But the driving forces for change were internal and were accelerated in 1986 when Afrikaner hardliners broke away into a new party rather than accept modest concessions to the black majority that de Klerk’s National Party was considering. In the last all-white election in 1987, he developed an action program that would eventually lead to the cataclysmic changes represented by Mandela’s release and the simultaneous dismantling of apartheid and the nuclear arsenal. “We were liberated to become a reform party when the right became the ultra right,” de Klerk said.

The differences and distances between the United States and South Africa are enormous. But I could not help but hear an echo of what could happen here as the Tea Party and other ideologues seek to pull mainstream Republicans to the far right. F.W. de Klerk’s experience suggests that such swings open the space for enlightened moderation to spring to life and ultimately prevail.