P.W. Botha, South Africa’s Ex-Leader, Dies at 90
By JOSEPH R.
GREGORY
31.10.06
P.W. Botha, the hard-nosed South African leader
who struggled vainly to
preserve apartheid rule in a tide of domestic racial violence and
global condemnation, died today at his home in South Africa. He was 90.
His death was reported by the South African Press Association in Cape
Town, quoting security staff at Mr. Botha’s home on the southern Cape
coast. 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 a limited relaxation of the nation’s apartheid policies and paved the way for him to become president in 1984. “We must adapt or die,” Mr. Botha told his constituents after becoming Prime Minister.
But the constitution only roiled the battle over race. 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. But the measures only fueled the anger of apartheid’s opponents.
One opposition leader, Frederik van Zyle, said Mr. Botha’s changes in apartheid were the political equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
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.
At the same time, Mr. Botha, who first achieved national prominence as defense minister, gave the military and police unprecedented power. His government repressed dissent, encouraged rivalries among Zulus, Xhosa and other tribes and ethnic groups, and tried to destabilize neighboring countries opposed to white rule.
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.
As opposition to apartheid spread, Mr. Botha’s room to maneuver shrank. “He was caught in a bind between wanting to show the international community that he was not inflexible, and not wishing to appear weak within his own country,” the journalist Allister Sparks wrote in his 1995 account of the end of apartheid, “Tomorrow Is Another Country: The Inside Story of South Africa’s Road to Change.”
In 1985, Mr. Botha was supposed to announce a giant step away from apartheid, but his proposals, which offered black Africans the vote under a legislative system that gave them no real power, disillusioned South Africa’s few remaining friends in the world.
Yet for a while Mr. Botha’s methods seemed to belie Alexis de Toqueville’s dictum that “the most perilous moment for bad government is when it seeks to mend its ways.” Mr. Botha was re-elected in 1987. Two years later, amid growing opposition within his own party to his intransigent style, 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.
An echo from a different era...
|
From
the News
Archives of: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org
Date & Time Posted: 9/17/2006 Nelson Mandela: The Songs They Sing about Killing Whites Here is another excerpt from the full 12 minute documentary called "The Songs they Sing", which contains much interesting footage and many more songs which they sing, some in Xhosa, and even some in english (like "Kill the Boers..."). The singing about the killing of the whites continues to this day. Jacob Zuma, who wants to be our next President leads the singing of the song "My Machinegun" at every political rally he holds - right now, in 2006! He could be our president in 2009! |
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| This portion shows Nelson
Mandela and Ronnie Kasrils at a funeral in
1992, where all the ANC/SACP members sing about killing the whites. This excerpt shows Mandela there, and it contrasts the words of the song, sung in Xhosa (the tribe from which Mandela comes), with the words he speaks in english. It also shows other members of the ANC, including women and children singing the same words. |
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| It has
been noted
over the years, that often, these black leaders, say one thing in a
"native" language, but when questioned in english, they say something
very different. In this excerpt you will see that. |
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Pieter Willem Botha was born on Jan. 12, 1916, in the Orange Free State to a Boer farm family with deep roots in southern Africa’s “White Tribe” — descendants of mainly Dutch settlers who had had been living on the continent’s southern tip for more than three centuries and who referred to themselves as Afrikaners.
Beleaguered, stubborn and insular, they saw themselves as heirs to a promised land watered with the blood of their ancestors in wars against Zulus, Ndebele and other tribes.
The Boers 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 self-image of the Afrikaner.
“I grew up on a farm where I came to know black people very well,” Mr. Botha told Joseph Lelyveld of The New York Times in an interview in Mr. Lelyveld’s 1985 book “Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White.”
“I played with them, I worked with them. I was taught by my father to be strict with them, but just.”
As World War II approached, tensions mounted among those who believed South Africa should side with Britain, those who advocated neutrality and those who sympathized with the Nazis. Mr. Botha sided with the latter, joining the right-wing Afrikaner nationalists in the Ossewabrandwag, or Ox Wagon Fire Guard, which was closely related to Daniel Francois Malan’s Reunited National Party. A paramilitary group within the Guard, modeled after the Nazi Brown shirts, agitated against the pro-Allied government of Jan Christian Smuts.
