THE NATIONAL Party, which yesterday left South Africa's national unity government, will be remembered as the party that invented apartheid, dismantled it land then negotiated itself out of power.
But for the country's black majority, the NP will be remembered for the segregationist policies it instituted when it came to government on a whites first ticket in 1948.
The policy evolved into the system known as grand apartheid, under which 10 tribal "homelands" were created as dumping grounds for surplus labour. Party leaders skilfully managed to deprive blacks of South African citizenship, instead giving them dubious rights within the impoverished tribal homelands.
It resorted increasingly to autocratic measures to maintain power, outlawing, in 1960, black liberation movements such as Nelson Mandela's African National Congress (ANC) and the Communist Party.
In February 1990, De Klerk lifted these bans, freed Mandela and began constitutional negotiations which led to his being voted out of power in historic all race elections in April 1994.
Some blacks give De Klerk credit for making these reforms willingly. But most believe the ANC's 30 year guerrilla war against the white minority government, civil disobedience and mass defiance campaigns, plus economic and other sanctions imposed by the world community, defeated apartheid.
Victims of the segregationist system are lining up before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to tell of torture, assaults, deaths and humiliation.
Memories of years of oppression, linked with the NP's attempts to cling to power during the four year negotiating period that led to the 1994 poll undermined attempts by De Klerk and his colleagues, to impress the black community.
In the election that brought Mandela and his ANC to power, the NP came in second with 20.4 per cent of the vote. A poll analysis showed the party's attempts to win support in black communities failed, although it gained significant support in the mixed race community.
De Klerk settled uncomfortably into his role as deputy to Mandela, complaining that it was difficult to be part of a government while criticising it.
"The NP has suffered while in the government of national unity," he said in February.