As politicians go into overdrive in the last week of campaigning for South Africa's second multi-racial elections, the man who released President Mandela from jail and negotiated the end of apartheid is lying low.
South Africa's last white president, Mr F.W. de Klerk, is in Britain promoting his autobiography while the party he used to lead is battling to remain the country's official opposition.
The New National Party (NNP), born out of the National Party which imposed four decades of racial segregation until Mr De Klerk negotiated the party out of power, has seen support slump since the Nobel Peace Prize winner stepped down as leader in 1997.
Opinion polls forecast that the NNP will win less than 10 per cent of the vote on June 2nd, down from the 20 per cent it polled in the historic 1994 election and could lose its role as official opposition to the liberal Democratic Party.
The NNP is even struggling to hold on to its last provincial stronghold - the Western Cape - where it is level-pegging with the African National Congress (ANC) after a series of defections by high-profile members.
Mr De Klerk features in one of the NNP's radio commercials, saying he will vote for the party because of the "dynamic" leadership of his far less charismatic successor, Mr Marthinus van Schal kwyk, and urges voters to back his old party in a newspaper advert.
"For me, F.W. de Klerk, there is only one party in the coming elections - the New National Party under the leadership of Marthinus van Schalkwyk; the New National Party which dismantled apartheid and will now offer everyone a political home," he wrote.
Mr van Schalkwyk (39) dubbed kortbroek or short pants by the media, last year re-launched his party in an attempt to break with its apartheid past and says the NNP is now the most racially representative group in the country.
While President Mandela still draws the crowds for his ruling ANC even though he is retiring after the election, Mr De Klerk is keeping a low profile in an attempt to leave the limelight to Mr van Schalkwyk.
"I don't think he wants to play a role where he will upstage anybody. He has said he supports the National Party, but he regards himself as a retired politician," Mr De Klerk's spokesman, Mr Dave Steward, said.
The NNP media director, Ms Juli Kilian, said Mr De Klerk was still a useful fund-raiser for the party, with golf days his speciality, but Mr Stewart said Mr De Klerk had no plans for other electioneering when he returned to South Africa in time to vote next week in his home province of the Western Cape.
Mr De Klerk, president from 1989 until he handed over to Mr Mandela after the first democratic elections of 1994, has been spending the past few months promoting his autobiography, The Last Trek - A New Beginning.
The 63-year-old is also setting up a charitable foundation to promote national reconciliation and multi-party democracy.
"He wants to continue to play an active role but more as an elder statesman than a party politician," Mr Steward said.
Mr De Klerk, who won the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Mr Mandela in 1993, has cautioned against the ANC's goal of winning a two-thirds majority in next week's election, saying his party, which ruled from 1948 to 1994, made its biggest mistakes when it was strongest.
The ANC is expected to win the election with more than 60 per cent of the vote and instal the party's president, Mr Thabo Mbeki, as Mr Mandela's successor on June 16th.
AFP reports:
Special voting in South Africa's general election got under way yesterday for the infirm, members of the security forces and government officials who will be abroad on election day. Independent Electoral Commission officials said 14,695 polling stations had opened yesterday for the limited voting. According to the IEC those allowed to vote include electoral officers, diplomats, the handicapped, pregnant women, the elderly, others who cannot move around freely or people who will be absent from South Africa on June 2nd "out of necessity".