Hello and thank you for downloading the Witness Podcast from the BBC World Service, history told

by the people who were there.

Today I'm taking you back to February 1990 when the South African President

F. W. de clerk announced the beginning of the end of apartheid, a system

of institutionalized racial segregation in which black South Africans were denied basic

human rights, including the right to vote.

I've been talking to Adrian Flock, who was

F. W. declerk's law and order minister, about that day

and about coming to terms with the crimes committed in apartheid's name. On the 2nd of February 1990, President F. W. de clerk stood up at the opening of Parliament and delivered

a speech that shook the world.

In 30 minutes transforming South Africa after 40 years of white minority rule.

The prohibition of the African National Congress, the Pan-Africanist Congress, the South African Communist Party and a number of subsidiary organizations is being rescinded.

In the chamber applause mingled with booze from the far right watching on television in the

Cape Town deanery Archbishop Desmond Tutu was thrilled by the news.

People serving prison sentences merely

President the clerk announced the release of political prisoners too.

Freedom for those in jail merely for membership of banned organizations,

but not those convicted of crimes of violence.

The media emergency regulations are being abolished.

Listening to President de Clerke in the Parliament chamber that day was his Minister for

Law and Order, Adrian Flock.

I didn't know exactly what he was going to announce, but I know there was an announcement

...