Frederik Willem de Klerk, South Africa’s last white president, died at his home in Fresnaye, Cape Town, on Thursday morning aged 85 after battling mesothelioma cancer.

“He is survived by his wife Elita, his children Jan and Susan, and his grandchildren,” his foundation said.

Until De Klerk, as president, announced Nelson Mandela’s release after 27 years in jail and lifted the ban on black liberation movements on February 2, 1990, South Africa was under a white-minority (apartheid) rule.

De Klerk, whose father was a minister in the National Party (NP) government that established apartheid, became the president under the white-minority system. Despite being a beneficiary of the system that oppressed the black majority for decades, he dismantled it and transformed South Africa into a non-racial democracy.

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In 1993, de Klerk shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela for his role in South Africa’s ‘miracle’ transition from white-minority rule. After the country’s first democratic election in 1994, he handed over the reins to Mandela and served as his deputy under a unity government until his resignation two years later.

Born into an Afrikaner political dynasty in Johannesburg on March 18, 1936, De Klerk was a lawyer and member of Broederbond, a secret Afrikaner society dedicated to white supremacy.

He became a parliamentarian in 1972 and was South Africa’s minister in charge of schooling systems for several years. He succeeded P. W. Botha, a hardliner apartheid president, in 1989.