Frederick van Zyl Slabbert: an Afrikaner African

Abstract

Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert's defiance of apartheid hegemony characterised his life, starting at university, persisting through his stint in parliamentary politics, and driving and defining his work in establishing the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa with his close friend Alex Boraine. Van Zyl Slabbert challenged the orthodoxies of his time, whether these concerned the dispossession of black South Africans, the inability of Afrikaners to work with white English-speaking South Africans, or the unwillingness of Afrikaners and whites in general to embrace the full humanity, dignity and equality of black South Africans. Van Zyl Slabbert grew up in what is now Polokwane (formerly Pietersburg) in the Limpopo province. At the age of seven, he and his twin sister Marcia were removed from a broken family and an alcoholic mother to be brought up by relatives. Despite this, they both excelled at school, with Van Zyl Slabbert becoming head boy of Pietersburg High School and captain of the first rugby and cricket teams. He matriculated from the Pietersburg Afrikaans High School in 1958.