Happy birthday PW - the Arch

2006-01-12 20:40

Cape Town - Former state president PW Botha was congratulated from an unexpected quarter on Thursday as he celebrated his 90th birthday at home in the Southern Cape town of Wilderness.

"Happy birthday! God bless him, oh yes, oh yes. Happy birthday!" Archbishop Desmond Tutu said with a chuckle at his Cape Town office when he learned of the occasion.

"Ninety is a very good innings."

Asked whether his feelings for Botha - who once described Tutu's Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a circus - had changed over the years, Tutu said with another laugh: "Oh, he's an old man, and you know, you expect, he will mellow."

Botha, known to his opponents as "die Groot Krokodil", was convicted in 1998, at the age of 82, of holding the commission in contempt and was fined.

But, he successfully appealed against both the conviction and sentence.

Hosting a light supper for him

Earlier on Thursday, his eldest daughter, Elanza Maritz, said her father was spending the day with family and friends at Die Anker, the riverside home he shares with wife Barbara.

She said she had not seen him yet herself - she was hosting a light supper for him on Thursday evening at her home in nearby George - but had talked to him by phone.

"He sounded wonderful," she said. "He's really well mentally. He's 90 years old physically, but mentally he's really great, razor sharp."

This was the view of not only herself, but of a number of people in regular contact with Botha. She said: "He goes around a lot, walks around."

Police on protection services duty at Botha's residence said they had enjoyed some of the birthday cake.

Coined 'total onslaught' phrase

Botha was elected MP for George in the landslide 1948 election that brought the National Party to power, and was head of government through the most-turbulent years of the anti-apartheid struggle.

Minister of defence before he took over the leadership of government, he coined the phrase "total onslaught" to justify the ever-greater use of force to suppress growing black resistance to whites-only rule.

After a light stroke in 1989, he was succeeded by FW de Klerk.

- SAPA