P W Botha

[speedymama]

I thought that Nelson Mandela was characteristically gracious about him, here , considering how he and is ilk treated the black majority population as well as Mandela. Also interesting to see the ANC offering their condolences.

Imagine, he and his fellow racists treated black people like they were no better than dog poo but yet, these same people offer compassion to his bereaved family. Ironic, don't you think but it also demonstrates the human capacity for forgiveness. A sobering lesson for us all.

Dennis Goldberg's comments are honest and heartfelt, I think as are Helen Suzman MP, here

Sobering report.

I was best friends with his granddaughter, she was my room mate at school in south Africa (she is totally blind). I think it's very easy to have an opinion on the type of person someone is/was based on what you read/hear in the media. I did not know the man himself, but I knew his family (his daughter//grandchildren) well and I can say now that his family were definitely not racists.

I grew up in South Africa and while I most certainly do not agree with how the law was back then, I believe that no-one really knows how things were unless you were there at the time.

Wannabe, having read accounts from the black people who had to live under his murderous, inhumane, vile and corrupt regime, as a black person, I'm glad that I did not personally experience apartheid. On the other hand, if I was white, maybe I could afford to be more charitable about that era.

I don't care what he was like on a personal level. He won't be remembered for his personality, he'll be remembered for his contribution to history. And his contribution, was to give succour and support to a racist state which tortured, murdered and imprisoned decent people.

sm I am by no means saying that apartheid was right and that I condoned it - I don't. I was just saying that things aren't elways exactly as they seem when we're looking in from the outside - this goes for so many situations. Reality is, that South Africa had apartheid written in law, but how many other countries condone racism in various forms - when hundreds of people were taken to gwantanamo bay I don't think there were very many white faces amongst them - in Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe is killing white farmers to reclaim the land to give back to the black people - even in South Africa white people are being killed purely because they are white - and isn't the divide between muslems and non muslems a tipicle example of racism?

caligula but the brittish haven't exactly been whiter than white when it's come to humanity in the past. During the boer war (and I use south Africa as an example again because I have more knowledge of how things happened over there from history), Kitchener used a scorched earth policy whereby farms were burned to the ground and the women and children were placed in concentration camps. Many died from disease, as the conditions there were less than favourable. I have no doubt this policy would have been adopted across most countries where the brits went in and took over (sun once never set on the Brittish empire). Things might have changed now, but our forefathers certainly were no saints.

Totally agree Wannabe. But British imperialism doesn't cancel out the choices PW Botha made. (And I'm sure Kitchener was nice to his mates as well, but we remember him for the concentration camps - quite rightly, because that's his contribution to history, not how he treated his friends and family.)

Apartheid was enshrined in law, racism of any form in the UK or in most countries is not. Just because racism happens everywhere, does not mean it is right to give credance to what S Africa stood for in the past.

BTW, Mugabe terrorises both blacks and whites who don't support him - his motives are more political than racial. It is mainly the blacks who are suffering because the whites have fled. Also, how can the divide between muslims and non muslims be regarded as racist since people of all races follow Islam?

I think you diminish the cruel reality of apartheid by trivialising its impact on the majority population and by comparing it to social unease, inequalities etc, which exists in all countries, imho.

I don't think I could find a good word to say about a man whose political stance or actions was to implement apartheid, and all that that meant fro the black population of S Africa.

Yes, times change, but Botha wasn't born in Victorian times, he was a C20th politician.

Racism is a problem in many places beyond S Africa - but there is a fundemental difference in writing racism into your country's constitution and having to challenge institutional racism or overt racism through your democratically elected gvt. Nothing about apartheid was defensible at any moment of it's history.

At least Mrs Botha has the sense and decency to decline the 'right' to a state funeral.

I agree with what Denis Goldberg said when the Today interviewer proposed that Botha was a product of his time. We all make choices, whatever time we were born in. (And anyway, they always make that excuse for monsters - how many times do we have to put up with the proposition that Ivan the Terrible and Henry VIII were products of their time - bollocks were they, people in their time found them shocking as well, that's why Ivan was called "the Terrible".) Nelson Mandela was around at the same time as Botha, he made different choices. And so did lots of white anti-racists.

"in Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe is killing white farmers to reclaim the land to give back to the black people"

Actually yes while the number of white farmers in Zimbabwe did indeed reach double figures, since the death of the first white farmer the number of black Zimbabweans killed is estimated to be in the 100's and the numbers tortured and beaten in the 1000's - Zimbabwe may look like a 'race' issue - but it's not really - not anymore.

Spot on Caligula.

but Botha did not implement apartheid. Apartheid was in place long before Botha became prime minister and then state president. in fact the start of apartheid in South Africa started a lot closer to home than we would potentially like to admit - it

here

Although apartheid was written to the constitution in 1946, the groundwork was laid by the Brits in the late 1800's.

I never said that Botha was a great man, I simply said that I knew his family and that the members of his family I knew and were close to were definitely not racists. but we do not always share the views of our families, and therefore all members of one family should not be tarred with the same brush. After all, whereas Nelson Mandella brought about freedom from apartheid, and his legacy will live on for centuries, his first wife Winny was an evil murderer who I am sure he would not wish to be associated with.

"but Botha did not implement apartheid"

Well, I'm sure that Nazi prison guards who oversaw the gassing of Jews could say that they did not implement the Final Solution policy in order to excuse what they did.

Botha made his choice. As President, he enforced Apartheid with force and brutality. History will judge him accordingly and no amount of white-washing will detract from the reality of what he represented.