But Mr. Botha, who in 1935 had left the University of the Orange Free State to become an organizer for the Nationalists, did not like the Wagon Guard’s “emphasis on national socialism instead of Christian nationalism,” a South African biographer, Brian Pottinger, wrote in 1988 in “The Imperial Presidency: P.W. Botha, the First 10 Years.” “With some courage and a fine nose for the prevailing wind,” Mr. Pottinger wrote, Botha publicly condemned the Ossewabrandwag, charging it with “interference” in national politics.
By 1944, with victory looming in Europe, the Wagon Guard had become an embarrassment to Mr. Malan, and he banned National Party members from associating with it.
A year earlier, Mr. Both married Anna Elizabeth Rossouw, who went by the name Elise and who died in 1977. They had two sons and three daughters. He married Barbara Robertson in 1998.
In the postwar years, economic and social uncertainty eroded the popular base of the Smuts government, which had advocated a comparatively liberal approach toward race relations. In the 1948 general election, Mr. Malan’s Nationalists, campaigning on a platform of white supremacy and racial segregation, were swept to power. Mr. Botha, who had become secretary of the party’s National Youth League in 1946, won a seat in Parliament.
Over the next six years under Mr. Malan’s leadership, the foundations of the Apartheid state were laid. The Nationalists imposed segregation on almost all aspects of South African life. They passed laws prohibiting mixed marriages and extramarital sex between races and regulated almost all other social relations. Freedom of movement was limited: most blacks were required to carry passbooks. And “independent” homelands, or tribe-based states, were created to make the various African ethnic groups easier to control.
Throughout the 1950’s there were protests and other forms of passive resistance. In 1960, some 70 protesters were killed and nearly 200 wounded when the police opened fire on a demonstration in Sharpeville, near Johannesburg. The climate changed after that.
Within the African National Congress, founded in 1912 to advance the cause of blacks, the leadership diverged, with men like Nelson Mandela advocating violent opposition to the racist state. By 1970, many anti-apartheid leaders, including Mr. Mandela, were either in jail or living in exile.
Meanwhile, Mr. Botha rose through the government ranks. In 1961, he became the minister of colored affairs; in 1966, minister of defense. His rise coincided with the country’s deepening political isolation. In 1961, South Africa left the Commonwealth of Nations, whose members were strongly critical of apartheid policies. As the country’s neighbors achieved independence from colonial rule in the 1960’s and 70’s, many cut off diplomatic, cultural and commercial ties with South Africa.
In 1974, the United Nations revoked South Africa’s seat in the General Assembly. Three years later, it imposed a weapons embargo. In the West, particularly in the United States, debate over imposing trade sanctions on South Africa reached a fever pitch.
But the disciples of apartheid hung tough. Huge reserves of gold and diamonds fueled the Afrikaners’ ability to circumvent economic embargoes and political sanctions. As defense minister, Mr. Botha increased military spending to 20 percent of the government’s budget, conducted a clandestine weapons trade with Israel and other states and pushed for the development of nuclear weapons.
In the early 1980’s, Mr. Botha’s government launched military strikes on the forces of the African National Congress and other insurgent groups in neighboring countries where they had taken sanctuary. Air and ground forces struck at targets in Angola, and South African commandos conducted raids in Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
South African forces also equipped and trained rebel movements against the left-leaning African governments that had replaced the ousted Portuguese colonialists. Moreover, under the direction of the State Security Council, created in 1972, Mr. Botha’s government carried out a program to kill anti-apartheid activists.
Racial violence and political protests continued to rise. Increasing numbers of white South Africans joined the demonstrations. Although Mr. Botha had come to power with the pledge to uphold apartheid as well as improve race relations, the two goals were mutually exclusive. Despite a seeming willingness to relax some apartheid laws, he remained adamant in his refusal to grant blacks political power.
The situation deteriorated. Police stations and other government installations were attacked. In 1985, the government announced an indefinite state of emergency. In 1986, the Anglican anti-apartheid campaigner Bishop Desmond Tutu addressed the United Nations and urged further sanctions against South Africa.
