South Africans should bury the past before the past buries them, Jordanian Christian missionary Dr Bahjat Batarseh told mourners at the funeral in George of apartheid-era president PW Botha on Wednesday.
In a lengthy sermon, he called on South Africans not to abuse the nation but to be one family together.
Having bitterness by remembering the past all the time is ”like a worm that eats the root of a tree and then the tree collapses,” Batarseh said.
”It seems as if when God is about to bless the nation, it rolls back,” he said.
People such as those who commit crimes that cause others hurt too often use the past as an excuse, he said. ”Bury the past or the past will bury you.”
Batarseh, who said he has preached all over the world for the past 52 years, told the congregation at the Dutch Reformed Mother Church that he first met Botha six years ago.
The service, broadcast live on national television, lasted about one-and-a-half hours. Botha’s simple brown coffin was decked with flowers.
It was attended by more than 400 people, according to the South African Broadcasting Corporation.
As President Thabo Mbeki came out of the church, he and Batarseh appeared to exchange contact details.
Shortly before the service began, Botha’s successor in the George constituency, Hennie Smit, said the apartheid-era president was passionate about his constituency and visited George every fortnight to keep in touch with those he represented.
Among those who attended the funeral was a string of former National Party MPs, most of them now members of the Democratic Alliance or African National Congress, and a sprinkling of former Cabinet ministers.
One of them was Dr Gerrit Viljoen (80), who served as minister of education under Botha. He was taken into the church through a back entrance in his wheelchair.
An early arrival was Gene Louw, who was administrator of the Cape during Botha’s term as head of government. Louw said he and Botha had had a ”long-standing relationship”.
He said Botha was being misjudged and that negative reporting since his death on his role in South Africa was being done with a political agenda.
”He wanted to go ahead and abolish the entire the system of apartheid. He very definitely wanted to do that. The spirit was there to abolish it, to enlighten the burden on the people,” Louw said.
Also at the service were former South African Defence Force chief Constand Viljoen, who described Botha as a ”strict, honest politician” who had played a vital role in starting the process of change in South Africa, and former head of national intelligence Niel Barnard.
Botha was laid to rest in a hilltop graveyard, next to his first wife, Elize. The private burial, attended only by members of his family, followed the funeral service in George.
The Bothas’ graves are in the grounds of the Dutch Reformed Church at Hoekwil, a settlement outside George.
By 6.30pm workers had filled in the open grave and covered the bare earth with wreaths.
On the sidelines
Meanwhile, Botha’s funeral service was the wrong place to steal a cellphone, two would-be thieves discovered. The men apparently took the phone from one of the marquees set up around the church while the service was in progress.
However, they were spotted and apprehended by police before they made it out of the church grounds.
Police maintained a strong but low-profile presence at the funeral and controlled the entry to the grounds.
A Labrador named Magriet with a cockatiel perched on her head was refused entry to the church where the funeral service was held — even though she was carrying a message of condolence in her mouth.
Magriet and the cockatiel, Oom Piet, are the pets of handicapped George resident Phillip Kotze, who said he wanted to present the message to Botha’s widow, Barbara. The message, hand-printed on red card and tied with black ribbons, said ”Rest in peace”.
But when Kotze tried to take the animals into the church, a police officer turned him away. Instead, he watched the service on a large screen in an adjacent marquee.
He was, however, able to hand the message, by then slightly scuffed, to Barbara Botha after the service.
”The dog has already been a maid of honour at people’s weddings,” he said.
Kotze said Botha was ”an exceptional person”, adding that he is a veteran of the bush war fought during Botha’s tenure as head of government and that he was left disabled by an assault 16 years ago. — Sapa