As South Africans prepare to confirm the new era at the polls, Howard Barrell looks at what happened to the kings of old
When last seen, Barend du Plessis, the man who was placed in charge of the national finances after his computer company had gone bust, looked like an aging beauty queen.
Consultant, director of companies and Johannesburg dealmaker extraordinaire, the once handsome Du Plessis was wearing one of those orange tans that some post-middle- aged peroxide blonde American widows cram inside 44DD brassieres.
Sources say his colour scheme can be explained by the fact that his new girlfriend owns a tanning salon at Sandton City to which the local kugels report for a quick pre-Greece fry.
Du Plessis is now, privately, deeply critical from the left of the New National Party and Marthinus “Kortbroek” van Schalkwyk is thought unlikely to get his vote.
Du Plessis’s former wife, Antoinette, is now married to Adriaan Vlok, the former minister of law and order, who, between hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, has been spotted leading a quiet life in Johannesburg, Pretoria and a hideaway at Melkbosstrand that lies under the shadow of Koeberg nuclear power station on Table Bay.
Chris Heunis, the former minister of constitutional development and planning (and almost everything else), has also sought sanctuary just outside Cape Town. He has made one of the cleanest breaks of the former Botha cabinet members. He has thrown his energies and talent for semantic gymnastics into a prosperous law practice he runs with two of his sons in Somerset West.
Up the road in Malmesbury, Gert Kotze, the entirely useless former minister of environmental affairs and water affairs, is farming.
As befits a Nobel laureate and memoirist, FW de Klerk, the minister of national education before he succeeded to the top job, has a choice of homes in South Africa and abroad. In the Western Cape, he can scan his new wife’s wine estate or the sea at Hermanus. And the happy couple have a seat in London, too.
The Afrikaans press has recently reported that De Klerk plans some “low-profile” campaigning on behalf of the NNP in the current election campaign – “low profile” so as not to overshadow his successor as party leader, Van Schalkwyk. Nobody – not even Patrick McKenzie – believes McKenzie’s claim that De Klerk approved his recent defection to the African National Congress.
Greyling Wentzel, the former minister of agriculture, has also returned to the rural life on his farm near Bethal in Mpumalanga. Wentzel made a brief foray back into politics when he tried to help the Afrikaner Eenheidsbeweging get going, but he has since fallen into the background again. Political sources say he is now well to the right of the NNP.
Eli Louw – who he? – is farming up in Namaqualand. He was minister of transport.
Kobie Coetsee, the former minister of justice who gets most of the praise (and much of the blame from some of his old colleagues) for kickstarting the negotiation process back in the mid-1980s when he met Nelson Mandela in prison, is on his farm outside Bloemfontein.
Described by Winnie Madikizela-Mandela as “that honourable gentleman”, his lesser fans insist it was never clear that he knew what he was doing or where it might all end – and, even now, they are unconvinced he knows where it did all end.
Gerrit Viljoen has recovered from a bout of confusion. Friends say it was a form of shell-shock as a result of being sent repeatedly into battle against the likes of Joe Slovo, Mac Maharaj and Albie Sachs in the constitutional negotiations armed with a very poor brief. Viljoen, who was only ever an academic – and a very good one – has now retired to his books. He was recently observed, happy and contented, driving a bakkie with a very big dog in the back through the streets of Pretoria.
Magnus Malan is recovering from a heart bypass operation. Otherwise, he has been consulting on aspects of business and security in Pretoria.
Dawie de Villiers, former Springbok scrumhalf and minister of administration and privatisation, has flown the coop. He now spends most of his time in Spain where he is deputy head of the International Tourist Organisation.
He opposed the National Party’s breakaway from the government of national unity and now, from a left-wing perspective, is understood to be deeply disillusioned with his old party. He might be one reason why the NNP should not push too hard for the vote for South Africans living abroad.
Then the two Stoffels. Dr CJ “Slim Stoffel” van der Merwe, the former minister of broadcasting services and the film industry, who suffered a dramatic fall from grace in the NP when, in the words of one political journalist, “his little head started ruling his big head”, has not returned to academia. He is now also a consultant, last noticed in Pretoria.
JCG “Dom Stoffel” Botha, the former minister of home affairs and communications, who once accused us on this newspaper of being “media terrorists” and closed us down, is, alas, no longer among us.
And the remaining two Bothas?
Following the death of his wife a few years ago, Pik Botha, former minister of foreign affairs, is remarried – to Ina Joubert, a television news producer. He is writing his memoirs and is often seen by jackals, snakes and rock rabbits wandering about the veld contemplating the meaning of life and scribbling quick poems on the back of cigarette packets. He also has a line in potjiekos that he shares with the rest of us on television. And he occasionally denounces the NNP as dead.
Sources say he has recently lost a lot of weight and quote him as claiming he is on top of the world. He apparently has masses of fractious extended family members living with him in his huge house on a smallholding north of Pretoria. As a result, he is now known in the area as the “Jock Ewing of the Magaliesburg”.
And the Great Crocodile PW Botha? He is remarried but evidently unchanged. He is thrashing about in unrequited fury in the Wilderness.