By the end of 1988, I was deeply unhappy. From 1980 until 1988, I had been regularly called up to attend military camps in the South African Navy. My employers did not fully compensate me for the three months at a time that I spent away from home and so I was perpetually short of money.

At the time, the banks did not like people to be overdrawn on their bank accounts and the bank hounded me on a weekly basis. My wife had a minor job and we had a young boy. The military camps were hard work. I was an officer and had to make things happen in an organised way. My wife complained often – and who would blame her?

The National Party government and Prime Minister (later President) PW Botha seemed intent on driving South Africa into a state of civil war. Every other year, there were clashes between police and people striking or rioting and there were people killed as a result.

I decided to divorce my wife, and I did – I was in a state where I could hardly cope, mentally. Then Botha had a stroke and FW de Klerk took his place as President. The Navy call-ups stopped.

I moved to Gauteng and lived on a farm with Joanna, who I loved very much. I was driving home on February 2, 1990. I had the car radio on. It happened that there was a live broadcast from the opening of Parliament and De Klerk was speaking. He started his speech by commenting on foreign relations and human rights before announcing the suspension of the death penalty. After discussing economic issues, he announced the unbanning of the African National Congress, the Pan Africanist Congress, the South African Communist Party and a number of associated groups.

I nearly drove the car into the ditch. The National Party had been in full control of South Africa since 1960, when I was five. They had run a paramilitary State through three right-wing Prime Ministers/Presidents, each, seemingly, more insane than the last. There was, indeed, order and stability and financial growth. There was not much crime. But the whole thing suffered from the ‘elephant in the room’ – there was unfairness everywhere. No franchise for the vast majority. Skewed education systems. Poor housing systems. And everywhere there were people who were deluded that things would turn out all okay. But on that night, hearing De Klerk, I stopped the car and started crying. I had read the speech by Martin Luther King Jnr, the US black leader, made in 1963. He had ended the speech with, “[We] will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: ‘Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last’.”

I didn’t kid myself that I had been particularly oppressed. I was white and, thus, almost by definition, privileged. But the Navy camps had sucked it out of me. I had spent decades knowing that things were not right. It was very depressing. Many of my friends had decided to emigrate and I had argued against this. I said, look, what use is there to just leave a mess behind? If things change, who’ll be here to get it all back on track?

I worked in central Johannesburg. Traffic was bad and, as a result, I would get up at 5:30 and leave at 6:00 to get to work at 7:00. So, on February 3, 1990, I got up, drove to work, parked my car in the parking garage. I walked down Loveday street towards the building where I worked. A black man walked up the street towards me. He eyed me. I eyed him. We both had heard that Nelson Mandela would be released. I raised my arm, fist clenched, and said, “Amandla!” – a salute of freedom. He replied exactly the same. De Klerk died recently. He helped change our world.