"Actually yes while the number of white farmers in Zimbabwe did indeed reach double figures, since the death of the first white farmer the number of black Zimbabweans killed is estimated to be in the 100's and the numbers tortured and beaten in the 1000's - Zimbabwe may look like a 'race' issue - but it's not really - not anymore. "

Much the same could be said about P.W. Botha's regime. I don't know what the actual number of white farmers killed is, but the number dispossessed has been large enough to have a catastrophic effect on the country's economy. An email from a former school friend tells of passing through mile after mile of derelict farms where the whites have been ejected, but no black farmers have taken over, just some of Mugabe's cronies who turn up once every six months and strut around with rifles, saying "We own this place now". But not so much as a sack of corn is being produced. If Mugabe is doing this for his own interests, or of the interests of a small clique of people, it only makes him and his cronies the same as P.W. Botha and his cronies - people who used race to justify the acquisition of privileges for a small minority, and to exclude the majority. Botha's crimes were no worse than Mugabe's, and his motivations no worse either. Mugabe's genocidal campaign against the Ndebele tribe (Matebeleland) was more murderous than anything Botha ever did, and just as racialist in origin.

Meantime, black workers on Zim farms, with no work to do, and no money coming in, simply wish the white farmers were back. At least they'd eat.

No-one is rushing to defend Mugabe!

I honestly don't understand why anyone else's bad behaviour excuses Botha in any way. Nor would I flinch from British involvement with the establishment of apartheid...or the later support of British businesses in shoring it up. Wasn't Dennis Thatcher the owner of some business that exported shackles for use by Botha's regime?

I agree with Speedymamma about the enormity of the gesture by both the ANC and Mandela. That is a really progressive and strong position for them to take. If we casually dismiss Botha's ferociously defended committment to apartheid as 'no worse than anyone else's' or 'of his time', we actually undermine the strength of what the ANC / Mandela have done.

I'm sorry - but as mad as Mugabe actually is I don't think anyone can say his regime is anything like the Apartheid regime which Botha helped to keep running.

Mugabe is mad - and many of those who suffer under him think that, Botha was evil - and therein lies the difference.

And now I must go and tidy up - DH has just called to say he's been asked to help do an interview with his boss - and needs to come home to get a shirt and tie ......and DS2 has emptied the entire contents of his toy box (mostly containgin 'matchbox' cars) onto the living room floor......and I'm still in my dressing gown

Blu, no one else's behaviour excuses Botha's, any more than his behaviour excuses theirs. I haven't said otherwise, and Mandela, for example, has been more generous to Botha than I have been. But I do get annoyed when murderous African dictators are dismissed as "mad", while white ones are "evil". That subtle distinction escapes me, and I don't know what kind of expertise you need in order to look into their minds and spot it in the first place. I have no idea how much of what Hitler did, or Stalin did, or Pol Pot did was down to madness or down to evil. And I see no reason to distinguish between dictators on the basis of what ideology they espoused. Racist motives for killing large numbers of people are not worse than any other kind.

I should also say that the involvement of the British government or the British commercial sector in propping up dictators does not make their regimes more or less evil than they were before. Dennis Thatcher might have profited from the sale of shackles to Botha's security forces, and you can be sure that his successors are also profiting from the sale of instruments of torture to Mugabe' henchmen. It makes no difference to how you judge those regimes themselves. Evil is evil. Murder is murder. On the scale of human rights abuse Mugabe is right up there with P.W. Botha.

"But I do get annoyed when murderous African dictators are dismissed as "mad", while white ones are "evil". "

What even when it's their fellow blacks that are describing him as mad??? Apart from Gukurahundi the first 18yrs of Mugabes reign as President had the country in a fantastic position - it was known as "the bread basket of southern africa" - as it produced so much Maize is had plenty to be able to export. Race relations where excellent, crime was (relatively) low, employment high, strong currency, low inflation.

It's only in the last 8yrs or so that things have taken a turn for the worst and I, and many Zimbabweans, but that down to some sort of senile dementia (perhaps not dementia) but definitely going senile!

8yrs ago he had no real issues with the UK government, was quite happy for British people to live and work in Zimbabwe - and the suddenly everything went haywire......not all his own doing I must add, there have been some very strong political individuals pulling the strings behind his back for several years now - and his views have changed. Something I'm sure he wouldn't have let happen 20yrs ago....but now seems out of control - and - yes - mad!

I'm sure if anyone is ever to be tried for Human Rights violations in Zimbabwe in recent yrs (taking Gukurahundi out of the picture) that Mugabe would not be on top of the list. He has some truly evil politicians running things behind his back.

RNF: I think Mugabe is evil, I think Botha was evil. But we're discussing Botha because he's died - and we're discussing the reaction of the ANC and Mandela. My comments were in response to Wannabe who was making comparisons and saying other peple or regimes were / are as bad. And agreeing that the British, from the the Boer war to Dennis Thatcher, have been right in there propping up the injustice that was apartheid...and that still doesn't make Botha 'better'. That's all.

Blu - point taken. It's about Botha. But the way these threads go, other leaders get brought into it. I see no reason to keep quiet if Botha's crimes are condemned while Mugabe's are dismissed as the actions of a madman.

HRHqoq - "I'm sure if anyone is ever to be tried for Human Rights violations in Zimbabwe in recent yrs (taking Gukurahundi out of the picture) that Mugabe would not be on top of the list."

And is there any reason why I should take Gukurahundi out of the picture? I'd no more do that than I'd take the massacre of Bosnian muslims out of the picture when forming an opinion of Slobodan Milosevic.

I've just googled for Gukurahundi. Mugabe sounds to me like a very evil man indeed. I wouldn't want him running a pub, never mind a country!