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F. W. de Klerk

President of South Africa from 1989 to 1994

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 21, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Frederik Willem de Klerk was a South African politician who served as the final state president of South Africa from 1989 to 1994 and as deputy president from 1994 to 1996. As South Africa's last head of state from the era of white-minority rule, he and his government dismantled the apartheid system and introduced universal suffrage. Ideologically a social conservative and an economic liberal, he led the National Party (NP) from 1989 to 1997.

Editorial summary

“F. W. de Klerk” enters the record as president of South Africa from 1989 to 1994. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Klerk, President and South can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1989, 1994, 1996, 1997—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Klerk, President and South.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“F. W. de Klerk” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Klerk, President and South provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1989, 1994, 1996 and 1997.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “F. W. de Klerk”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow F. W. de Klerk primary sources, F. W. de Klerk archive and Klerk research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “F. W. de Klerk”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “F. W. de Klerk” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.