Mr. Botha grew defiant. “We are not a nation of jellyfish,” he declared in a party speech in 1986. An aide, Hendrik Jacobus Coetsee, recalled: “The Old Crocodile was obsessed with looking tough and in control. He never wanted to show any sign of weakness.”
But even within the Botha government, pressure was growing for negotiations with the African National Congress. Clandestine overtures were made to Mr. Mandela, who had been in prison since 1963. The Botha government, hoping to appear reasonable to the world, was looking for a way to free Mr. Mandela without appearing weak to its own Afrikaner constituency.
In March 1989, Mr. Mandela offered to negotiate a political settlement, reversing the African National Congress’s commitment to overthrowing the white government by force. Mr. Botha, who had had a stroke that January, replied that the two men should meet. The did so on July 5, 1989.
In the end, the encounter turned out to be little more than a courtesy call. “Yet, in some subtle way a line had been crossed,” Mr. Sparks wrote. “After that there was no stopping the process. It was just a matter of time and the man.”
Mr. Botha’s days in office were numbered. Increasingly ill-tempered and authoritarian, he remained reluctant to move on with reforming the nation’s apartheid policies. In February 1989, a month after his stroke, for reasons that are unclear, he had renounced his position as National Party leader while keeping the presidency. The move left him open to younger rivals. That August, at a cabinet meeting, his successor as party leader, Mr. de Klerk, followed by other ministers, suggested that he step down. That night, in an angry, rambling broadcast, the president announced that he would resign.
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 African National 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 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 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 10,000 rand 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.”
Pieter Willem Botha
P.W. BothaPieter Willem Botha (January 12, 1916 – October 31, 2006), commonly known as "P.W." and Die Groot Krokodil (Afrikaans for "The Big Crocodile"), was prime minister of South Africa from 1978 to 1984 and state president from 1984 to 1989. Botha was a long-time supporter of South Africa's National Party and a staunch advocate of racial segregation and the apartheid system; however, he engineered a loosening of some of the government's most stringent racial policies toward the end of his career.
Parliamentary career
Botha was first elected to parliament as a member of the National Party in 1948 and was appointed defence minister by prime minister B.J. Vorster in 1966. When Vorster resigned in 1978, Botha was elected as his replacement by parliament.
Though generally considered a conservative, Botha was also seen as far more pragmatic than his predecessor. He was keen to promote constitutional reform, and hoped to implement a form of federal system in South Africa that would allow for greater self-rule for black homelands, while still retaining the supremacy of a white central government.
As a former defense minister, Botha pursued an ambitious military policy designed to increase South Africa's military capability. As prime minister, he sought to improve relations with the West – especially the United States – but with mixed results. He argued that the preservation of the apartheid government, though unpopular, was crucial to stemming the tide of African communism, which had made in-roads into neighboring Angola and Mozambique after these two former Portuguese colonies obtained independence.
In the 1980s he began to develop a secret nuclear weapons program in collaboration with Israel. He also remained steadfast in South Africa's administration of the neighboring territory South-West Africa, particularly while there was a presence of Cuban troops in Angola to the north. Botha was responsible for introducing the special forces counter-insurgency unit, koevoet. South African intervention in support of the rebel UNITA movement in the Angolan Civil War continued until the early 1990s and was dependent upon the withdrawal of Cuban troops. To maintain the nation's military strength, a very strict draft for white South African males was implemented in 1981, which essentially made provision for all adult males to be called upon to perform compulsory military service.
State President
Stamp issued in 1984 to commemorate Botha's election as state presidentIn 1983 Botha proposed a new constitution, which was then put to a vote of the white population. Though it did not implement a federal system, it created two new houses of parliament, one for Coloureds (House of Representatives) and one for Indians (House of Delegates), along with that for whites-only (House of Assembly).
The new Tricameral Parliament theoretically had equal legislative powers but the laws each new house passed were effective solely in its own community. Control of the country was maintained by the White house. However, the new constitution also changed the executive branch, abolishing the post of prime minister and instead creating a strong, executive presidency with expanded powers.
