This week the world said good riddance to P. W. Botha, the South African leader who fathered apartheid. The bastard child grew up until it consumed a country in a tide of domestic racial violence and global condemnation. He was 90.
Roots of Racism
Pieter Willem Botha was born on Jan. 12, 1916, in the Orange Free State to a Afrikaner farm family with deep roots in southern Africa’s “White Tribe” — descendants of mainly Dutch settlers who had been living on the continent’s southern tip for more than three centuries.
Beleaguered, stubborn and insular, they saw themselves as heirs to a promised land watered with the blood of their ancestors in wars against Zulu, Ndebele and other tribes.
The Afrikaners and the British, with their imperial aims, were also old enemies, rivals for land, diamonds and gold. Their enmity culminated in the Boer War of 1899-1901, which ended in a British victory and the eventual consolidation of the country under the empire. Mr. Botha’s father fought the British, who burned his mother’s family farm. She and her family fled but were eventually captured and interned. Their experiences forged their son’s attitudes. Raised in the traditions of the Bible and the gun, he learned to ride and shoot and to embrace the embattled but beneficent self-image of the Afrikaner.
Rise to Power
Mr. Botha was a combative, irascible son of a well-to-do Afrikaner farm family who dropped out of college to work for the right-wing National Party, then rose through the ranks of South Africa’s political establishment, gaining a reputation as the “Old Crocodile” for his ability to charm, outwit and crush his opponents.
In 1978, Mr. Botha became prime minister and proceeded to engineer the creation of a new Constitution, one that held out the promise of limited reform of apartheid policies. When the Constitution came into effect in 1984, Mr. Botha became president. “We must adapt or die,” Mr. Botha told his constituents after becoming prime minister.
Aparthied
Though it allowed Asians and people of mixed race to be represented in a white-controlled Parliament, it continued to exclude the nation’s black majority. Some apartheid laws, like a prohibition on mixed marriages and a requirement that blacks carry special passes, were relaxed.
Opposition
Holding out the promise that apartheid would eventually be dismantled, he opened negotiations with Nelson Mandela, the imprisoned leader of the African National Congress. The talks went nowhere, and Mr. Mandela remained confined.
Paranoia
Mr. Botha used the climate of the cold war to justify his actions. He portrayed a growing Marxist threat in southern Africa and warned that Communists had infiltrated the anti-apartheid movement at home. South Africa, he said, was engaged in a “total war” and must develop a “total strategy” to fight the battle.
The End
As opposition to apartheid spread, Mr. Botha’s room to maneuver shrank. Mr. Botha was re-elected in 1987. Two years later, as opposition to his intransigent style grew within his own party, the president suffered a stroke and resigned. He was succeeded by F. W. de Klerk, who legalized opposition parties, freed Mr. Mandela and other political prisoners, and made the agreements that eventually brought apartheid down.
Era of Rebirth
Under the new government, led by Mr. de Klerk, apartheid unraveled. In 1990, Mr. Mandela was freed after 27 years in prison and the African National Congress became a legal political party. In April 1994, the republic’s first multiracial election was held, the Congress won an overwhelming victory and Mr. Mandela became president. In May 1996, a new national Constitution was adopted.
Apartheid was finished. In the late 1990’s, the brutal methods that had been used to prolong its existence were exposed during hearings of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Actions by the country’s security forces and police during Mr. Botha’s years in power had killed 4,000 people; as many as 50,000 others were held without trial.
The aging Mr. Botha derided the commission as a witch hunt. After failing to attend a hearing in Cape Town on Dec. 19, 1997, he was found guilty of contempt of the law, fined and sentenced to a suspended 12-month prison term. The conviction was overturned on appeal, and the Old Crocodile remained as intransigent as ever.
“I have nothing to apologize for,” he said. ‘’I will never ask for amnesty. Not now, not tomorrow, not after tomorrow.”
Botha joins Hitler and Milošević in hell. All that remain is the arrival of Saddam Hussein to round out the table reserved for lasts century's worst sinners.
Below are some must see films that cover this tumultuous time period.
Mandela and de Klerk (1997)(TV)
"Ekhaya: A Family Chronicle" (1997) Canada (Mini)
Mandela (1996)
My personal favourite
Cry Freedom (1987)
Later,
Kenaz
