South Africa's last white president, Frederik Willem (FW) de Klerk, died on Thursday morning at his home in Cape Town, the FW de Klerk Foundation said in a statement. He was 85. 

"Former President FW de Klerk died peacefully at his home in Fresnaye earlier this morning following his struggle against mesothelioma cancer," the statement said.

De Klerk, 85, headed South Africa's white minority government until 1994, when Nelson Mandela's African National Congress party swept to power.

He shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Mandela, but his role in the transition to democracy remains highly contested more than 20 years after the end of apartheid.

He was diagnosed in March with mesothelioma, a cancer that affects the tissue lining the lungs.

"He is survived by his wife Elita, his children Jan and Susan and his grandchildren," the foundation said, adding that the family would in due course make an announcement regarding funeral arrangements.

Berlin Wall falls, apartheid ends

Hailing from a prominent White Afrikaner family, de Klerk evolved into a moderate reformer influenced by the ideological changes in the late 1980s that saw Mikhail Gorbachev implement his "perestroika" or political "opening" in the Soviet Union. While de Klerk was in favour of gradual change, the rapid end of the apartheid system was achieved, under his watch, without major violence.

"The first few months of my presidency coincided with the disintegration of communism in Eastern Europe," de Klerk wrote in his autobiography, "The Last Trek: A New Beginning".

"Within the scope of a few months, one of our main strategic concerns for decades was gone," he wrote. "A window had suddenly opened which created an opportunity for a much more adventurous approach than had been previously conceivable."

He is most remembered for his February 1990 speech, announcing the lifting of the ban on the African National Congress (ANC) and other liberation movements.

In the same speech he ordered the release from prison of anti-apartheid icon Mandela after 27 years in jail.

Fearing a leak and a backlash from right-wing Whites, de Klerk had kept the momentous decision secret from all but a handful of cabinet ministers. Even his wife was in the dark until she and de Klerk were heading to parliament.

At de Klerk's 70th birthday celebrations in 2006, Mandela heaped praise on his predecessor for taking that leap into the political unknown.

"You have shown courage that few have done in similar circumstances," said Mandela, who died in December 2013 at the age of 95, less than six months before the 20th anniversary of South Africa's first all-race elections.

Reckoning with the past, coping with the present

De Klerk launched his parliamentary career in 1972 as member for the right-wing mining town of Vereeniging and was for several years minister in charge of a schooling system that spent 10 times more on White children than on Blacks.

He challenged then-finance minister Barend du Plessis in the 1989 party election of a successor to ailing apartheid hardliner P.W. Botha and then ousted Botha from the presidency in a cabinet coup a few months later.

Botha showed no remorse for apartheid until his death in 2006 aged 90.

Black and white analysts said de Klerk was too cautious in moving against security force right-wingers suspected of fomenting violence and of being out of touch and ill-informed about the horrific gun and spear attacks in Black communities.

After the fall of apartheid, his National Party shared power in a "Government of National Unity" in which he served as a deputy president.

But the relationship between de Klerk, a chain-smoking whisky drinker, and the austere Mandela was often strained, and De Klerk pulled out of the government in 1996, saying the ANC no longer prized his advice or guidance.

He retired from active politics in 1997 and later apologised for the miseries of apartheid before Archbishop Desmond Tutu's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

"History has shown that as far as the policy of apartheid was concerned, our former leaders were deeply mistaken in the course upon which they embarked," he said.