* Jaap Marais; Supporter of Apartheid

Jaap Marais, 77, South African politician considered the voice of ultraconservative Afrikaners. Alarmed by government moves to allow some integration in sports and fearing the beginning of the end of apartheid, Marais helped found the far-right Herstigte Nasionale Party in 1969 after being expelled, along with other ultraconservative parliamentarians, from the ruling National Party--the architect of apartheid--following disputes with party leaders. Marais became head of the Herstigte, also known as the Refounded National Party, in 1977 and was a zealous opponent of any form of multiracial politics in his country. During the downfall of apartheid in the early 1990s, he called then-President Frederik W. de Klerk a dictator for offering compromises that would probably result in a black head of state. The country’s first all-race elections were held in 1994, bringing Nelson Mandela to power and ending the policy of strict racial separation. Although a slightly built man with a crippled foot, Marais was considered a fiery and effective Afrikaans orator. He was a devotee of poetry, particularly the works of John Keats and T.S. Eliot, and translated Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” into Afrikaans. On Tuesday of a bleeding ulcer in Pretoria.