F.W. de Klerk has faced tougher crowds.

The former president of South Africa, who has been credited as a partner with Nelson Mandela in dismantling apartheid, has spoken at dozens of American universities since he retired from politics in 1997. His visits often spark protests and contentious questions about his nearly 20-year involvement in apartheid-supporting governments.

But de Klerk, co-recipient with Mandela of the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, nearly got out of Kansas University’s Lied Center on Saturday night without being taken to task on that issue. Nearly  but not quite.

De Klerk spoke to more than 400 people about avenues the international community must pursue in order to realize global peace and equality. To reach that goal, he suggested, the world’s most powerful and wealthy nations, particularly the United States, would have to help developing and divided countries reduce poverty and promote economic prosperity, develop democracies that uphold human rights, and cut off the roots from which internal conflicts sprout.

“None of us can any longer ignore problems and grievances in distant countries,” he said.

De Klerk’s critics contend that he’s guilty of ignoring problems in his own country during his climb to the South African presidency. De Klerk entered politics in 1972, when he won a seat in Parliament. He served on the South African Cabinet and later was elected leader of the National Party.

Although soon after he became president in 1989, he freed Mandela from prison, legalized the previously banned African National Congress and helped guide negotiations that eventually ended apartheid, his critics claim that international pressure, not a morally based change of heart, motivated him to take steps to end apartheid.

Many also charge that he knew about but ignored human rights abuses instigated by the National Party. Though much of the evidence for those claims comes from findings of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a body designed by the post-apartheid government to document illegal activities that occurred during apartheid, de Klerk said in an interview prior to the lecture that he didn’t regret supporting the commission’s work.

“It had to take place,” he said, adding that he remained critical of the composition of the commission and its focus on security force transgressions. “But by and large, the good work they’ve done I give credit for. I think the catharsis for victims and perpetrators alike had, in many instances, a very good effect.”

Vimbayi Kajese, a KU student from Zimbabwe who was the last audience member to address de Klerk during a question-and-answer session following his Lied Center lecture, asked how he could justify the killing of innocent black people during his regime and whether he honestly thought he deserved the Nobel Prize.

“Ah, a nice aggressive question to end with,” de Klerk said. “I don’t justify the killing of innocent people. It’s wrong. And when I was president and in the governments in which I served, if there was any evidence … they were tried, sent to jail and, before we abolished the death penalty, often were put to death.”

De Klerk went on to say that he hadn’t been in favor of granting amnesty to those who had committed “gross human rights violations” during the reign of apartheid, “but in order to save the negotiations, I had to decide whether to make what for me was a painful concession.”

He also refuted allegations that he had never apologized for apartheid.

“We did not only apologize,” he said. “We played a leading role  not the only role, but we played a leading role  in doing something to rectify the injustices of the past.”

As for whether he deserved to win the Peace Prize, de Klerk responded this way: “I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t apply for it. I was totally surprised when I got it. Ask that question to the committee who decided to give it.”

After the lecture, Kajese said de Klerk’s answer hadn’t satisfied her.

“He freed Mandela and got a Nobel Prize after being the head of a government that supported apartheid,” she said. “If he was indeed noble, he would not have accepted it.”

Despite a tense end to the evening, most of the audience sent away de Klerk, who received $25,000 from the Student Lecture Board for his appearance, with a standing ovation.