The presidency and cabinet had sole jurisdiction over areas deemed to be of "national" responsibility, such as foreign policy and race relations. Though the new constitution was criticized by the black majority for failing to grant them any formal role in government, many international commentators praised it as a "first step" in what was assumed to be a series of reforms. In 1984, Botha was elected as the first state president of South Africa under the newly approved constitution.
Implementing the presidential system was seen as a key step in consolidating Botha's personal power. In previous years he had succeeded in getting a number of strict laws that limited freedom of speech through parliament, and thus suppressed criticism of government decisions.
Botha's authoritarian style of leadership made him unpopular in certain western countries, and many condemned him as a cruel, racist dictator. In many western countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom (where the Anti-Apartheid Movement was based) and the Commonwealth there was much debate over the imposition of economic sanctions in order to weaken Botha and undermine the white-minority regime. By the late 1980s – as foreign investment in South Africa declined – divestment began to have a serious effect on the nation's economy.
Apartheid regime
In some ways, Botha's application of the apartheid system was less repressive than that of his predecessors: interracial marriage – which had been banned – was legalized, and the constitutional prohibition on multiracial political parties was lifted. He also relaxed the Group Areas Act, which barred non-whites from living in certain areas. In 1983, constitutional reforms granted limited political rights to Coloureds (South Africans of mixed white and non-white ancestry) and Indians. However, on the central issue of granting political rights to blacks and ending white supremacy, he would not budge. In the face of rising discontent and violence, he imposed greater state repression such as states of emergency and state-sponsored covert action against anti-apartheid activists. He also steadfastly refused to negotiate with the African National Congress.
Typical of his rule was his 1985 "Crossing the Rubicon" speech, a policy speech in which Botha was widely expected to announce new reforms. Instead, he refused to give in to pressure for concessions to the black majority including the release of Nelson Mandela. His defiance of international opinion in this speech led immediately to further isolation of the country, calls for economic sanctions to be applied and a rapid decline in the value of the rand.
In that year, Botha also declared a state of emergency.
Botha's downfall
Botha's uncompromising policies greatly polarized his own party's views and eventually led to feuding within the National Party. In February 1989, he suffered a mild stroke and, caving in to cabinet pressure, resigned.
The conservative-moderate Frederik W. de Klerk became state president later that year. Within months of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, de Klerk had announced the legalization of anti-apartheid groups – including the African National Congress – and the release of Nelson Mandela. De Klerk's rule saw the dismantling of the apartheid system and negotiations that eventually led to South Africa's first racially all-inclusive democratic elections on April 27, 1994.
Retirement
Botha and his second wife Barbara retired to their home, Die Anker, in the town of Wilderness, close to the city of George and located inland just a few miles from the Indian Ocean coast in the Western Cape. He remained largely out of sight of the media. In some circles it was believed that he remained opposed to many of F W de Klerk's reforms. He refused to testify at the new government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission for exposing apartheid-era crimes, which was chaired by his cultural and political nemesis, Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
In August 1998 he was fined and given a suspended jail sentence for his refusal to testify in relation to human rights violations and the violence sanctioned by the State Security Council (SSC) which he, as president until 1989, had directed.
Personal life and death
In 1943, Botha married Anna Elizabeth Rossouw (Elise), and the couple had two sons and three daughters. After Elise's death in 1977, he later married Barbara Robertson on June 22, 1998.
In 1989 Botha suffered a stroke which left him partially paralyzed on the left side of his body.
Botha, aged 90, died at his home on 31 October 2006.
(He was not related to contemporary National Party politician Roelof Frederik "Pik" Botha, who served as his foreign minister.)
References
- The Mandela Document, dated prior to Mandela's release
- TRC findings: P W Botha, dated after Mandela's release
- "Fighter and Reformer: Extracts from the Speeches of P. W. Botha", Compiled by J.J.J. Scholtz, Published: Bureau for Information, Pretoria, 1989
- Former South Africa leader dies - BBC News
Britain had an apartheid society
Multiculturalism
The British National Party