Kobie Coetsee

Hendrik Jacobus Coetsee ( born April 19, 1931 in Ladybrand, † July 29, 2000 in Bloemfontein ), also known under the name Kobie Coetsee, was a South African politician of the National Party. He worked from 1980 to 1994 as Minister of Justice under Presidents Pieter Willem Botha and Frederik Willem de Klerk and was responsible, among other things, for the police and the prison system in the final stages of the apartheid era. After the first free general elections in South African history, he took over from 1994 to 1997 the office of President of the Provincial Council, the second chamber of the South African Parliament.

Life

Kobie Coetsee was born in 1931 in Ladybrand, the only child of his parents, who were both active at the local level for the National Party. Both his grandfathers had been involved as commanders in the Second Boer War, so that the freedom and independence of the Boer played an important role in the political views of Coetsee. He studied until 1954 Law and Latin Studies at the University of the Free State, and then was admitted as a lawyer. In 1968 he won the parliamentary seat which became vacant by the election of Jacob Johannes Fouché president. Ten years later he was first appointed by then-Prime Minister Pieter Willem Botha as Deputy Minister of Defense and National Security in October 1978. In October 1980, he took over the post of Minister of Justice, which he kept from 1989 under Botha's successor, FW de Klerk.

In 1985 he became chairman of the Provincial Association of the National Party in the Free State Province. In the same year, there were discussions between Kobie Coetsee and jailed opponents of apartheid, Nelson Mandela, 1989, he organized a meeting between Mandela and President Botha. After the election of FW de Klerk as president in August 1989, he played a key role in the negotiations between the government and the African National Congress, after Mandela's release in February 1990 on the gradual abolition of apartheid legislation and in 1994 the first free and general elections in South African history led. From April 1993 to May 1994, he also assumed the office of Minister of Justice temporarily run the Ministry of Defence. After the elections of 1994 he was President of the Provincial Council, the representation of the member States and the second chamber of the South African Parliament. He held until 1997 this office.

Kobie Coetsee was married in 1956 and father of two sons and three daughters. He died in 2000 in Bloemfontein from a heart attack.