Johannesburg - The FW de Klerk Foundation on Thursday welcomed the decision to have Table Bay Boulevard in Cape Town named after the former president.
“This is not an honour that Mr De Klerk sought and he is not at all sure that places and streets should be renamed after living people,” executive director Dave Steward said in a statement.
“However, he has decided to accept the honour in the spirit in which it was offered.”
Steward said recognition should be given to the fact that the country's “new non-racial constitutional democracy” was not only created by the African National Congress and that other parties had also contributed towards it.
“Mr De Klerk regrets that this matter has been turned into a political controversy by the ANC in the Western Cape,” he said.
“Mr De Klerk - and other parties - in a spirit of reconciliation - has never objected to the far more numerous cases where places and streets have been renamed after ANC figures.”
Steward said the ANC's attitude was an indication of the degree to which it had deviated from former president Nelson Mandela's example in promoting reconciliation.
“In his message to FW de Klerk on his 70th birthday, Mr Mandela gave generous recognition to the indispensable role that he had played in helping to create our new society.”
The City had also received “widespread support” on the proposed renaming.
“Eighty-five percent of respondents to a recent poll were in favour of the honour,” said Steward.
After much debate on the proposed renaming of Table Bay Boulevard, the office of the city's mayor Patricia de Lille earlier this month week said it would change it to FW de Klerk Boulevard.
De Klerk, 79, was president from September 1989 to May 1994. He was the last head of state of South Africa under the apartheid era. In 1993, he won the Nobel Peace Prize along with struggle icon Nelson Mandela for their role in ending apartheid.
Sapa