An Afrikaner woman who has come of age, Annelize van Wyk, is the epitome of what those who benefited from apartheid should strive to become.
"It surely required great courage, honesty and personal integrity for Annelize to allow us to speak openly about her past and for herself to wrestle with the demons of her past, so that she can live at peace with the present," said President Mbeki in Parliament on Wednesday. Mbeki was responding to the debate on his state-of-the-nation address.
Van Wyk, an MP, joined the United Democratic Movement from the New National Party, before joining the ANC last year.
When she responded to Mbeki's speech this week, she said she had confronted her past, got to terms with it and then decided to work on building a better South Africa by joining the ANC.
She told parliament that "there are those for whom referring to the past is very unpopular. They would rather ignore it and would prefer to act as if South Africa has no past. I have dealt with my own past," she told Parliamentarians.
In highlighting her heroic effort, Mbeki said many of those who propped up apartheid needed to learn from her.
With her permission, Mbeki told MPs that Van Wyk, the daughter of a former Correctional Services official who became an apartheid general, was born, in a manner of speaking, into apartheid.
Her father drove the vehicle which transported Nelson Mandela from Pretoria to Cape Town, on his way to his incarceration on Robben Island. She joined the NP at the height of repression.
"By any standard, especially in the context of present day South Africa, this is not a comfortable past, intimately linked as it is to the apartheid security services and the NP during its days as the party of apartheid," said Mbeki.
"I know, and many of us know, that there are others in our country who have failed to show the courage and honesty of an Annelize van Wyk. These are the people she said find reference to their past unacceptable, who prefer to act as if South Africa has no past," Mbeki intoned.
The president publicly conveyed his "deepest respect" to her and said he appreciated her for the example she had set.
"Annelize van Wyk asked the questions - who are you and what are you going to do? Martin Creamer (editor of Engineering News) has responded in part by saying that we should cultivate a 'common consciousness of past pains'."
Mbeki's focus on Van Wyk was a clear appeal to beneficiaries of apartheid to confront their past, get to terms with it and look ahead to the future.