FW de Klerk's loathsome history is not unknown.
That he enjoyed public acclamation post apartheid is due largely to Nelson Mandela's acceptance of him as deputy president in the government of national unity, although Mandela also noted that De Klerk had blood on his hands.
This related to the killing of liberation movements' cadres by apartheid forces under De Klerk, both as president and previously as Minister of the Interior.
One of the most notorious of these, authorised by De Klerk, claimed the lives of five children in 1993 in what came to be known as the Mthatha Raid, the SANDF claiming all had brandished weapons, weapons which were never produced. Another was the murder of the Cradock Four.
De Klerk did not help his cause in later years by repeatedly trying to whitewash apartheid. He also never applied for, and was therefore never granted, amnesty for the Mthatha massacre or any of the many other atrocities committed under his watch.
It is perfectly understandable then that his posthumous apology is difficult for many to swallow.
In life he had had the time and opportunity to admit to the wrongs of the apartheid system, to condemn it unequivocally and thereby change the mindsets of the remaining racists in the country.
He did not do so, choosing instead to bask in the glory of the Nobel Peace Prize, which many would argue he did not deserve, and feeling that it exonerated him from his past. As Mandela remarked, he was rewarded for correcting his own mistakes.
Far from being a willing participant, De Klerk was forced, by pressure being brought to bear locally and abroad, into the negotiations and into taking the decisions which led to apartheid being dismantled.
His apology is therefore too little, too late for those to whom it would have meant most.
Nevertheless, as Africans we subscribe to the principle of ubuntu, which demands that we do not rejoice in his death.
So by all means don't mourn his death, but don't celebrate it either.
The Independent on Saturday