By ALEX DUVAL SMITH
JOHANNESBURG - Marike de Klerk, the last of South Africa's white first ladies, has been strangled in her Cape Town flat in a grisly murder which investigators say was probably committed by someone known to her.
The investigators hunting her killer said there were no signs of
forced entry nor of theft.
The 64-year-old ex-wife of former President F. W. de Klerk was strangled to death with bare hands.
She was found dead, slumped back with her legs folded under her, outside the bedroom of her luxury second-floor flat, on a peninsula facing Table Mountain.
Police at first did not correct an assumption that Marike de Klerk, who frequently said she was depressed, had killed herself. But yesterday they said she had been attacked.
The former President said from Sweden that he was "devastated and deeply shocked", and was in touch with the couple's three children.
De Klerk, who was a joint Nobel laureate in 1993 with Nelson Mandela, had been due to attend a ceremony marking 100 years of the peace prize. He said he would immediately return to South Africa.
In South Africa, black leaders issued tributes to the conservative former first lady, who is known to have strongly opposed majority rule. But rather than affection, their comments betrayed pity for the tragedy of her unhappy last few years.
President Thabo Mbeki said Marike de Klerk, who was married to F. W. de Klerk for 39 years until 1998, was "strong, charming and dignified". Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who lost her husband at the end of apartheid, said she identified with de Klerk.
"She died lonely. As a woman, I can identify with the exhaustion of her emotional resources in shaping her former husband's career. He attained his dream and she became expendable."
Marike de Klerk had, in a number of television interviews, begged her husband to return. F. W. de Klerk left her on Valentine's Day 1998 to live with Elita Georgiades, the wife of a Greek shipping magnate.
Professor Deon Knobel, who led the autopsy, said: "The killer gripped her neck with such force that a small blood vessel burst in her eye. Several small bones in her throat were also broken."
Knobel found the blade of a serrated steak knife embedded in her back but said it had not perforated any organs and did not cause her death.
- INDEPENDENT
De Klerk's ex-wife strangled in home
By ALEX DUVAL SMITH
JOHANNESBURG - Marike de Klerk, the last of South Africa's white first ladies, has been strangled in her Cape Town flat in a grisly murder which investigators say was probably committed by someone known to her.
The investigators hunting her killer said there were no signs of
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