Roelf Meyer

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Roelf Meyer (born July 16, 1947 in Port Elizabeth ; actually Roelof Petrus Meyer ) is a former South African politician, businessman and political advisor. He was instrumental in the negotiations for the abolition of apartheid for the then government .

Life

Roelf Meyer's parents were the farmer Hudson Meyer and his wife Hannah. He attended primary school in Kareedouw , after his family moved to a secondary school in Ficksburg and studied law at the Universiteit van die Oranje-Vrystaat , among other things . In 1968 he earned a Bachelor of Commerce and in 1971 a Bachelor of Law. During this time he was president of the conservative Afrikaanse Studentebond. He did his military service in the choir of the South African Navy . He then worked as a lawyer in Pretoria and Johannesburg until 1980 .

In 1979 Meyer was elected to the National Assembly for the ruling National Party (NP) in the Johannesburg West constituency. There he was one of the lost, so more reform-minded MPs of the NP. In 1986, President Pieter Willem Botha appointed him Deputy Minister of Law and Order (about: "Minister for Law and Order"). In 1988 he became Deputy Minister of Constitutional Development (about "Minister for Constitutional Development ") - he held this post until 1991, when he was appointed Minister of Defense by President Frederik Willem de Klerk . In this office he succeeded Magnus Malan . Meyer resigned in May 1992 after the generals revolted against him. He was appointed Minister for Constitutional Affairs and of Communication by de Klerk and in 1993 was the government negotiator at the Multiparty Negotiations Forum, which had replaced the CODESA body . The aim was to lead South Africa to free elections. During this time he developed friendly relations with the negotiator of the previously banned African National Congress (ANC), Cyril Ramaphosa . At the same time, he worked closely with Niel Barnard of the then National Intelligence Service , another proponent of free elections.

Meyer was next to Pravin Gordhan the highest representative in the Transitional Executive Council (TEC, German about " Transitional Executive Council "). After the first free election in 1994 , Meyer was appointed Minister of Provincial Affairs and Constitutional Development by Nelson Mandela in his cabinet . Here he worked again with Ramaphosa, the chairman of the Constitutional Assembly (about: "Constituent Assembly") was. In 1996 Meyer resigned to become Secretary General of the NP. Soon afterwards, the NP left the government. Meyer did not succeed in getting the NP on a course that would guarantee cooperation with the ANC government, against the resistance of conservative circles around Hernus Kriel .

In 1997 Meyer left the NP and had to give up his mandate as a result. He founded the same year with Bantu Holomisa the party United Democratic Movement (UDM), which in the 1999 elections won 14 of the 400 mandates. Meyer was again a member of parliament and deputy president of the UDM. In 2000 Meyer temporarily left politics, in 2006 he joined the ANC.

From 2001 Meyer worked as a businessman for Tilca Infrastructure and on the board of ARMSCOR . He has also worked as a consultant on peace efforts, including in Northern Ireland , Sri Lanka , Rwanda , Bahrain , the Basque Country and Kosovo .

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j portrait at sahistory.org.za (English), accessed on February 10, 2015
  2. ↑ a b c Biography at issafrica.org ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (English, PDF), accessed on February 8, 2015
  3. ↑ Shelag Gastrow: Who's Who in South African Politics. Number 5 . Johannesburg 1995, p. 185
  4. ^ De Wet, Potgieter: Total onslaught: Apartheid's dirty tricks exposed. Zebra Press, Cape Town 2007, ISBN 978-1770073289 , p. 286. Digitized
  5. ^ Meyer's biography at history.de ( Memento from July 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on February 8, 2015
  6. ↑ Shelagh Gastrow: Who's Who in South African Politics, Number 5 . Ravan Press, Johannesburg 1995, p. 259
  7. ↑ Announcement on the honor on the website of the President's Office (English), accessed on August 22, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Meyer, Roelf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Roelof Petrus Meyer (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African politician, businessman and consultant
DATE OF BIRTH July 16, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Port Elizabeth