Willem (Willie) Abraham van Niekerk (29 June 1937 in Pretoria[1] – 8 August 2009) was a South African physician, professor, and politician.
Van Niekerk was Minister of Health in the government of P. W. Botha from 1985 to 1989 and Administrator-General of South West Africa from 1983 to 1985.
Van Niekerk was born in Pretoria and grew up on the family farm located in the Orange Free State.
[1] In 1992, as the National Party began to lose their grip on power, Niekerk left politics to return to the private sector as a Gynaecologist in the suburbs of Cape Town.
He was the first to describe the cytological appearance of cervical cells in folate deficiency, which had certain similarities with pre-neoplastic changes (Nel, JT).