Wynand Malan (born 25 May 1943) is a liberal Afrikaner
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...
n politician.
A lawyer, Malan entered politics in the
1977 South African election when he was elected to the South Africa's
all white parliament
In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...
as the
National Party MP for Randburg.
A member of the NP's reform wing, he was critical of
P.W. Botha for being too timid in his constitutional reforms in the 1980s and was also critical of the
state of emergency
A state of emergency is a situation in which a government is empowered to be able to put through policies that it would normally not be permitted to do, for the safety and protection of its citizens. A government can declare such a state du ...
implemented by Botha. In the
1987 general election, he left the NP and ran as one of three independent candidates along with former ambassador to London Dennis Worrall and businesswoman Susan Lategan. He was the only one of the trio elected, probably because he was the only incumbent. He subsequently quarreled with Worrall and so the two formed two separate political parties after the election. In early 1989 these two new parties joined up with the veteran Progressive Federal Party to form the Democratic Party, which won a record number of seats for a liberal party in the September 1989 whites-only election. He subsequently became one of three co-leaders of the new party and retained his parliamentary seat in the
1989 general election by defeating former Ambassador to Canada
Glenn Babb
Glenn Robin Ware Babb (born 4 June 1943) is a former politician and diplomat for the former apartheid government in South Africa. More recently he has been a businessman and entrepreneur. From 1985 to 1987 he had a high-profile posting in Canad ...
who was running for the NP. Malan remained in the DP's leadership until 1993.
From 1995 to 1998, Malan was a Commissioner of the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission
A truth commission, also known as a truth and reconciliation commission or truth and justice commission, is an official body tasked with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by a government (or, depending on the circumstances, non-state act ...
, which was chaired by Archbishop
Desmond Tutu
Desmond Mpilo Tutu (7 October 193126 December 2021) was a South African Anglican bishop and theologian, known for his work as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist. He was Bishop of Johannesburg from 1985 to 1986 and then Archbishop ...
.
[Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, Final Report, vol. 1, p. 44, available at https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/report/]
References
1943 births
White South African anti-apartheid activists
Afrikaner people
Living people
National Party (South Africa) politicians
Independent Party (South Africa) politicians
Democratic Party (South Africa) politicians
Members of the House of Assembly (South Africa)
{{Gauteng-politician-stub