PW turning 90
2006-01-11 17:24
Cape Town - Former State President PW Botha, who turns 90 on Thursday, will
spend the day with friends and family, his eldest daughter, Elanza
Maritz, said on Wednesday.
"I think he's looking forward to it," she said. "It is a special
birthday."
There would be "coming and going" all day at Die Anker, Botha's
riverside home at Wildnerness in the Southern Cape, and then in the
evening, a light supper and more celebrations at her home in nearby
George.
She said most of her brothers and sisters - she has two of each
- and their children would be there for the day.
Though Botha loved cake, there were no plans for a particularly
special cake.
"Being with him is the main thing, not the eating and drinking,"
she said.
Biography
Botha was born on January 12 1916 on the farm Telegraaf near
Paul Roux in the then-Orange Free State.
He was elected MP for George in the landslide 1948 election that
brought the National Party to power, and would hold that seat until
1984: a total of 36 years during which - as a "good constituency
man" - he promoted the town's development ceaselessly.
His first cabinet post came in 1961 when Prime Minister Hendrik
Verwoerd appointed him minister in the portfolio of community
development and coloured affairs.
His department oversaw the destruction of District Six and the
displacement of its people to the Cape Flats.
In 1966 he became Verwoerd's defence minister - in which
capacity he was to play a major role in overseeing South Africa's
war in Namibia and Angola - and in the same year was elected as
the NP's Cape leader.
In 1978, in the fallout from the scandal over the state funding
of The Citizen newspaper, he outflanked his rivals to become prime
minister.
Pass book
Botha would remain in the post for six years, during which time
he tinkered with apartheid, bringing in a new constitutional
dispensation that elevated him to executive state president and
enfranchised Coloureds and Indians in their own separate and
unequal parliaments.
However he did little, beyond scrapping the hated pass book, to
better the position of black people, and in the notorious Rubicon
speech incident backed away from meaningful reform.
It was Botha, known to opponents as "Die Groot Krokodil" (the big crocodile) who
coined the phrases "total onslaught" and "total strategy" to
justify the ever-greater use of force to suppress growing black
resistance to whites-only rule.
Elbowed out
He had a light stroke in January 1989, was elbowed out of
his post by FW de Klerk later that year, and retired to live in
relative obscurity in Die Anker.
The coming of democracy, in 1994, did briefly give him trouble,
in the shape of Archbishop Desmond Tutu - an old foe - and the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Botha took a dim view of the body, famously calling it a
"circus".
He was convicted in 1998, at age 82, of holding the commission
in contempt and was fined, but successfully appealed both
conviction and sentence.
- SAPA