part of me was pleased to hear FW called out.

De Klerk's recent denialism of apartheid as a crime against humanity has understandably inflamed passions across the country, including my own. His assertion that most of the death and dying was caused by black people against other black people is also totally disingenuous. It seeks to shift the culpability and responsibility away from...