F. W. de Klerk has died

[BH]

Its announced on the news that he died at age 85 at his home . He was president of South Africa from 1989 to 1994 and was the president that ended apartheid. He served as deputy president under Nelson Mandela for a few years as well.

 

[lpetrich]

I remember once noticing how much  F. W. de Klerk and  Mikhail Gorbachev have in common. Both of them presided over the end of a failing political regime, both of them did it more-or-less peacefully, and both of them are/were bald.

That baldness part is less of a coincidence as it might seem. Both men became leaders of their nations when they were in middle age, and that's when male-pattern baldness is very apparent. They became leaders in middle age because that's a typical time to become a major leader in systems governed at least partially by merit.