THE former South African president, Mr F.W. de Klerk, attempted to recapture moral high ground from the African National Congress in his testimony to the Truth Commission yesterday.

Mr De Klerk, who is now the leader of the opposition, made his apology yet for apartheid, the policy which his National Party imposed on South Africa for more than four decades.

60 year old Afrikaner leader captured world headlines as a bold reformer in 1990 when, to the astonishment of many South Africans and even members of the NP's parliamentary caucus, he revoked the decree outlawing black nationalist movements, released the ANC leader Nelson Mandela and invited his political enemies to negotiate a peace settlement.

From that moment, Mr De Klerk was under constant pressure to apologise for apartheid. He moved slowly in that direction, admitting first that it was "unworkable", then that it had been a "mistake" and finally that he was repentant about it.

Yesterday he re emphasised his regret for the "immeasurable pain and suffering" which the NP's racial policies had inflicted. A sophisticated politician who has mastered the skills of oratory - for a relatively small man he has a powerful, well projected voice - Mr De Klerk said: "I .. . have already publicly apologised for the pain and suffering caused by the former policies of the National Party." I reiterate those apologies today.

Noting that those apologies had already been publicly acknowledged by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the chairman of the Truth Commission, he added: "The National Party is prepared to admit its many mistakes of the past and is genuinely repentant .. . We have gone on our knees before God Almighty to pray for His forgiveness."

Contrition over policies which the NP once espoused as South Africa's salvation came after political, economic and demographic pressure forced the NP to accept universal adult suffrage, a political system destined to marginalise the NP unless it can garner support outside the minority community.

The NP did surprisingly well in the 1994 non racial election, winning just over 20 per cent of the vote and capturing control of the Western Cape provincial government. Its success was due in large measure to the backing it received from the largely Afrikaans speaking "Coloured" community.

To fulfil its declared goal of winning power in 2004, the NP musty I win support in the black community. While there was undoubtedly a genuine element of remorse in the NP's deposition, political calculations were not absent.

Another consideration for Mr De Klerk was the pending testimony toe Archbishop Tutu's commission of the ANC today and its anticipated presentation of its guerrilla war against white rule as a "just war" and its predicted portrayal of apartheid as a "crime against humanity".

The Truth Commission was conceived as a process to facilitated national reconciliation but, in many respects, it soon became another terrain of the struggle, in which the different adversaries seek to gain ascendancy in an undeclared propaganda war.

MR De Klerk's moving apology for apartheid was not unqualified: he denied responsibility for the assassination and torture of "enemies of the state" by undercover agents.

"In dealing with the unconventional strategies from the side of the government, I want to make it clear from the outset that, within my knowledge and experience, they never included the authorisation of assassination, murder, torture, rape, assault and the like," he said.

The scion of an Afrikaner family of political notables - his father was leader of the Senate during the period Henrik Verwoerd, the high priest of apartheid, was in power - Mr De Klerk was careful to defend Afrikaners who served in the police and military during white rule. They were motivated by a genuinely held belief that they were defending South Africa against communism, he said.

Ironically, but perhaps significantly, Mr De Klerk seemed to all but echo the testimony of a politician at the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, Clarence Makwetu of the militant Pan Africanist Congress, when he said: "I stand before you today neither in shame nor in arrogance but deeply conscious of my responsibility."