News of the death of Mr F W de Klerk, the last white South African president, will have triggered memories of all sorts for those old enough to remember.

A son of the conservative establishment, which created and nurtured the racist, fascist system of Apartheid, Mr de Klerk evolved to partner with the late, legendary Mr Nelson Mandela in dismantling that evil system and igniting democracy in South Africa.

Younger Jamaicans should appreciate that Apartheid wasn’t just about racial separation and discrimination as it is often mistaken to mean.

It was, in fact, a system of laws which elevated whites above and separate from all other races — who were also separated — with blacks at the bottom, as menial workers and labourers, ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’.

South African whites were comforted by religious affirmation of Apartheid. The largest white establishment church in South Africa, the Dutch Reformed Church, provided ideological sanction for racial segregation. That view upheld whites as the dominant race as part of a natural order.

Under Apartheid, whites who were a small minority relative to the black and coloured population, owned the bulk of arable land. Blacks were officially relegated to so-called homelands, though the need for cheap labour meant they were facilitated in shanty towns close to major cities and industrial centres.

Blacks were not allowed to vote in South African parliamentary elections.

The system enforced separate schools for the various races with the best education reserved for whites. Mixed-race marriages or sexual relations involving people of different races weren’t just taboo. Such an offence was a crime, punishable by jail sentences that could last years.

To move about in their native land, black South Africans needed to show special passes.

Under Apartheid, which was formalised and expanded in 1949, the South African police had unfettered power and committed wide-ranging abuse, including mass murder, against the black majority.

As far back as 1956, while still a British colony, Jamaica, under the leadership of Mr Norman Manley, led the way in shunning Apartheid South Africa, becoming only the second country behind India to break trade and travel links.

In time, South Africa was increasingly isolated with economic and other sanctions mandated by the UN. Even traditionally friendly Western powers, including the US, distanced themselves.

By the 1970s and 80s, the increasingly activist role of the African National Congress (ANC) — politically and militarily — buttressed by the sweeping liberation movement across southern Africa, was creating an even greater problem.

It was against that backdrop that the pragmatic Mr de Klerk flew in the face of everything he had represented to stun the world by rejecting Apartheid.

Mr Mandela — who had been in prison for 27 years on trumped-up, politically-motivated charges — was set free in February 1990 to join in the transition process. That culminated in Mr Mandela and the ANC being elected to power in 1994 — the first-ever democratic national election in South Africa — and the sidelining of Mr de Klerk’s Nationalist Party.

Mr de Klerk’s actions were undoubtedly motivated more by realism than anything else. But to the extent that he had the wherewithal and courage to turn against his own socialisation and conditioning, to reject racist, fascist ideology and embrace democracy, redounds to his eternal credit.