Jan van Eck

Jan van Eck (18 December 1943 – 27 January 2009) was a Dutch–South African politician who served in opposition in the South African House of Assembly from 1986 to 1994. He represented the Progressive Federal Party from 1986 to 1987 and the Democratic Party from 1989 to 1992; at other times, he sat as an independent.

An opponent of apartheid, he left the Democratic Party to join the African National Congress (ANC) in 1992. After South Africa's democratic transition, he briefly represented the ANC in the National Assembly in 1994, but he left to become involved in peacemaking in Burundi, where he worked for over a decade as an independent mediator in the Burundian civil war.

Early life and education Van Eck was born on 18 December 1943 in Holland, the eldest of five siblings. His mother was a housewife and his father was a classical piano teacher, and they moved to South Africa when van Eck was five years old. he resigned from the PFP and sat as an independent until the 1989 general election, when he won re-election as a candidate for the newly established Democratic Party (DP).

Van Eck supported the United Democratic Front (UDF) and had links to the Dutch anti-apartheid movement. In July 1989, he was among a white delegation that met with ANC leaders in Lusaka, Zambia, during a summit organised by the Five Freedoms Forum. In April 1992, van Eck and four other DP members – David Dalling, Jannie Momberg, Pierre Cronjé, and Robert Haswell – announced that they were defecting from the DP to join the ANC. In a joint statement, the group said that they were responding to a call made by Nelson Mandela shortly after his release from prison in 1990, for "all our white compatriots to join us in the shaping of a new South Africa". Van Eck and the others remained in Parliament as independents for the rest of the legislative term. On 2 June 1992, the NP moved to suspend van Eck from Parliament because he had claimed that the government was responsible for the deaths of a large number of black activists. However, he resigned from his seat later the same year. He was initially involved as an independent consultant to the Cape Town-based Centre for Conflict Resolution; he later became a consultant to the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies, heading the institute's Political Dialogue Project in Burundi. Although he collaborated with the peace-making initiatives of the South African government, he was highly critical of the government's high-pressure mediation method.

The Rotary Foundation awarded him a Paul Harris Fellowship "in appreciation of tangible and significant assistance given for the furtherance of better understanding and friendly relations among peoples of the world".

Personal life and death Van Eck was married to Eunice, with whom he had two other children. He had another son before the marriage. He died of a heart attack at Constantia Medi Clini on 27 January 2009, aged 65.