Apartheid-era leaders would have been “filled with the deepest revulsion” at the killing of nine black worshippers in Charleston‚ South Carolina‚ the FW de Klerk Foundation said on Thursday.

This came in reaction to Max du Preez’s column carried by Media24 publications on Tuesday which said the accused gunman‚ Dylann Roof‚ “shares apartheid’s ideology”.

A picture of Roof which emerged after the killings showed him wearing a jacket emblazoned with old South African and Rhodesian flags.

Foundation executive director Dave Steward said: “Du Preez goes on to say that Barend Strydom’s random killing of seven black South Africans in 1989 made him think ‘that his (Roof’s) identification with apartheid wasn’t so inappropriate after all’.

“This inescapably creates the impression that the wanton killing of black people was somehow an integral aspect of the ideology of apartheid.

“In fact‚ however wrong their policies may have been‚ there was not a single pre-1994 leader who would not have been filled with the deepest revulsion at Roof’s cold-blooded killing of nine black worshippers at the Emanuel Church in Charleston — or who would not have been equally repelled by Strydom’s actions.”

Steward went on to say that‚ while “nobody should whitewash the injustices of apartheid”‚ the accusations serve a “divisive version of history…in terms of which the pre-1994 white establishment was uniformly evil‚ while all those on the (African National Congress) side were uniformly good”.

“It is unacceptable to equate in any way Roof’s actions — and the heinous killings of Barend Strydom — with the values and policies of previous National Party leaders‚” said Steward.

Strydom was pardoned in 1992.