Frederik Willem de Klerk (born 18 March 1936 in Johannesburg) is a South African politician. He was the president of South Africa from 1989 to 1994. In 1993, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace with Nelson Mandela. They were given the prize for peacefully ending apartheid and setting up a new government in South Africa. From 1994 to 1996 he was vice president of South Africa. In 1997, he retired from politics. In 2004, he left the New National Party, when it became known that it wanted to unite with the African National Congress to form a single party.