As the electric gates slide open at Pik Botha’s home in Akasia, a northern suburb of Pretoria, the first thing you encounter is a World War II artillery piece looking you squarely in the eye. A gift from a well-wisher, the giant gun speaks of bygone days and the trace of a laager mentality.
We make our way past a row of farm-style storehouses to the shaded cool of the veranda, where a chest-high bronze bust of Botha glares at us from one end as we await the flesh-and-blood version to emerge from a doorway at the other.
Sounds of shuffling from the kitchen, the low hum of an Afrikaans baritone as he confers with his wife, a thunderous belch, and out steps Roelof Frederik “Pik” Botha, minister of foreign affairs under the last three apartheid prime ministers.
To many South Africans, though, he’s known simply as “good old Pik”, one of the more liberal senior National Party politicians.
However, the Botha of today’s interview is pallid, his eyes bloodshot, his mood dark. Holding a soon-to-be-published doorstopper of a biography (Pik Botha and His Times, by Theresa Papenfus) in the crook of one arm, he is not amused.
“I don’t like it,” he says, dropping the book on the chequered tablecloth with distaste. “I don’t like what it says.”
“He’s not depicted as an angel,” says his wife, Ina, a wiry woman holding a cigarette, who joins us at the table, “but nobody’s an angel, are they?”
Normal life as a South African citizen
It may be the afternoon heat, it may be the sleepless night spent reading his biography, or it may be the intrusion of a reporter and a photographer from an old adversary, but Botha is gruff.
“What is the purpose of this article?”
We explain.
Ina chips in: “You must not allow him to be photographed without smiling.”
“Ag, no man,” comes the reply, “Must I now sit here with a big smile on — don’t I have any say in anything any more?”
We are ordered not to photograph him smoking, although he does so incessantly, reaching into a packet of Paul Revere cigarettes every 10 to 15 minutes.
“We lead a normal life. I’m just a private citizen of South Africa,” he says, when we ask what retired life is like for him.
Zimbabwe
Botha wants to talk about the highlights of his career instead. His rich smoky voice pauses after every five or six words as he gathers his thoughts, then begins again. He may be 78, but precise dates of 20, 30 years ago roll off his tongue.
“— the trilateral agreement between South Africa, Cuba and Angola on 22 December 1988, paving the way for Mandela’s release and the negotiations which led to a new constitution for South Africa — the Inkomati Accord — the Lancaster House agreement — “
Here, he stops to assess the way the latter agreement, which propelled Robert Mugabe to power in Zimbabwe in 1980, has worked out.
“Mugabe has made a mess of that independence, certainly, but we must ask ourselves: What would have been the alternative? Just as I often encounter from certain quarters the accusation that we sold this country down the drain in 1994, but none of them has indicated what the alternative would have been. It would have been the complete destruction of this country economically and in other ways, which would have made it impossible to govern at all,” Botha says.
Media muzzling
Sitting with a square of tissue paper in front of him which he folds into ever-smaller squares, Botha says he sees the ANC’s proposed media appeals tribunal and Protection of Information Bill as the pathway to “a Mugabe Zimbabwe”.
“It will not end with curtailing media freedom. The independence of the judiciary would be next and then other fundamental rights in the Constitution’s human rights charter.”
We ask him whether he sees any similarities between the ANC now and the National Party of yore, given his party’s crackdown on media freedom and the secret funding of the Citizen as a government mouthpiece in the 1970s, with parallels to the pro-government New Age today.
Botha allows himself the slightest chuckle at this comparison.
“Yes, we introduced a measure of media censorship. Without excusing what we did — it was wrong — but the way I understand the ANC’s new attempts to regulate the media, it will be worse than the measures taken by the National Party. Even in this book,” he taps a craggy fingernail on top of the offending biography, “there are hundreds of quotations from the media, much of it critical of what we were doing. Under the ANC’s laws, you would not have it.”
‘We should have started dismantling apartheid earlier’
Talk turns to Botha’s legacy. Does he have any regrets in either his public or private life? There is a lengthy pause, while Botha first extracts a cigarette, then lights it.
“Of course, there are tens of individual events, like cross-border operations and other setbacks, which were extremely painful to shoulder. But looking at it as a whole —”
Another long pause, before Botha digs his finger decisively into the tablecloth three times: “We should have started dismantling apartheid earlier.”
As the afternoon cools and the birdsong gathers confidence in the trees around us, Botha ends with a story.
“Years ago, when I was still a young member of Parliament, I was asked to address a political meeting at a place called Swartwater [far northern Limpopo].
“On our way there we were five in this Mercedes-Benz. As we were travelling there was one gravel road forking off to the right. And just as we approached it there was a flat wheel and we had to pull off the road. Four of the guys got out and began to quarrel — heavily — about which road we should take.
“A tremendously emotional conversation took place, until I said, ‘Gentlemen, can I make a proposal? Can we first change the wheel, so that when we agree about which road we should take, we can drive?’
“There is a great lesson in this little anecdote. Can we first please ensure that the wheel is on the car of this country so that we can drive?
“We need this lesson because we need each other. The whites need the blacks and the blacks need the whites. If that simple fact can grow, you will resolve this country’s problems.”