BY LIBUSHA KELLY

F. W. de Klerk, former president of South Africa and Nobel Peace Prize winner, spoke about the past and future of South Africa to a packed Kresge Auditorium Jan. 29. Amid student protests of his human rights record, he told a somewhat skeptical crowd, "I abolished apartheid."

While de Klerk said that the solution for a troubled country is not found in debate about the past, but in looking toward the future, he discussed portions of South Africa's political and social transition.

Beginning in 1978, de Klerk held a variety of ministerial posts in the apartheid government. He served as president of South Africa from 1989 to 1994, when the first democratic elections were held. For his efforts toward the "peaceful termination of the apartheid regime," de Klerk was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Nelson Mandela in 1993.

The transition to a democratic country was not an overnight process, de Klerk said. It took years for the apartheid government to come to the conclusion that the situation in South Africa was "morally indefensible."

De Klerk said that through the early 1980s, South Africa was focused on a course to break the country into separate states for separate ethnic and cultural groups, but interdependence made this impossible. "It is difficult to take an omelet apart," he said.

South Africa needed to endorse a new vision in substitution of separate development, de Klerk said, with the goal being a united country. But this paradigm shift was not going to be easy. "Knowing you are on the wrong course and being willing to change that course are two different things," he said.

De Klerk discussed the basic principles he called relevant to the solution of all conflicts. These include willingness on the part of all parties to pursue settlement, and to accept each other's reasonable core interests, the existence of a balance of power and minimal trust.

It was in the late 1980s, he said, that all these principles converged in South Africa and enabled serious negotiations between representatives of the then-outlawed African National Congress and the ruling National Party, the architects of the apartheid system. There were major compromises and concessions made on the part of both groups. "If there is a victor and a vanquished, it sows the seed for new conflict," de Klerk said.

De Klerk discussed the importance of his relationship with former political prisoner and president Mandela in this process, and said that upon their first meeting, although they had "sharp and bitter differences . . . both of us concluded we could do business with one another."

A number of student groups expressed their displeasure with de Klerk's human rights record in South Africa by sponsoring a teach-in, fliers and an organized silent protest at the conclusion of his talk. Between 30 and 50 students stood and turned their backs on de Klerk as the rest of the audience applauded.

Education graduate student Bidemi Carrol, acting president of the Stanford African Students Association, said the protest was a way to raise the issue of de Klerk's legacy with the larger Stanford community. "This is very personal in a lot of ways," Carrol said. "We all grew up understanding what was going on in South Africa."

Questioned by students about policies and government-sponsored violence that occurred during his party's 46-year rule in South Africa, de Klerk insisted he was being made a "scapegoat" for violence that he was not a party to. "I was not part of a policy which said murder and assassination was OK," he said.

In response to de Klerk's statement taking credit for ending apartheid, one audience member noted that student protests had played a major role in bringing about political change in South Africa.

De Klerk said he believes that the future of South Africa depends on foreign and domestic investment. "We have not achieved the levels of economic growth that we desperately need," he said, but expressed confidence that continued stability would convince outside investors to give South Africa a chance.

He cited AIDS, crime and corruption as other serious problems plaguing the country, and also discussed racial tensions in the mixed society. "Black and white South Africans need to realize that we can easily fall back into a pattern of looking at each other across a divide," he said.