[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 120 (Thursday, September 11, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1736-E1737]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    THE RETIREMENT OF SOUTH AFRICAN STATESMAN F.W. de KLERK AND THE 
      CRITICAL IMPORTANCE OF USIA'S INTERNATIONAL VISITOR PROGRAM

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 11, 1997

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, just yesterday, the South African National 
Party elected a successor to F.W. de Klerk, who has served for many 
years as the head of the party. Mr. de Klerk is the former President of 
South Africa. In 1990, he rejected his party's policy and his country's 
laws which established the vicious apartheid system, freed Nelson 
Mandela, and began negotiations which led to the generally peaceful 
transformation of South Africa from a racist society to one that is 
moving toward a pluralistic, multiethnic, open society. In 1993, Mr. de 
Klerk and Nelson Mandela were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize--an 
award that was an appropriate honor to Mr. de Klerk's statesmanship, 
foresight, and commitment to principle.
  Mr. Speaker, I pay tribute to Mr. de Klerk's role in the 
transformation of South Africa. He now retires from public life to have 
the time to chronicle the significant changes that he has both 
witnessed and helped to bring about. Mr. de Klerk gave his farewell 
address to the South African parliament on Tuesday, and I join his 
colleagues in the parliament in paying tribute to him.
  Commentators around the world have reacted to Mr. de Klerk's 
announcement by taking note of the key role he played in ending 
apartheid and moving his country toward democracy. I have no doubt that 
change eventually would have come to South Africa, even without Mr. de 
Klerk's efforts; justice cannot

[[Page E1737]]

be denied forever. There is general agreement, however, that without 
Mr. de Klerk the transition to democracy would have been a much longer, 
much more painful, and certainly a much bloodier process.
  It is exceedingly rare that a political leader helps dismantle the 
system within which he has risen to power. And yet that is exactly what 
F.W. de Klerk did. He grew up in the world of apartheid, and he was 
tremendously successful in that world. But in spite of all the 
connections linking him to the status quo, he came to the realization 
that apartheid had to end. For a man so steeped in the old system and 
its ways of thinking, that realization represented an extraordinary 
conceptual leap. And, I am proud to say, Mr. Speaker, that leap 
occurred at least in part because of experiences and insights gathered 
by Mr. de Klerk during a trip to the United States. What he saw here 
helped him envisage a new and better path for South Africa.
  Mr. de Klerk and his wife visited our country in 1976 thanks to the 
U.S. Information Agency's International Visitor Program. That program--
in place since 1940--gives carefully selected individuals from foreign 
countries a chance to come to the United States and confer with 
professional counterparts and experience firsthand our institutions and 
society. Participants in the program are up-and-coming figures in key 
fields such as government, politics, the media, and education. More 
than 130 of them--including Mr. de Klerk--have eventually achieved 
positions of chief of state or head of government, and some 600 have 
been named to cabinet-level jobs. Margaret Thatcher, Anwar Sadat, and 
Willy Brandt were all participants in the program before they rose to 
leadership positions. The same is true of the new Prime Minister of the 
United Kingdom, Tony Blair.

  In many cases, participants may think they already know our country 
based on the flood of images they have received from the mass media and 
popular culture. But in almost every instance, they discover that those 
images provide an incomplete or even distorted sense of who we are. The 
3- to 4-week tours of the United States provided by the International 
Visitor Program--a carefully structured blend of briefings, meetings, 
discussion sessions, and hands-on experience--give participants a much 
richer and more nuanced view of our Nation.
  This experience makes an indelible impression on most participants. 
That certainly was the case with Mr. de Klerk. In 1991--15 years after 
his trip--he stated:

       [My wife and I] toured the United States in 1976 on an 
     International Visitor Exchange Program. We saw the vibrant 
     magnificence of New York City, nature's artistry in the 
     majestic formations of the Grand Canyon in Arizona, the 
     cultural diversity of New Orleans, Louisiana; Miami, Florida; 
     the excitement of Las Vegas, Nevada; the serene beauty of San 
     Francisco, California; but most of all, we experienced the 
     vitality and warmth of the American people.

  The International Visitor Program not only affected Mr. de Klerk's 
view of the United States, it also had a profound impact on the way he 
regarded his own country and its future. A profile of Mr. de Klerk 
published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine of November 19, 1989, 
includes the following statement: ``As de Klerk tells it, a 1976 visit 
to the United States as a guest of the United States Information Agency 
convinced him that race relations could not be left to run their 
course.''
  Clearly, Mr. Speaker, that was a vitally important moment in the 
development of Mr. de Klerk's thinking--and we as Americans can be 
proud that we helped make it possible. It is no exaggeration to say 
that the insights that F.W. de Klerk achieved while visiting the United 
States as a participant in the International Visitor Program were an 
important factor in his decision to break with the past and help his 
nation in its movement toward justice and democracy.
  Mr. Speaker, it is significant that our country's exchange programs 
may be just as important a weapon in the fight to encourage democratic 
development as other more traditional diplomatic weapons that we use. 
The International Visitors Program may have been as important in 
bringing about the transformation of South Africa as the economic 
sanctions that were imposed by the Congress, over the veto and 
strenuous objections of then-President Ronald Reagan.
  I invite my colleagues in the Congress to join me in paying tribute 
to the former President of South Africa F.W. de Klerk, and at the same 
time also to join me in paying tribute to the critically important 
programs of the U.S. Information Agency which have also played a key 
role in influencing positively Mr. de Klerk's thinking about race 
relations, and thus affecting the course of history.

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