Born April 27th, 1932, at Rustenburg, South Africa.
Who is he? South African politician.
Why's he in the news? Has announced he will resign from politics at the end of June.
Career Pik joined the diplomatic service as a young lawyer in 1953.
Served in Sweden and Germany. Appointed in 1963 to represent South Africa at the International Court of Justice in dispute over its control of South West Africa. As a result, the apartheid regime was able to avoid the imposition of sanctions.
However, Pik said "You need more than the law to win the political battle. South Africa could never win with basically an immoral policy".
Pik assured Ronald Reagan that South Africa had no intention of exploding a nuclear device (early 1980s), despite being shown satellite evidence of just such intentions in the Kalahari desert. His own defence force assured him it was a deep drilling rig, searching for water, but it later turned out that the US had been correct. He had been deceived by his own defence force.
Pik was one off the longest serving foreign ministers in the world when the apartheid regime ceded power after the 1994 South African election.
What's he like? Colourful and canny. Got his nickname from wearing his Sunday best as a child, pikkewyn being Afrikaans for penguin.
Tall and bulky, with a villainous mustache, he has the instincts of a showman.
On election day in 1994 he voted in Seoveto, the black township outside Johannesburg, saying some of his best friends lived there.
Last word Goes to Pik. When asked if he would miss the hurly burly of public life, he said "I've been at my loneliest in the middle of meetings and at parties."