Row over road named for apartheid president FW de Klerk
A Cape Town road has been named after FW de Klerk, the last president of South Africa's white-minority apartheid government, despite fierce opposition.
The proposal was adopted on Wednesday during a chaotic city council meeting, with councillors from South Africa's ruling African National Congress - virulently opposed to the motion - locked out of the venue, local media reported.
Cape Town is under the control of the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA).
South Africa's last white president, de Klerk ruled from 1989 until the country's first democratic elections in 1994. He was jointly awarded a Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela in 1993 for his part in dismantling apartheid.
The proposal to rename a section of the road - previously called Table Bay Boulevard - after the politician was put forward by a group of 27 signatories, including fellow Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu and DA leader Helen Zille.
But the move has been fiercely opposed by the left, including the ANC, the South African Communist Party (SACP), and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the union umbrella body.
"This move is an affront to the memory of all those who bravely fought and were brutally murdered and some even hanged by the apartheid regime," said the SACP in a statement earlier this month.
Cosatu called De Klerk "an accident of history" who was "forced to negotiate with the ANC to ensure that the big businesses did not lose what they stole in a bloody civil war".
The Cape Town mayor's office said the proposal had received "overwhelming support" from the public. De Klerk's foundation had previously said he was "honoured and touched" by the proposal.
