The generous tributes paid by the first two black presidents of South Africa to one-time arch foe PW Botha have left many compatriots bemused and warning against a rewrite of apartheid’s history.
Botha, regarded as an international pariah during his 11-year leadership of a whites-only government, died last week largely unmourned and unloved in a country where few people now even try to defend the former racist regime.
However, rather than choosing to recall his role in the death of hundreds of black activists or his refusal to release the African National Congress (ANC) leadership, both Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki played up what they saw as his role in paving the way to the end of the apartheid regime.
Mbeki, who succeeded Mandela as president in 1999, lost a son, brother and cousin during the apartheid era — all believed to have been assassinated by government agents.
But in a weekly newsletter, Mbeki said Botha should be seen as an architect of the rainbow nation, which has replaced apartheid with the first multiracial elections 1994, for initiating the first contacts with the ANC leadership.
”Of them [Botha and late ANC president Oliver Tambo] we can say, echoing the words of the Palestinian, Yasser Arafat, when he spoke of the Israeli, Yitzhak Rabin, that they were partners in the creation of the peace of the brave that is our blessing,” said Mbeki.
The magnanimity of Mbeki, however, has left many observers protesting against what they see as an overly generous assessment of a man the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said had personally ordered deadly attacks.
Misleading
”What is misleading … is this impression that Botha made the initiatives out of the goodness of his heart,” said Ido Lekota, a columnist for the Sowetan newspaper. ”The reality is that international pressure, coupled with the sanctions imposed on South Africa, as well as the internal struggles waged by the oppressed, led him to realise the futility of white rule.”
Mandela, a former resident of Soweto, spent the Botha years as a prisoner despite the resounding international calls for his release and it was left to the last white president, FW de Klerk, to free him after 27 years in jail.
However, during Botha’s final days in office in 1989, Mandela was invited to a top-secret tea at the president’s Cape Town residence where a degree of mutual respect appears to have arisen.
In a message of condolence, Mandela acknowledged Botha was a symbol of apartheid but urged people to ”also remember him for the steps he took to pave the way towards the eventual peacefully negotiated settlement in our country”.
According to Vuyo Mvoko, a columnist for Business Day, Botha’s death should not have been occasion to push the notion of hidden qualities in a man whose abrasiveness won him the nickname the Groot Krokodil (Great Crocodile).
”I felt an awkward sense of betrayal when people I regarded as my leaders — Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, [Archbishop] Desmond Tutu — chose to say very little, if anything, about the atrocious man we came to know as Die Groot Krokodil,” wrote Mvoko.
”Botha’s death, I sincerely believed, should have been used to teach future generations that may never have experienced his viciousness that we would have indeed gone very far as a nation had we not had people like that finger-wagging racist.”
Gesture
Perhaps the most remarkable gesture from the government came with a visit to the Botha family from Frank Chikane, now Director General in the Presidency, whose clothes were laced with poison by apartheid agents at the tail-end of his presidency.
Patrick Craven, spokesperson for the Congress of South African Trade Unions, said Botha deserved only contempt given his track record. ”His hands were stained with the blood of hundreds who were murdered during the struggle for democracy and liberation under his presidency,” said Craven. ”The overwhelming majority of South Africans and the people of the world will remember PW Botha only with hatred and disgust.”
While the Botha family turned down an offer of a state funeral, flags have been ordered to fly at half-mast.
Few people, however, appear willing to join in such tributes. A book of condolence opened at Parliament in Cape Town remained unsigned in the first few days after his death while another in the seat of government in Pretoria attracted only about a dozen signatures. — Sapa-AFP