The article review(文章导读):By Delia Robertson Johannesburg01 November 2006
Former South African president, P.W. Botha, has died at his home in Wilderness on the country's southern coast. He was 90. VOA's Delia Robertson has th
Text(正文): By Delia Robertson
Johannesburg
01 November 2006
Former South African president, P.W. Botha, has died at his home in Wilderness on the country's southern coast. He was 90. VOA's Delia Robertson has this profile on the man who introduced some reforms in apartheid South Africa, but who also established a shadowy parallel government that ruthlessly oppressed opposition, assassinated opponents and was involved in widespread state-sponsored violence.
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P.W. Botha (file photo)
Immediately after being elected Prime Minister of South Africa in 1978, P.W. Botha stood on the steps of parliament in Cape Town and promised the country a streamlined government that would administer openly, honestly and fairly.
When pushed from power by his cabinet colleagues in 1989 he had established himself as an executive president presiding over a bankrupt administration that spent 20 percent of the national budget on defense; and included nine so-called homelands for black South Africans operating at varying degrees of nominal independence.
Most importantly he had put in place the so-called State Security Council, a shadowy parallel government whose tentacles reached into every aspect and level of South African society. The Council, in which he had the final say, was drawn primarily from defense and intelligence structures and included some members of cabinet, but by-passed parliament altogether.
Analyst Robert Schrire said on national radio that Mr. Botha was ruthless and typified his nickname of the "Groot Krokodil" or "Great Crocodile".
"P.W. really was the bull in the china shop. He was very tough, very ruthless," he said. "But ultimately totally insensitive to the interests the interests and perhaps the values of other groups, especially black South Africans."
During his tenure Mr. Botha tried to soften his image as an unrepentant racist by meeting with one or two African leaders; and in 1985 he put in place the so-called tri-cameral parliament which gave limited political power to colored and Indian South Africans. He also tentatively chipped away at what analysts then called petty apartheid; removing laws that criminalized inter-racial unions, and desegregated some public facilities such as park benches and post offices.
Former opposition politician, Helen Suzman, who spent many years sitting across from Mr. Botha in parliament, says that among his reforms was one of real significance - he allowed black workers to form and join trade unions.
"P.W. was always in a temper ... very irascible, very angry with people who disagreed with him. But I have to say that it was during his regime that many of bricks of apartheid were in fact withdrawn," she said. "The first one being the recognition of black trade unions; now that was an enormous advantage for the black working force."
But he never deviated from the goals of so-called grand apartheid, the permanent separation of races in which 87 percent of the population, blacks, would live in 13 percent of the country in the so-called homelands - nine small, carefully demarcated states with little or no arable land. |
